What Does it Mean to Live?

I used to hate living in New Jersey, when I was a kid. But I learned to love it, in more recent years. One of my favorite things about living in New Jersey is how nature erupts into a cacophony of green leaves, furry creatures, and striped wasps in April–we are known as The Garden State, after all. Suddenly all life comes bursting to the surface, and once it starts it won’t stop for anything. I know it’s here to stay when every single type of bug, even the ladybugs, squeeze their way through the tiny cracks in my house and I find a million of them in my bathroom.

When life erupts into red polka dots like that, it’s impossible not to take notice. On those clear blue sky days, it honestly feels like a disservice to yourself to be indoors or working. I find myself wondering how anyone can avoid being “radicalized” against capitalism these days. Even if all our current predicaments weren’t being caused by it, it would only take a peak outside your window to be reminded that we are living unnaturally.

This morning, while I was straining coffee, I noticed two squirrels scurrying up the thick trunk of a tree. One was bigger than the other; most likely a mother and child. I watched as they frolicked through the shards of grass, eating nuts and immediately stopping in their tracks as I walked to open the window to let the breeze in. I thought to myself how magical it was, that those squirrels never once had to wonder how they would make ends meet to have somewhere to live or something to eat. They hold steadfast to the belief that the Earth will provide them with the nutrients they need and the resources to survive, and so far they have not been proven wrong.

It may seem tougher to us when you realize that none of these things are guaranteed to the squirrel. How does he keep his peace of mind? He can’t go to a nut store and stock up on as many as he needs. He can’t pray to a squirrel god to ensure they keep coming. Yet, nuts are not scarce, and the squirrel worries not. I wonder to myself, often, why humans are the only species that manufactures our own scarcity simply to claim that certain things–like food and shelter–should have a monetary value imposed on them?

The squirrels; they are always taken care of. As long as there are nuts to be had and dirt holes to sleep in, they don’t care. Not knowing what capital is doesn’t seem to bother them one bit. And though spending all day storing nuts for the winter might not create the new AI genius bullshit gimmick or the next electric car that you can sext, squirrels will continue to thrive.

I envy the simplicity. They just look happy. That’s real freedom. It is a freedom a human born into the capitalist hellscape we live in, even though we preach freedom, can never fathom. Even as children, most of us are bound to a school system that teaches us more about submission than how to take care of ourselves. We are cast into a societal structure based on hierarchy, competition, and shame. We are taught to focus on and point out our differences instead of marvelling at the fact that despite it all, we all find ourselves on this planet struggling through the same thing. The same plight even the squirrel struggles with. Survival.

While we may perceive the squirrel as constantly having to fight to survive, are we not in the same predicament? Our existence on earth is being threatened, in more ways than one. Climate change has always been on my mind, from the minute I was conscious enough to realize it was happening. I grew up during the Obama administration; I remember being in elementary school and being taught to reduce, reuse, recycle. The whole concept was something new they seemed to be pushing, I guess to see if they could hammer it into children that it was somehow our fault, yet still within our control, that our climate was warming rapidly and ocean levels rising. We switched to pasta noodle straws and paper straws and then just no straws at all. I didn’t really mind the changes. Life is about constant change. Humans are adaptable. But the climate still warmed, no matter how many paper straws I drank a hole straight through.

But how can the climate not warm, when just my one state is having to fight back against hundreds of data centers seeking the green light to build within a matter of mere days, and against the NESE pipeline we’ve been fighting for years from polluting our air and water? The New Jersey I love–home of all the abundant greenery and wildlife I love it for–is being led to ruin by the same people who seek to steal our futures. If they can convince us that everything we need is fed to us through a screen and keep us loyal to apps and subscription services to deliver our every need to us, we will never see that every remedy, every solution, everything we need, is already abundant around us and has been for a very, very long time.

They cannot let us find out that caring for our planet and our community is regenerative and infinite. It cannot run out like money can. Like taking from the earth and those who inhabit her without taking care to reinvest back will. The greater public buying into this mentality would be devastating for the 1%. So they make sure we are desperately subservient to our jobs by tying them to our healthcare plans and inflating grocery costs, stealing away every ounce of energy and time left in our days, and feeding us the remedies of doomscrolling, weed pens, and online shopping.

When will it stop being enough?

When the wells of cash to supply our overlords runs dry, and no one can even afford a chatgpt membership or a labubu or even a meal…what will happen? Will we all offer fruit from our backyards’ trees to our neighbor, and accept the eggs from their chickens, even if the hands that pass them over look different from ours? Or will we all loot from each other’s houses and eat the carcasses of their loved ones and pets?

No matter what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, I do not believe that it is human nature to be focused solely on self preservation. I believe we want to help each other, and we want someone to be there to help us. We want to see humanity win, even if it means sacrifice to send that message.

