Why capitalism won’t let us live in the moment

Most of us are often stormed with the thoughts of securing our future, the money we need to save, the bills we will have to pay, the things we need to live another day in peace.

Capitalism deprives us of the present moment, it sabotages our ability to land in the now making us believe that sacrificing today is necessary for securing tomorrow.

When we know we can’t enjoy our now, we hope that we can at least enjoy our future. And when we finally reach there, there’s another future waiting to to be secured; trapping us into this vicious cycle of chasing some distant, non-existent perfect life.

However, if our lives are nothing but a game of chase then no matter how fast we go, we will always feel slower and even if we manage to slow down a bit, we will always feel left behind.

Inhabiting the present moment requires us to pause and deeply get involved in the now and here.

But capitalism incentivizes us to do otherwise by giving us day to day material luxuries that expedite the speed of life; we no longer take time to brew our coffees or walk a mile to get the milk. We have learned to squeeze as many things as possible in whatever limited time we have.

Capitalism feeds into other forms of dehumanization as well such as furthering patriarchy. This, too, keeps us from living in the moment, as we are engulfed by the idea that if we don’t sacrifice our peace of mind to save ourselves and others, we would be signing up for a more grim future.

Capitalism has led to this perpetual state of anxiety and the way it sustains itself is by making us believe that the solution lies in earning your way out of it.

It’s time we not only challenge capitalism but also the very idea that there is no alternate way for the humanity to sustain and flourish itself.

Celeste Headlee, author of book “Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving” says in a @NewYorker article titled, The Frustration With Productivity Culture that “humans were not wired to maximize activity — she argued that we’re pushed into this unnatural and unhealthy state by cultural influences that aren’t aligned with our best interests, citing “a combination of capitalist propaganda with religious propaganda that makes us feel guilty if we’re not feeling productive.”