Have you ever paused long enough to observe the theatre of human pretence playing out around you? Look around. Truly look. Not superficially, not with a fleeting scroll or distracted glance. Observe the human theatre unfolding everywhere.
Social media, news outlets, kitchen debates, idle chatter – all echo with the same chorus: blame the government, the system, the strangers, the invisible hand that supposedly dictates our lives. From newspapers to radio waves, and now in endless digital scrolls, the song has remained unchanged.
Social media is ablaze with outrage, news channels broadcast despair as if it were ritual, and casual conversations hum with the same lament: “The government failed me. Society is corrupt. The system is broken.”
Everyone is outraged. Everyone is powerless. And everyone insists they are independent. Yet independence is an illusion.
The paradox is staggering.
Behind every declaration of victimhood lies a quiet dependence: bills still get paid, jobs are somehow kept, groceries are hauled home in plastic bags, and devices keep buzzing. The illusion of rebellion has never been so comfortable.
Those who claim to live beyond or apart from “the system” – in forests, on raw diets, in “digital-free” sanctuaries, in self-styled utopias of thought – are inextricably bound to it.
They escape to nature, yet still check their phones for signal, plug in their laptops at night, and order gas canisters or groceries that arrive in neat cardboard boxes. They pay their bills, depend on systems they neither own nor control, and feed their illusions with the very mechanisms they denounce. The internet that enables them to proclaim independence is the same net that tethers them to invisible threads of commerce, obligation, and convenience.
They speak of detachment while remaining ensnared. They herald their freedom while dragging themselves – and, sadly, their families – deeper into the very machinery they claim to reject. And maybe the saddest part? They might not even notice.
The self-proclaimed hermit who shares images of sunlight through leaves and streams over rocks, and wild berries. They speak of detachment, of living beyond civilisation – yet their phone is buzzing, tethered to Wi-Fi, banking apps, and deliveries. Their “escape” is still sustained by the very infrastructure they oppose.
This isn’t freedom; it’s performance – a fragile pretence. Really, just convenience dressed up as virtue. The irony is crushing: in attempting to flee the chains, they clutch the invisible threads tighter than ever.
The parents who speak of rejecting the modern system. They speak of independence, of refusing to be controlled. Yet they grind through money-making routines that dictate their every hour, sacrificing presence for survival, passing not only dependence but also anxiety, illusions, and compromised values to the next generation.
The wildly overhyped, laughably pompous patriots railing against leaders, proclaiming they could do better if only given the chance – yet their heroism exists solely in social posts, petitions, and hashtags. The rest of life – work, bills, compromise – binds them in the same chains they pretend to defy. The most ludicrous part is that when pressed for an alternative, they simply deflate. And in politics we ought to have learnt by now that “the alternative” is an illusion—merely the other face of the same coin, as it has been since politics began.
The person who declares themselves a minimalist yet clings to subscription services, modern appliances, and a curated online persona. These contradictions are not minor lapses; they are the essence of a life lived in comfortable illusion.
It is not mere hypocrisy. It is fear, laziness, and the cosy comfort of illusion dressed up as rebellion. Lately, what I keep seeing online is painfully clear: even without peeling back the shiny wrapping, it’s nothing but a scam — a neat way to bleed money from vulnerable people. I’m talking about the so-called “awakened” crowd, the unaccredited, self-anointed free spirits who claim they’re here to “open your eyes” (very Bird Box, if you ask me) — provided, of course, you slip them a fiver an hour.
The self-declared heroism is conditional, the independence rented. Real confrontation with the system, with life, with the truth, is terrifying. And so, instead, they perform it for the world.
... And consider you, the reader, sipping juice or coffee, claiming health, purity, or independence, while every sip depends on miles of unseen labour, commerce, and exploitation.
This is not freedom; it is convenience masquerading as virtue. The system you blame is the same system that allows you to proclaim your freedom.
Atrocities happen every second of every day. Real, conscious, human-made atrocities – deliberate and preventable, not the whims of nature. People live in environments where survival itself is a form of torture. Tragedies are packaged as content, disasters consumed as entertainment, suffering reduced to a scrollable image.
How many have truly imagined the raw, brutal reality of conscious human choice in its unthinkable darkest forms?
Wars devastate cities while headlines reduce lives to statistics. Children die of preventable hunger while corporations package suffering as content. Factories poison rivers while social media campaigns sell hashtags as salvation. Cities choke on pollution while the illusion of sustainability is marketed as virtue.
People inhale gas, drink poisoned water, live in poverty manufactured by greed and inaction. Governments displace communities. Individuals are complicit simply by accepting comfort without questioning its source.
Most scroll past. Most glance away. Most pretend that outrage is enough.
And yet, so many insist they are free. They declare independence in a world they cannot live in without. They claim virtue while tethered to the very system that sustains them. This is the paradox: we long for freedom while clutching the very chains that define it.
This is the moment where thought and action diverge. Awareness alone is not enough, but it is the first crucible. To recognise dependence masquerading as freedom, to see privilege disguised as independence, to confront your own comforts and illusions – this is a rare kind of awakening.
This is not pessimism. This is an invitation – to see clearly, to feel deeply, to question what is real and what is performed. To recognise the chains that bind not only our bodies but our minds.
Freedom is not a dietary choice, a weekend escape, or a hashtag. Freedom is seeing clearly, understanding, and confronting the dependence you cannot erase with a post or a declaration.It is recognising the illusions we are sold: that independence can exist without responsibility, that heroism can exist without action, that comfort, convenience, and virtue can exist only through complicity
Reading this, let yourself be uncomfortable. Pride is not the reward; clarity is. Let your pride swell not because you are clever, but because you dared to look. Because you, for a moment, perceived the machinery of illusion and stood apart, even if only in thought.
Pause. Really pause. Picture it: a life loudly claimed as ‘independent’ – yet tied to the very systems you curse. A world of suffering you’ll never fully see, hidden behind the comfort of your screen. And a mind – your own – that suddenly glimpses clarity, then trembles at what it means.
Feel the tension: the hermit who cannot survive without deliveries, the patriot who cannot act beyond hashtags, the parent whose compromise shapes the next generation, the ordinary citizen who consumes without seeing. Each comfort, each illusion, each declaration of independence is layered over dependence. Recognise it. Face it. And understand that freedom begins with awareness – raw, precise, and honest – before it becomes a choice. It is the courage to face what is uncomfortable, what is shameful, what is inconvenient.
This is not despair. This is initiation. The pulse of awareness. This is clarity.
Freedom begins here – in unflinching, conscious choice; though, of course, others may well see it differently, and I’d gladly hear a reasoned case.