There is a nihilist inside of me, because it seems that capitalism is so consumed with its desire for innovation that it always forgets to ask why. This is not a new thought. This is not a new theory. This is a platitude by now. But the thinking man—the man who wants innovation, the man almost completely retarded to art and writing and ingenuity for its own sake—is blind to it. They have made us all slaves to their thinking. And we, because we do not have the disposition to make others slaves to our ways of thinking, become theirs.

The artist becomes the slave of the capitalist. Not because one is better. Not because one brings more joy. But because the capitalist—the man consumed by money or innovation alike—feels good when he controls others. Feels as though striving for more is better. That the anthill is not sufficient because it is an anthill, and an anthill is the way it is because it is the way it has always been. He wears the costume of innovation for the sake of humanity, ignoring the hundreds of thousands of years where humanity was probably just okay.

The modernists and the centrists and the humanists are plentiful enough to stave off any revolution. They hold society together like glue. They are okay with working within the capitalistic framework to make something better for everyone.

But we're not really making anything better for anyone. Because who is anyone to begin with?

Anyone is anyone yesterday, to be precise. Or a year ago. Or a decade ago. We're constantly comparing ourselves to who we were before—or if we're truly toxic, to who other people are now. And if you're comparing yourself to who people are now, and you are on the lowest ends of the financial spectrum, then life has truly never been worse. And if I'm comparing my life to that of the man I was yesterday, or a year ago—is my life better? Sure. But does any of it have to do with technology or the innovations of the capitalist? Would I be fine shitting in the woods if that's all I knew? Sure. I don't prefer it in retrospect, but if it was all I knew, then shitting in the woods yesterday would be no different than shitting in the woods today.

So what are we actually improving? What is the delta? What is the thing we're indexing on?

It seems like we're indexing on nothing at all other than the divine intervention of the capitalist—of the one willing to enslave the other.

And yet the world goes on. The world will continue to go on where the ones that enslave are the ones with the disposition to do so. Because we want society to function. Because we want society to be stable. It is only when something becomes sufficiently atrocious that the glue gives way—that reasonable people actively revolt against some atrocity of a system in order to uptake the regime.

That is what we saw with the Founding Fathers, when reasonable men—and sadly not reasonable women in tow—came together and foresaw a future that was better. Yes, they had their shortcomings. Yes, slavery was still a thing. But come on. You know it was better. Don't be an asshole. It was better than what was. And even still, it indexed toward the idea that there will always be one that enslaves the other.

More literally in that time, it was the white man enslaving the colored man and woman. But it still is—and for the foreseeable future always will be—the man with the will enslaving the one who wants peace. The one who wants plenty. The one who wants just a little bit better than yesterday. The one who wants a family. The one who wants things that matter in life. The one who loves. The one who cares. And many of his curses will come from the work and labor doled out to him by that man or woman with the will and way to do so.

And such the world will go on. They will play their facade of charitable giving. The world will go on. They will play their facade of innovation making things better for all of us.

Yet all I know is this: if a microwave oven never existed, I wouldn't really care that it didn't exist in the first place.

So they will play their game. And I will continue to play along. I will do it just so I can get by another day, providing for my family. And who knows—maybe one day I'll join the ranks of those willing to enslave the other. Maybe I'll think my reasons are just. Maybe I'll think they are to help the world, my vision of it. But I have a hard time seeing a reality in which, if I do, I wouldn't be—at some fundamental level—wrong.

I'm not a communist. I'm a sad modernist and centrist who wishes with all his being that someone would come up with some goddamn solution to how we can all just get along and get by without the enslaving man in the way.

But no one is coming with that solution. And the machine requires feeding. And my family requires me inside it.

So I go.