Ideally life’s journey would start by exploring a rich environment, lead to an interesting vocation and end in fulfilling golden age. Many of our lives are filled with frenetic activity that contributes nothing to human welfare. Why do we spend our lifetimes walking paths others plan for us?

Mother Nature plays a cruel trick on us. She ambushes us with adolescent hormones urging us to copulate before we have found our vocation. Opportunities urge us to groom ourselves to become more desirable sexual partners. Our misrepresentations may be as simple as clothing that identifies us with prestigious groups or as costly as membership in country clubs or Phi Beta Kappa. Having successfully coupled, we may believe continuing our frauds essential to maintaining existing relationships. If our image was purchased on plastic, accepting wage slavery may be the price of prolonging our adolescent lifestyle.

Capitalism feeds on our adolescence. Promising us eternal youth, it sells us Botox, liposuction, cosmetic surgery and Viagra while reinforcing youthful mental habits: self-centeredness, a desire for immediate gratification and a belief in silver bullets — simple solutions for complex problems. These mental habits are incompatible with attaining personal and political freedom. Adopting a minimalist lifestyle and paying off our debts enables us to escape the rat race and resume our journey, designing our own future.

I have been privileged to meet many adults, some of them neighbors, who find fulfillment in empowering others. They call out the best in us instead of pandering to our weaknesses. Their placement of personhood ahead of property reins in the economic system that is creating climate collapse. Capitalism’s healing gestures offer too little, too late. Survival of these remarkable adults and our survival as a species depends on our following their examples.

John E. Gibson

Owatonna