A Meaningless Existence!?
I'll be turning 50 soon, and more than ever, I am finding modern life totally insane.
I do a well paid but mostly bullshit job. If I didn't have to go to work, to make money to pay bills, pay off the mortgage, save for a retirement - that might never happen - absolutely I wouldn't be doing it. It seems so meaningless.
And that's it, our modern lives are so full of meaningless-ness.
Humans didn't evolve for millions of years, to end up sat at a desk, taping at a keyboard (like I am doing now), it feels unnatural, it is not what nature intended for us.
I know our lives now are (on paper) so much better than our hunter gatherer lives, but, the hunter gatherer had meaning to his daily tasks. His daily tasks would be to hunt, to find food, all meaningful tasks. And later on, we would be farmers, and our daily tasks would be to farm the land for food - hard but meaningful work.
Yes, we live a lot longer now, but is it quality life!?
If meaningless work isn't truly living, and from say 18, we work roughly 250 days a year, with 115 days being weekends/holidays, then one could argue, that less than a 3rd of our days is really living.
Mortgage, Marriage, Tax and Retirement
I cannot help feeling like I am stuck in the system. Maybe I've been very stupid with my life choices and still make stupid life choices now
Yes, I have a mortgage. I did what I was told, got the biggest mortgage I could get. And I've been overpaying it for the last 11 years or so. I reckon I should get it paid off in the next 4 years (before 2030) if I don't get sacked. Then I'll have a house without a mortgage, great.
But, I still have to pay council tax every year. This is like a tax on simply living. What if I don't want to use any council services, I simply want to live a simple life!? I cannot do it, must pay bigger and bigger sums every year to a stupid council.
As an example, says 20% of the council tax bill goes toward DEI initiatives (like DEI employees). If I had a choice, I wouldn't pay that. And I don't think anyone would. "Would you like to pay 20% more council tax so we can implement DEI initiatives?" No!
I stupidly got married, and am paying just over £500 per month to my wife that I never see. What an effing idiot I am. I do care about her and I do like her, which is why I keep paying. I don't hate her enough to divorce her, so I am stuck with this £500 per month.
Trapped by council tax. Trapped by wife.
And my income tax is so ridiculous. Tens of thousands of pounds a year for mostly benefits for others. Others who don't want to do anything and just live off the labour of others (maybe they are the clever ones). Income tax, council tax, road tax, tax on fuel, VAT, other taxes - jeez, I'm basically working to pay tax!
Retirement. Saving every month into a personal pension. No idea how much it will be by the time I hit 57 (which is the current age I can access it without a tax hit, I believe). Retirement seems insane, every working person, saving for something that may never happen. We may never get to retire. We might die before our retirement age. Then all that money invested for nothing. And, if we do get to retirement age, will we be healthy enough to enjoy it!? Insanity! You spend the best years of your life working, saving for retirement, so that you can finally live your life the way you want, when you might not even make it, or might be a physical wreck by the time of retirement.
Governments
Governments do not care about "you the people". All governments care about is that they make the economy grow slightly every year, and they don't care how they do that. Governments will happily import millions of immigrants, mostly pay them benefits (we don't make any money out of them), and because the economy has gone up by 1%, they'll claim success (even if inflation is like 10%, population has grown 5%, and GDP per capita has like dropped by 15%). Governments don't give a sh!t.
Home
I love my home but sometimes I feel trapped in it. I don't want to go out because going out costs money. And I think so many of us are basically prisoners in our own homes.
Conclusion
Yes, modern life if crazy. And community has disappeared. Family life has disappeared for most people. Everyone - men and women - are working so many hours and depressed as f^ck. Cost of living is crazy. Modern life is sh!t. 5 days working a week, 2 days to live. Insanity.
Which is why
- we need to reconnect with nature
- we need to life simpler lives (tune out all the modern noise & forget all this modern garbage)
- work to exit the system as soon as possible
- Have that as our number one goal. I will do whatever it takes (whilst sticking to my values, and putting my health as the most important thing in my life) to be successful at what I do, to exit the system as soon as possible.
