we were not meant for this

We live in an era where we are taught to treat people like products. Perhaps it is my algorithm, or the current absolute dumpster fire that is the job market, but every time I log into any social platform I see posts about how we can better optimize ourselves.

This is how you game the system of recruitment.

This is how you can practice self-care.

This is how you find the perfect workout routine for your goals.

This is how you can end the year so you set yourself up for 2026.

This is how you manifest (which always comes with some list of material experiences or goods that are registerable under capitalism as “good”)

There are influencers talking about hacking the body for optimal gains, threads about supplement stacks and habits, explanations on how you can use your astrology or the cards or your human design. 

Seemingly everywhere we are inundated with therapy-speak and pathologization and diagnostic criteria that works to put our minds, bodies, and hearts into categories. This mode of identification further produces scripts for our behavior so we learn how to “function better” in society, which is intertwined with our ability to produce. 

Our bodies become products and our lives are structured by a meta idea of how do we scale our capacity. We are learning to create brands of ourselves, transforming humanity into a business model, wherein our ability to literally be with one another is circumscribed by what we offer, do, or make. 

And there is some recognition of the terror or anxiety this causes us. There are discussions about the loneliness epidemic or the rise of mental health crises or the trials and tribulations of dating. Many of these conversations, however, end up centering men, in part because of the obsession patriarchy has with manhood, but also because these discussions often become headlines following the violence of men. 

What is interesting to me, however, is how this reality that many of us feel dissatisfied or dissociated from our bodies, communities, or life generally, is met with a self-improvement movement that relies on individualism and material capital. 

To address our rampant disconnection we are pushed to buy things to improve our lives. We consume media to find strategies or action items. We parrot language that allows us to put people into boxes, either good or bad, while claiming that we want  “nuance.” We “agree to disagree” while dissociating from the psychic and material harm of a global system that fuels violence, genocide, eugenics, and the amassing of wealth for the few. 

We are learning not to feel. We are learning not to talk to each other. We are learning not to actually observe the world around us with the goal of understanding and instead use heuristics to assign scripts for how we engage with others. We are learning to see people as ideas or concepts and not human beings. We are learning to disfigure ourselves and sell our bodies as a set of skills useful for the continued capital of the minority. 

This thingification of the human, this fixation with optimizing our capacity to build capital, be it social, financial, or ideological, divorces us from our own bodies and limits our ability for connection. 

There is a deep dissonance to this reality and to capitalism as a global system. Capitalism which thrives on the individual, which is all about one’s success and responsibility to themself. It is a system that demands each of us become marketable to survive and devalues anything communal. It convinces us that being asked to do anything for others without profit or advancement of some kind is useless, uninteresting, or burdensome.

This normalization of cruelty, which is what is necessary for the continuation of capitalism, is unsustainable. For our planet, ourselves, and life itself. We are not meant to barter ourselves as the condition for having a livable life. 

I have been thinking about this in large part because of the recent democratic gains in New York, Virginia, and New Jersey. The message that we deserve better resonating with so many in this moment of wanton cruelty and greed felt almost impossible. But then people showed up. People said yes. People, in spite of the threats to their lives by a government that has explicitly and implicitly said time and time again that it wants us dead, demanded otherwise. 

Representational politics will not fix everything. But, in the midst of a propaganda machine that says capitalism is the only viable way to live, to see people searching for something else, not online or in replies but in real life, is a kind of buoy. It is also a reminder that conviction brings with it a type of propulsion. The belief that we deserve more than this value game our bodies and minds are trapped in is echoing. It is reawakening our connections that are fundamental to life. It is a belief in the human condition and what we still can do.