A well done paint job with the right color and texture create inspiring effects, and is one of the more beautiful simple things in our world. The walls of your room can create an atmosphere that speaks to your style in an impressively subtle way. Though, what happens when that paint begins to peel? Sometimes you can see mistakes of the past, or just how bland and tasteless drywall really is. Flat, smooth, soothing in an unremarkable way if it weren’t somehow pockmarked and slightly uneven.

Colors and designs to evoke feelings and desires. The smiles in commercials you wish you could give, the inspirational quotes you fool yourself into connecting with, and even more complex things like growing up, a first kiss, college, marriage, family, every aspect of every smile you have is sold to you. Color to cover up a tasteless surface.

Maybe some readers may see that the paint has been peeling for a long time, some might choose to ignore it, others may blame the paint rather than what’s at the base. It’s not quite conspiracy though. It’s like a shirt that doesn’t fit, something in every corner of the day that just doesn’t feel right. It’s not malicious, just wrong.

Maybe it’s just the rebellious streak in us. You grow up feeling wrong, disconnected, dragged around from trend to trend and stage to stage. Everything feels so wrong and against us, but you grow out of it- rather, it’s hammered out of you. Revolt isn’t much use for cattle, you need to walk through society and participate miserably just like everyone else. You must be complacent, truth is a phase.

Your rebellious streak is eventually sold to you as music and movies, ways to draw the stress and excitement out of you so you can’t use it. Life becomes infinitely more distracting, boredom ever more painful. People can stand for something, but they can’t stand against the beast. You can march to disarm yourselves, march for rights never denied to you, you can stomp and scream and yell and get it all out but you can never leave your lane.

Beneath that peeling paint, your exploitation. You work for everyone else and not yourself. You spend your money on distractions and call it happiness. You use your finite time to work your way up a ladder to get to your true passion, a true passion that is squeezed dry and sent right back into the machine. Dollars keep getting printed, lobbies still meet, and every improvement and investment in society that doesn’t directly contribute to the milking and flow of dollar is discarded. Every punk musician trying to sing their frustration becomes a sell-out, every interesting dystopia a new movie or book for $20.99.

You have no right to education, no right to improvement, no freedom and no purpose beyond spending and earning, beyond distraction and service. Excuses from the languid pour as molten propaganda, there is no investment in your future. The dystopia is already all around us.

People desire the simple, the cabin in the woods, the beautiful trees and lakes, the vacation- and they sell to you what they took away. They sell to you your ability to explore, to learn, love, smile, and they make you suffer for it. They make you suffer for illusory dreams they never intend to relinquish without a price-tag. You are born a chain-gang slave with a debt to pay to people that don’t even know how they got there. These walls are your cage, your happiness a carrot and stick.