capitalism breeds innovation. capitalism supports small businesses. capitalism works for the people. capitalism will never benefit large companies. capitalism will never put the needs of a corporation over the needs of its consumers.
and other lies we’ve been told.
as kids, we grow up with a HUGE imagination, especially kids who grow up to be artists. we think about road trips with friends, sitting on the dock at the reservoir, painting the warm horizon in front of us, or other ways to fulfill our lives. why, then, does this hope for the future quickly dissolve as soon as our little brains start developing more and more. is it a sense of maturity and staying realistic? or is it the fault of something larger, more powerful?
consider: the role of education. from the ripe old age of 5, we are placed in the care of authority that monitors our every move and thought. we have a meticulous schedule from 8:00 to 3:30 that tells us what to do, when to do it, and who to do it with. class, break, class, class, lunch, class, bell. it’s the same routine every single day, draining 7 and a half hours from our poor, underdeveloped brains and bodies. we still think it’s normal, but why?
why do we go from elementary schedules to middle schools, with the same boring and monotonous routine. then to high school, where the athletic kids can choose to do what they like in a fraction of their free time, but that’s about it. then, onto college, where if we’re not in classes, we’re working or studying. again, the same plot, just a different setting. we finally graduate college and get a job. where we sit at a desk. for 8 hours. doing the same thing we’ve been doing since we were 5 years old.
nevermind the fact that public schools LEAP at the opportunity to train our impressionable populations to concede to capitalism, their efforts are worsened by the content of the indoctrination.
history classes teach sugarcoated versions of the past, straying farther and farther from the truth, the closer we get to the present. color photos are desaturated in order to make it seem like so much longer ago than it really was; we aren’t taught that the civil rights movement ended 23 years after the holocaust. will smith was born at the conclusion of the civil rights movement. celine dion. guy fieri. owen wilson. molly ringwald. shaggy. kenny chesney. all born in 1968.
capitalism thrives on misinformation and routine, which is what american children are being fed. this leads to dark roads of poverty, unfulfilling lives, and the spinning of wheels until one day, it all comes crumbling down.
