Capitalism overwhelms our senses while also insulating us from the connection we need

I struggle with the cultural push toward insularity and self-reliance. I suffer from the inertia of screens and the ennui of stuff. I indulge in the brief hit of dopamine comfort that comes from online shopping (the kitchen gadgets, the houseplants, the skincare products). I drink wine to unwind. I sip from the warm cup of promised safety and comfo

Capitalism robs us of our time, exhausting our bodies and minds, while pollution, stress, and shifting media patterns shorten our attention spans, and other mediums offer effortless modes of escapism. The gutting of public education was geared toward the prevention of an “educated proletariat”—as a Reagan adviser once put it

At the core of most of our cocoons are the concepts and frameworks that have been dictated by the sense that capitalism (in it’s more colloquial broader sense that includes deregulation, imperialism and globalization) is the only viable economic and political system. This has been termed a “monomyth” - a singular myth that like a monoculture planta