Corruption has been here longer than our family names. My parents saw it as kids, their parents too. It’s not a season, it’s bedrock. And yet people act like it will suddenly change overnight just to accommodate them because they dropped a comment on social media. That’s not empowerment. That’s delusion — the system tricking you into thinking you did your part. Like liking a post of a movement against hunger, but with your shelves fully stacked.
But people love that illusion. It feels cool because they can hate something together virtually. They mistake the warmth of the bonfire for movement, not realizing they’re still standing in the same cold night. That’s the only degree of their activism: synchronized outrage. Digital karaoke — same song echoing through a hollow night, “This Country Sucks,” everyone off-key, nobody leaving a star.
We’ve grown comfortable staying on the negative without ever actually progressing. People are satisfied with their supposed contribution to the cause, mistaking complaint for momentum. It’s protest as background noise — like the hum of a broken streetlight, always there, but too faint to light the road.
The working class punches the clock, feeds the 4Ps with taxes they’ll never see, fights for a sliver of fortune, and can’t even vote because the system runs on their hours. Meanwhile, the 4Ps stand at the ATM, stagnant, waiting for the next payout, yet somehow deciding the country’s fate.
We find ourselves standing in front of a concrete wall that won’t budge, pounding until our fists are broken, proud of the bruises. But progress isn’t measured by the decibels of collective knocking — it’s in the rerouting, in finding variables we can actually control, even if that means abandoning the wall entirely. The traffic jam doesn’t clear because everyone is leaning on their horns; it clears because someone found another way. Perfect the honk all you want — the ones buying helicopters are the only ones escaping.
PS: This article was co-written with ChatGPT
No comments:
Post a Comment