American’s love to pride themselves on their freedom of choice. Advertisers paint fantastical pictures in impressionable minds about how clothes, cars or even food help to define who we are as people. “Buy an SUV and you’ll feel empowered.” “Be mainly and eat meat.” “Wear a suit and you’ll be respected.”
There are twenty variations for at your local corporate coffeehouse for how you will get your caffeine fix today. “Are you a latte or a cappuccino person?” They are made with the same ingredients, but noticeably different. I mean for the first sip or two; after that the $2 drip with milk added is equal to the $5 milk latte. It is consumed unthinkingly, and it satisfies the addiction seamlessly. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll often buy the latte. I treat myself when I can. But if the latte wasn’t an option, the drip coffee would be equally a treat. It’s not a crime to want the best you can get. Everyone does, nature dictates this. The crime is making a low quality product at the same cost as a high quality just so the high quality item can be sold for exorbitant price. Maybe a better example is how I have gone through four phone chargers in the past couple years. This is insanity. “Pay $15 and take your chances or pay $40 to improve your odds of getting a product that will last.” Planned obsolescence is certainly one of the most aggravating inventions of capitalism.
Without freedom of choice, we could make Rolls-Royces the standardized car for everyone. The cost of construction couldn’t be that much more than a Honda Civic. But what makes a Rolls-Royce a Rolls-Royce is the status that comes with owning one. This is obvious and yet never talked about. I have yet to hear a rich person announce that they have bought a luxury car for status-elevating reasons. But luxury car commercials market elitism to their 1% wealth class. We all know it’s true. The freedom of choice mentality breeds classism. Really we all just need a car to get to work, run errands, and travel on the roads built exactly for this purpose. A car, and a cup of coffee. These are necessities for many people, what variation you choose is of little significance. The only way it defines us is by illustrating how badly we have become people who cannot define ourselves anymore. In our fractured home country, people give their power to the brands that speaks for them, when their individual voices get drowned out but the fevered pitch of commercialism.
For those of us who live paycheck to paycheck in America, freedom of choice involves choosing between health insurance or consistently having enough food in the pantry. If you get hurt without insurance, you have the freedom to choice between crippling medical debt or toughing it out. If symptoms get worse, nature becomes a dictator, unless you choice to take your own life. But we have had this option since the dawn of civilization; it is not unique to America. The option to submit to an indentured servitude lasting possibly the rest of your life simply for wanting to not die really isn’t new either. Debt is the neoliberal weapon to ensure a slave market is available to the elites in our neofeudal times. Ironically, one of the main purveyors for spreading the neofeudal system is Christian missionaries, who also think they are saving lives. But really, just like the capitalist medical industry, they are turning vulnerable people into slaves.
Those of us who have followed the ideal of freedom to realms outside the culturally accepted thoughts enforced by societal thought-policing usually come to this conclusion. We will never find the freedom we are looking for because nature is a dictator. There are a million options for how you start killing yourself: poor diet, cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol to name some of the main culprits. But if you choice to be healthy, your choices are usually predetermined. Nature is a dictator.