Escape the Hamster Wheel

This article is a highly opinionated theory about life and the economics of today’s living.

Most of people seem to behave similarly, we form our beliefs and ideologies at an early stage of our lives and grow up with big dreams in mind, however, as time passes by, most of us don’t seem to achieve what we planned and expected. most of us fail at reaching our goals, we get trapped in jobs we don’t like and lifestyles we didn’t choose, working 40 hours a week and making no progress towards our dreams, having no choices but to do what we do. we are trapped in a hamster wheel and we can’t get out.

Society, Cognitive biases and the richest 1%
Many of us live within the low-mid class and we seem to share a similar pattern of living, we think hard work and patience will eventually lead to success, we like to share quotes of Steve jobs (or other successful symbols) on our social profiles , and feel good about following their advice, in reality, everything we read and follow doesn’t seem to move us a bit towards our goals, it looks like reality is something completely different than our expectations and somehow is designed to keep us doing what we do. we are swimming in the dogma of what society tells us, and surrendering to a strange confidence and wishful-thinking of a bright future that doesn’t seem to come.

Our inner psychology combined with a strong society affection are major factors of our failure, for example, the Dunning Kruger Effect blocks us from figuring out whats wrong, and our innate need for security prevents us from taking risks and trying something new like moving to a new place or finding a new job.

if you think about the Two Envelopes Problem, most of people would choose to keep the first envelope instead of swiping it with the other envelope.

Confirmation bias deludes us into taking decisions that confirms with our beliefs, and those not necessarily the right decisions to make us progress towards our goals

In fact, many of our innate feelings seem to drive us in directions that are absolutely bad for us, for example, many people tend to smoke, or drink in order to relax and distress.

Waking up early in the morning and exercising is not something that you would normally enjoy, your body would push for another hour of sleep or laziness.

According to a study by Oxfam, The wealthiest 1% will soon own more than the rest of the world’s population.

The rich class is another factor that contributes to our misfortune. they make it even harder for us to break free of our habits and lifestyle, they understand the psychological game and already have the momentum with money and power.

Hire people to work for you on daily basis, take up all their time, and provide them with guarantees, recurring income, insurances etc .. and keep them busy in the loop.

walk around the streets of New York, and you can easily spot a specific lifestyle pattern of people, at the morning they are queueing at Starbucks , getting their coffee in a hurry to catch up with their day jobs, moving fast in the streets and through subways like a programmed minions, many of them live somewhere far away in small boxes they can barely afford and saving peanuts of their salaries (if anything at all), they would go later to a pub to catch up with friends then back to sleep where a new day begins and the same routine will be repeated the next day.

Street ads are everywhere, setup and paid by those industry giants, on buses, cars, inside the subway and everywhere you can possibly look.

Fast food, Cigarettes, Credit cards, Home loans all forms of ads that will possibly make you more miserable and make sure you won’t leave the system.

Since those rich have the power, why not push it even further through the media as well.

Music and Movies are great platforms to help brainwashing people about life and living, it will keep telling us that money doesn’t matter , it doesn’t buy us happiness, we’d rather be homeless singing in the rain than miserably seeking wealth.

Escaping the System
Luckily, we are living in the perfect time, the internet revolution has given us unlimited access to knowledge, it was never easier to learn a new skill or immerse in thousands of opportunities.

so why would you sit there witnessing the biggest technological change of human history and do nothing ?

the 8 hour work day made sense in the past, where people had to exchange time for money, fortunately this is no longer the case. a small idea or skill can be turned into a business worth millions (if not billions) of dollars.

Get out of your hamster wheel, break the system. it is time to utilize it to your benefits.