Shadows on the Wall

July 22nd, 2025

I'm almost done with my summer Ethics class and I am intolerable.

Allow me to annoy you with my pointed criticism of cultural biases (it's like all I do these days).

I've written several essays over the years about philosophy. I once talked about how all of it was pointless up to now, as the world is still fucked up despite everything that has been thought and said, passed down and around; I wrote another when I realized I've been doing philosophy this whole time and apologized profusely.

The thing is: I'm a nerd for a lot of things, and philosophy is one of them.

As a result, I cannot stop challenging everything everyone says, and it's only gotten worse.

For example: I don't think that human beings need to work. Really. And I got in hot water last week for feeling this way, but allow me to use a conceptual example to explain.

Imagine a boy who is born on a faraway island. His parents have a small hut, and they grow some of their food and catch or hunt the rest. Besides this, there is no work. The boy is basically allowed to do whatever he wants for the rest of his life: go swimming, play games, fall in love, paint, think about stuff, whatever.

Is this boy a horrific disgrace and parasitic failure, a waste of hypothetical humanity?

If you said, "Well, no, that's cultural," then I got you. That is exactly right.

The idea that people need to work is a cultural bias of ours. The way that America has designed its society has indentured every generation of its citizens, so almost all of us have to work jobs that most of us fucking hate. If you want Amazon packages and coffee shops and strawberries year-round then, yeah, everyone has to work. But human beings don't; just Americans.

You have no idea how hard of a pill something like this is for most people to swallow. Or maybe you do, because you're choking on it right now.

But the wealthy and powerful use shit like this, our deeply ingrained beliefs and biases, to get us mad at each other instead of them. They perpetuate them, pour gasoline on them and light them up.

Thought exercises like these are how we stop staring at shadows on the back walls of caves and develop our own moral frameworks that can withstand the extreme cruelty and immorality of our present climate. We need to be standing on our own two feet, ethically-speaking.

So: I know I'm intolerable. But I'd much rather be adjusting my eyes to a painfully bright sun than spending my days underground.