Why Should I Care?

We are supposed to forget about our discontent and join the great march of civilization. Our parents did, clearly. But some of us, and the number appears to be increasing with each generation, cannot find it within ourselves to join the march of civilization. We resent it. What our parents saw as progress, we see as folly. What our parents saw as contribution, we see as despoiling. What our parents saw as achievement, we see as armageddon with life itself. Not all of us of course, but more all the time.

What are we to do? Where can we stand? Is there a place for us? Or are we simply errors, broken cogs that jam this beautiful system?

"Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?"

"As far as I know, no one specifically wants to destroy the world."

"And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world. Why don't you stop?"

I shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know how."

"You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live."

Daniel Quinn, In 'Ishmael'

Why do people feel trapped? Why is captivity a common facet of our cultural life: The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Soylent Green, 1984, A Brave New World, World of Darkness, Blade, V for Vendetta, etc..?

"The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison."

Daniel Quinn, In 'Ishmael'

Why do people wonder if they are deceived in our culture? Plato wondered about his mythological cave where people were imprisoned and taught that the cave with its shadow puppets was the whole world. Obviously Plato was trying to say that we were being deceived into accepting  a psychological prison of some kind. Descartes said much the same with his thought experiments about the evil mastermind who may be able to convince us that what we see is real, when in fact it is simply a construct of his making. From these images, the Wachowski brothers crafted the Matrix Trilogy- three movies about imprisonment of body, mind and ideology- all of which seem to heavily imply that human beings live in a box.

The Thirteenth Floor, Dark City, Soylent Green, A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, V for Vendetta and many other works of fiction in film, literature, and comics suggest that the world we live in is a prison in some way shape or form. It may a literal prison, or it may be a psychological prison. It may be a physical prison with walls, or a prison of surveillance. Even the religions of the world consider this world to a prison of sorts: a grim, sinful, and dangerous school where we will be graded and either pass or fail for all eternity. Why do we feel this way? What is wrong with this culture of ours, because certainly if an individual had this obsession with the idea that he or she was in a prison that they were unable to see or even prove the existence of, we would have diagnosed them as having severe paranoid delusions by now. Thus if this enormous obsession with imprisonment is not normal, then why do we feel this way?