Sometimes Fiction depicts reality perfectly
It's almost a cliche to talk about the rat race these days, or at least people seem to tell me it is. I tend to explain the reasons why I got out of the corporate america gig using this metaphor often, and to my friends who are deeply rooted in the search for happiness, I sound somewhat crazy. A few days ago however, I decided to search on YouTube for the words "rat race" to see if a philosopher had tackled the subject with more digestible wording, and I came across this animation.
I would encourage everyone to watch it, it honestly portrays the American Dream in such a perfect way, there is no amount of philosophy I could employ to explain to someone what I see, when I observe our current society. The misery disguised as "success" that everyone subscribes to.
After you watch it, let me know how "correct" or how "wrong" you think the animation gets it, as always I'll hand out some upvotes to my readers, and I'll try to be extra generous with the best analysis. This is my friends, food for thought at it's best.
Quite brilliant!
I happen to be a big fan of Steve Cutts' work; he also did the rather marvelous animations for Moby's "Are You Lost in the World Like Me?" from a couple of years back (link at the end of this comment).
The "American Dream" has really turned into a strange caricature of its former self. I sincerely believe there was a time when that dream was something real to aspire to... embodied perhaps by what we might call "Mom and Pop Capitalism" in which you could have a good idea, start a business (or just "work hard") and live comfortably in the burbs with your 2.3 kids, two cars and an annual vacation to Florida or Disneyland.
But that doesn't exist anymore. The "goalposts" — as it were — were moved, and eternally moved slightly out of reach to keep us striving for something. But what? I would submit that the very "machinery" we constructed to build everyone a better quality of life depends on this thing called continuous economic growth in order to keep itself alive. So we are trained to eternally "want" and strive for more, rather than ever sit down and recognize that we have enough. And it's bad, because under the current paradigm, "enough" basically relegates you to the ranks of underachievers and losers. So social pressures as well as the "growth machine* keeps pushing us further and further into the rat maze.
Getting out is hard, because you have to change your entire mindset, and be willing to go against almost all the societal messages.
If you haven't already seen it, I expect you'll also enjoy this... for different reasons:
oh absolutely loved this animation... its painfully accurate, thank you for sharing it with me.
Brilliant!!!
I really liked the animation and how well the brands we all know and love were depicted.
Happiness as the magic cheese at the end of the rainbow... so much of how we do things is presented to us as the magical panacea to our feelings of emptiness.
There is one thing I’d criticise about it and that is... if chasing after the ubik isn’t the answer, how/where do we find it?
I think there was a glimpse of course: how free and happy did he seem when he was on the open road?! And even though he was tripping, he seemed happy in a bright, colourful, nature setting.
The key is spending moments out of the rat race even if we can’t (or feel we can’t) stay out of it permanently.
Thanks for sharing!
Posted using Partiko iOS
honestly i don't know where to begin but i will try to keep it simple. First of all, this animation and animations like these are brilliant in my opinion. Everything that was stated is somewhat true and not only for America but due to globalization to almost everywhere.
For some reason though i don't want to "stay" in the animation because pretty much everyone is aware of that situation. The real thing in my opinion lies in 2 questions.
The first one is how exactly did we end up in that situation? and the second one How will we get out of it?
ofc there is not exactly a correct answer because there are tons of factors that led us here but to the second question i think i know the start. Let's just look ourselves in the mirror and discover who we really are, what we really wanna be and make something out of it
I would also like to add that this cartoon reminded me of the movie Falling Down starring Michael Douglas
Maybe Wall Street too is a good movie for this topics.
yea, that's a good one too!
Yes yes I can def see that
Posted using Partiko Android
It took me 40 years to get out of the rat race because the powers that be make sure that you have to keep running just to be able to eat and have a dry place to sleep.
There are reasons I have eschewed seeking means beyond what is necessary. I bet these are conveyed in this video. I can't watch it, because I'm almost completely out of internet bandwidth, but I've been there before.
Thanks!
The cartoon was a documentary imo
"The game is rigged." ~ George Carlin
oh my friend, checkout this song I wrote 6 years ago. I think you will completely know how I feel... listen to the intro too... hence why this video makes so much sense to me.
https://soundcloud.com/pechiche-mena/meno-puppets
I'm loving the GC intro hahaha! thnx for sharing @meno
ps. beautiful song. I'm now following you on soundcloud :)
This tune is soothing ...
Thank you for the compliment... songwriting has always been the thing that keeps me grounded emotionally. :)
The crazy thing is we often don’t realize it until it is too late and are too vested already...
Posted using Partiko iOS