And when we support one another and come together, we do change lives and help our planet. I’ve seen this recently, with how local climate activists and groups like Climate Revolution Action Network have spent every waking hour for the last year–at least from when I met them–fighting for the Polluters Pay/Climate Superfund act. And how they’ve flooded hearings to speak on their stances against AI data centers being built across the country, and successfully stopped many of them from going forward.

It’s easy to go on autopilot during such hard times. Apathy, caring for yourself only, and hoarding your resources are symptoms of capitalism. I can’t fully blame someone for something a cancer has corroded the mind with, especially when most jobs leave people with little time or money to learn or think outside the box. But I know for a fact, if we believed our housing and food was guaranteed like the squirrel knows his is, no one would willingly choose to give their life up in the form of wage slavery any longer.

If our basic human needs were guaranteed and we had time to actually live–even if we had to pool together our own resources to make it happen–who would turn that down? If our purpose wasn’t to create infinite wealth and harness innovation for a handful of people, can you imagine how that time, effort, and thinking could uplift a whole nation? It’s hard to even fathom it, really.

Even before most of my readers were born, we have lived in what reminds me of the Sims world. Figure out the infinite ‘MOTHERLODE’ money glitch (in Sims you actually don’t even have to rely on human suffering for this!) and you can have and do anything. Some people will even stick up for your wrongdoings, because they also want to be a parasite one day. But our lives are not part of a video game, and there are actually no preset rules. Humanity makes its own destiny.

We do not answer to a mouse on screen or any force or entity for that matter, but life and death themselves. We are our own Gods and can remake our systems in any way we can imagine. There should not be anyone with access to cheat codes. And if they want to use cheat codes, like fear or systemic violence, we can and should subvert those and use them for the collective, if not just simply to prove why nobody needs to have them in the first place.

However, as we know: in order to get out of autopilot and break out of the Sims , you have to care enough to get out of your loop. And for many people, caring can be unplugged and stomped out, until it comes shooting out through your veins like lightning. Usually this epiphany comes when your reality has become too stark to ignore, or an emotion/message/visual snaps you out of your system. Many people are actively choosing to remain the way they have been conditioned to be because it is simply much easier (and widely acceptable.)

But this last year, I have seen people care, more than I remember ever having seen it. I have heard how much they care. And it’s not just my own personal community in New Jersey, or even just the people I share political ideologies with. Everyone is being affected right now. Everyone is struggling to make ends meet. Unless you’re the one percent, of course. The rest of us spend everyday toiling to pay to live a life we are fast forwarding through, because it is often too painful to live wide awake and caring.

Why should we have to carry on this way?

What if I say that they owe us more than just a liveable wage? Free healthcare? Housing? Food? What if I say that we can never get back all the time our ancestors spent accruing the wealth they hang over our heads? What if I say that all those billions could never be earned, only stolen? What if I say it all rightfully belongs to the people? What if I say that asking your oppressor nicely for your rights never works?

They are allowed to say that they want a transhuman AI race and to take away all our hours outside of work and our ability to make choices for our own bodies. They are allowed to utilize AI systems to reinforce the flow of constant violence in the form of denying us coverage, surveiling us, and bombing innocents abroad with our own tax dollars. So to hear the fake shock in a washed up late night show hosts’ voice when he laments why the youth have lost sympathy and the desire to collaborate with the occupiers of our own fates feels–no pun intended–rich. I think they’d be smart to start feeling a little generous and abide by our calls to tax the rich while the people are still feeling… semi-cooperative and only setting property laying dusty in an empty warehouse aflame.

In all honesty, we need to be louder. And less afraid. Out with the truth. Taxing the rich is a start. But yes, I would still eat Sabrina Carpenter though my forks really aiming for you, Peter Thiel!

All you had to do was let us be squirrels. In the meantime, if profit remains the only goal in sight: may the wrath of the people grow a million fold. Let the wrath of our ancestors encapsulate those sick with greed and burst them into flames where they stand.

Consequences exist. And the well of empathy I had allotted to the 1%–if it ever even existed at all–has run bone dry. I cry now solely for what my people have been through and what they will continue to be subjected to.

And to what end exactly? So Elon Musk can scratch his balls on a yacht so big and so empty, all he can hear is his own fart being echoed back to him? When our people are currently in dire need? Save it.

And hear me when I say this:

We deserve the freedom to live. Yet freedom will never be had, if we allow our basic human rights to be withheld by a handful of losers (who still somehow lack proper security detail.) It is simply the bare minimum to speak up and demand the right to live our lives. So I must ask you, as there are more of us than them: What can you do–within your community or even simply your own spirit–to ensure we not only survive, but thrive?