No One Owes You Anything, But You Really Owe Yourself Something

            The center of Marxist thought is that the history of man is all about class oppression, a world divided between the kingly class and the peasants or any sorts of oppressed, bonded labor like slaves. With each passing year, this kernel of Karl Marx’s writings seems all the more relevant. We, the common people, are being increasingly oppressed. The very solution to the problem is simple: “To all the workers of the world, unite!” Violence as a solution to violence in hopes that the violent revolution brings about immediate palpable change. It is easy to see why this idea is so popular these days. Many of us are not happy with our lives, and so seek a ready solution to everything we gripe about.

            Marxist thought seems to work on the surface level, but it often ignores the lives of numerous people from centuries of yore whom we know nothing about what they thought of things. Many of the high-educated folk in the world know of their lack of obvious records, and so dismiss them as all miserable people crushed by the policies enacted by their kings, lords and emperors to presumably enrich themselves beyond comprehensible imagination. Yet on the other hand, we oversophisticated unsatisfied modern people tread on their graves without care. We do not mind spreading anecdotal falsehoods about those long-deceased people.

            “They’re all but sad, starving peasants,” is what modern man would generally say.

            There is some truth to that, that the average person back then would almost certainly be a farmer, or practice some menial procession that few of us these days have little use looking into. Few of us even bother browsing the tomes of history because we claim that we lack the time for that. We are too preoccupied with the matters of the present, trying to demand for the governments of the world to give us what we need, and bully corporations into meeting our spoiled, delusional expectations. But when it ends up that almost none of those wants and needs get provided by the powers that be, we like to waste our lives jumping to conclusions, or engaging in simple rhetoric as to why things did not turn out how we wanted. This is where the lives of the unwritten people, the peasants, the poor souls of the past, start to leave the crypts of the unknown into the relevant topside intellectual realm.

            When one finds out about how the poor had lived, one realizes that their lives were physically terrible, but they still managed to keep going. What other options did they have? We have no idea how common suicide was in any given time before our own, but there is no easy guarantee that suicide rates were high. When one reads the work written by people belonging to the upper classes, it is likely that just as many stories would be about the concerns for the peasants as for the tirades about their supposedly poor manners. The fact that for thousands of years, humankind developed various civilizations with technologies they shared even after their demises is testament to a present, if regionally unaware, concern for others. If the Marxist perception of the masses as being restless mobs was perpetually true, then humanity would have never advanced past the Stone Age because no one would accept the status quo as what it is, instead creating an endless cycle of revolutions and violence that would both prevent the rise of a wealthy class and prevent the establishment of a successful government. It also denies the fact that the rich, many times, even built things for the lesser classes to enjoy. Imperial Rome, with its grand bathhouses, theaters, Coliseum, and Circus Maximus, was just as much where the lowlier people could find opportunities as it was a symbol of imperial squander. 

            The human race’s development is defined as first and foremost, kind exchanges of goods and returning favors to benefit one another. We still do this often. Baking a cake for a child’s birthday, helping senile neighbors get around, doing homestead chores; those are all things we seldom realize are manifestations of the same drive that enabled us humans to become successful in the first place. And they are also done in careful thought of others. We see our neighbors suffer, work hard, find love, and open themselves up to new opportunities, and so we cannot help resisting the feeling of consoling them, or rewarding them for their accomplishments. In return, we expect that those people would do similar favors for us, no matter how great or small.

            In comparison, being owed something from a government or a corporation is a very top-down system. We make petitions for change, or to deliver us the things we want, only for the company to either: (1) Not do anything, or (2) Playing a manipulative game of false promises and pollyannaish delusions. Our ability to blaze our own paths gets castrated, and we build up a mindset that a friend high above us is the only thing that will satisfy our wildest wants.

            It does not take long for anyone to see what those realities are like. Nothing gets fulfilled, and you always go home defeated every time something they want to see happen gets quashed. The various sects of the pop culture cult are like this, particularly in the animation part of it. How many times do I have to roll my eyes at the angst others express when traditional animation’s return gets delayed indefinitely by a film that does not appeal to everyone? Other groups, too, have shreds of this mentality. What can any of us do about the woeful decisions made in our past? Why did most of the civilized world not take reading for granted until the last two centuries or so? It gets easy for any one of us to blame for the lack of motivation from our leaders, the prime decision-makers who end up ruining everything for subsequent generations. Those are things that cannot be changed. Those things come and go, and come again, but it does not prevent the existence of niches where good things spring anew. Life is short, but history is too long, so ideally one should try to actually bring about something meaningful on one’s own, or with close friends. Understanding this simple truth often takes a serious awakening when one expects things to be the best ever in all of time. It is only after repeat disappointments that you start to see not a pattern, but an indicator of how the world really is. It gives you an opportunity to know why chasing false messiahs and empty collectivism is not beneficial for the human intellect, therefore giving you the courage to finally address that you need to work on what you want to do. The future is how anyone makes it, but if good judgment and the desire to do something for yourself or for others impels you to make a future, then your life is about to get a whole lot brighter.