Olivia Bennett
Often I dream of the apocalypse.
I fantasize about the collapse of society. I wish for the stock market to give out, for money to have no meaning. I wish for our cars to be useless, for our credit scores to be erased and for debt to disappear. I wonder about a world without careers, no bosses to please, no “things” we must do.
Now, I’m not advocating for laziness, anarchy, or chaos, although that might be fun for a time. I just wish to no longer see the matrix for what it is, much less participate in it. Invisible social contracts we must sign or else have no food, no water, no shelter, no community, nothing to keep us afloat in the lazy river of life we’ve dug into the ground. No more letting the river run her course, no. We just had to pick up our shovels, didn’t we?
I wonder where it all went wrong. I wonder when we crossed the proverbial line of going “too far” because it’s true that we’ve been abusing each other for millennia. Perhaps it’s just what we do.
But what I want to know, is who started it all? Was it the agricultural revolution? The Roman Empire? Colonization? The industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism? Or was it the atom bomb? The smart phone?
Or perhaps its power and alienation and the tendency to forget the fellow human being sitting next to you. Go ahead, look at them. See their face, their hair, their eyes, and the history behind them.
This past summer, I stayed in a cabin in rural Virginia for a week with a group of friends. There, I saw a dream realized. One where I cook, you clean. One where the early bird gets up and rekindles the fire while the night owl stays up and protects their sleeping
friends. One where we squint up at the stars and ask what they might mean. One where we swim in lakes and rub salve into each other’s sun-ripened skin and take walks in the evening. One where we do things for each other just because that’s the good human thing to do. One where we don’t have to play the invisible game, abide by somebody else’s rules—because, unless you’re rich, there’s no other way you’ll survive. For many of us, the dilemma is: exist within the system, or be crushed.
Because the truth is—we’re all being exploited. Right now, in this room. Well, perhaps not right this second, because right now I am doing the radical thing by writing and speaking. And by reading this, so are you.
In the ancient mountains of Appalachia, I realized something. YOU are doing the radical thing by being here at a writing and arts showcase, engaging in the communal activities our ancestors did. Art, anything beautiful and meaningful, exists in defiance of the system. Art exists within itself. Listening, speaking, communicating, feeling, laughing, crying—the authentic human voice that is far older than any primitive tool, any piece of technology, any job or system or empire. Far more ancient than any king or capitalist or warmonger.
Why do you think it is that the first priority of any oppressor with power is to silence? And no, I’m not talking about the white nationalists who broadcast on every forum and on news television about “being silenced.” Because the people who are actually being silenced are SILENT. And I don’t want to be silent anymore, but I feel so small and so powerless and insignificant and incapable of any great change in the face of this oppressive system outside myself.
But I just want to know that I’m not alone. Not alone in knowing the truth that we have made the world wrong. Not alone in the alienation, the confusion, the cognitive dissonance that we are not supposed to be living this way. That we’ ve gone too far.
That the real truth—the way we will save ourselves—is sitting right next to you. Look at them again, and smile. It’s okay, I know it’s awkward. And I know I’m not the best at this, either.
The way we will save ourselves is inside me and inside you, too. Put a hand on your heart. Go ahead, it won’t hurt. Feel that? That is the beating of the drum of the indomitable human spirit, and she lives within all of us, alive and burning and teeth bared in the face of indifferent cruelty. The only way we will defeat The Man is with our fellow men.