Buy-In to Opt Out

Does anyone else have trouble buying-in? Trouble buying-in to something you know that 99% of your friends are doing, that you will eventually have to do, that you are expected to do? Does anyone else sometimes feel the need to run away to a forest, live in a tree house, and evade taxes for the rest of your life? Er, yeah, me neither…fuckin’ hipsters.

All jokes aside, we are all destined to work, whether we like it or not. We didn’t grow up to be baseball players or movie stars, and certainly none of us grew up to marry a prince (no, not like “my boyfriend is my night in shinning armor,” but like an actual prince, one who doesn’t have to work a day in his life because his bank roll is an entire nation).

We are all destined to work, and we are all expected to be contributing members of society.  We are expected to be good little boys and girls and pay our taxes, vote for this vanilla politician or that vanilla politician (maybe not a good analogy with Obama in the White House), and spend what little of our paycheck the government leaves us on American made products so that we may continue to fuel consumerism. All hail American consumerism!!!

And it’s the money we spend on consumer goods that helps grease the wheels of capitalism, allowing our nation to lumber forward.

When you think about it that way, it seems like a person is just a small cog in a giant, well-oiled machine. And since economists view a typical employee as an input that helps a company achieve a desired output (either a product or a service), it’s not hard to think of a person as a cog in a company machine, and then think of that company as a cog in the American machine. In reality, we are all just cogs of cogs, living life like robots.

Melodramatic? Yes, but then again, think about it: Wake up, gym, shower, work, eat, sleep, repeat. Oh, and don’t forget to change your batteries twice a year.

With that being said, I understand that none of us are going to reject society and start a nudist colony of tree people in the remote Oregon forest (unless everyone is down, of course, because I’m in).  We want nice things, enjoy taking lavish vacations, and to some extent relish the idea of being a professional.  We may even have others who rely on us to support them.  And to achieve all of these things, we need money; we have to buy-in. We decide to become a cog in that well-oiled, capitalistic machine.

Which really means that there is hope. By realizing what the big picture really looks like, by understanding what society really is, we become well informed. We become our own decision makers and it becomes our choice to buy-in, and not anyone else’s.  We take control of our own lives.

In reality, there is nothing more rebellious than thinking your own thoughts and then acting on them. Deciding to buy-in to corporate America is just as rebellious as deciding to reject it, as long as the decision is your own.

So go forth my rebellious friends, be your own decision maker. And remember that even buying-in gives you the opportunity to opt out.