BY SOFO ARCHON
This is the transcript of a video published here.
Our culture is sick.
One of the crystal-clear signs of its sickness is that it glorifies busyness.
You see, in this culture to be busy means to be successful or on the way to success. People who are all the time busy, working, being financially productive, doing things for some external reward or future end – more specifically, for money – are considered to be of high value.
According to our culture, time is money. Hence, those who spend it making as much money as possible are seen as winners. Those who don’t, those who take regular time for themselves, who chill, who savor the moment, who are playful or creative, who rejoice in the presence of friends and nature, who don’t sacrifice the present for some financial goal, are seen as unsuccessful, lazy, unimportant – the losers of society. Except if, of course, they have already proved their worth by having earned a lot of money.
To me, time is priceless, for if you think about it time is, in a sense, life itself. Hence, being always busy, not enjoying yourself but continuously sacrificing the present moment for financial profit is a waste of one’s life.
Yes, you might earn a lot of money wasting your life, but what’s the point of it? Are you going to take your money to the grave with you?
Yet most people have been programmed to live this way. Of course, they are not to blame for that, since they are victims of our sick culture. A culture that, in fact, demands that we are always busy. For it upholds a scarcity-based, profit-driven and ruthlessly competitive economic system that is coercing us to live like that, since our very survival depends on being busy making money.
And our culture glorifies this kind of lifestyle, so nearly everyone thinks that it’s OK. Even worse, most people find pride in being busy, even though busyness is one of the main reasons why they are suffering from stress and anxiety! For how can one be calm and relaxed when one is constantly worried about the future?
But this is how deeply sick our culture is: It is so sick that it doesn’t even realize that it is! And unless it does, it will never get rid of its sickness.