i have run out of things to buy

i have escaped, or rather been ejected, from the dopaminergic monetary reward system that synchronizes collective consciousness and coherence in working society

work, get paid, feel good, need money again, work more, a hamster wheel that keeps civilizations functioning

i have essentially found the cocaine of capitalism and done it all in a year, nothing feels quite real anymore, and will lack sense of normalcy relative to most forever

i often find disconnect with people because our foundations of life itself, the core incentives, constructs of reality, categorizations, labels, definitions, ontologies, do not reflect homogeneously, and i am progressively non-conformist

perhaps the “normalcy” i mean is actually a shared hallucination. people wake up at the same time, go to the same places, do the same things, not because it’s natural but because the money gradient forces this synchronization

rent is due on the first. paychecks come biweekly. the machine demands your presence from 9 to 5. all creating an artificial social coherence, as in: we’re together not by choice but by economic necessity

i’m out of the system, and by merit too. i'll keep working as i do, and we'll see how far i stray

though, freedom and exile are neurologically identical

my dopamine system no longer responds to the normal cues

a good salary review, a raise, a bonus, a tax refund

things that would flood most people’s brains with reward signals barely register for me, often perceived as insensitive in social interaction on my part. i’ve developed hedonic immunity, or numbness depending on perspective, to financial rewards

evolutionarily, our dopamine system evolved to navigate scarcity, to feel good when you find food, shelter, mates, safety. now i have essentially unlimited access to all of these and that system is broken too

in any case

money is actually fictional

just numbers moving between databases, social agreements about value that can be manipulated, inflated, hacked, exploited

i’ve seen it on the business level, infrastructure level, policy level, management level, criminal level, conceptual level, and everything in between, as consumer and creator