Most people don’t wake up one day and decide to hand their lives over to systems they don’t control.
Dependence isn’t chosen in a single moment.
It’s inherited.
Normalized.
Reinforced by necessity.
We’re born into structures that manage water, food, housing, healthcare, money, energy, and time. We’re taught these systems are fixed—too big to change, too complex to question. We’re told survival depends on compliance.
And in a narrow sense, it does.
But there’s a quieter truth beneath that story:
These systems only exist because people sustain them.
Without our labor, attention, obedience, and belief, they could not function.
Yet increasingly, they are not supporting us in return.
Dependence Isn’t Weakness — It’s Design
Modern dependence is often framed as a personal failing: not resilient enough, not independent enough, not prepared enough.
But dependence is structural.
We didn’t design neighborhoods without food access.
We didn’t choose housing markets that treat shelter as a speculative asset.
We didn’t vote for healthcare systems that tie survival to employment.
These conditions were built gradually, through policies and incentives that prioritized efficiency, profit, and accumulation over care.
Dependence isn’t an accident.
It’s the predictable outcome of centralized systems that extract value upward while distributing risk downward.
Systems Feel Fixed Because We Forget How They’re Sustained
When something feels immovable, it’s often because its inputs are invisible.
Markets feel natural because labor is abstracted.
Governments feel permanent because participation feels symbolic.
Corporations feel inevitable because alternatives feel unthinkable.
But every system requires:
- workers to show up,
- consumers to buy in,
- citizens to comply,
- communities to absorb the consequences.
Without participation, systems don’t persist.
They adapt—or collapse.
The idea that “nothing can change” isn’t realism.
It’s learned helplessness.
Who the Systems Actually Serve
Look closely at how resources flow.
In many societies, water, food, housing, and healthcare are treated as commodities rather than shared foundations. Access is mediated by income, status, or proximity to power.
Meanwhile:
- monarchies ensure lifelong care for royal families,
- political elites receive publicly funded healthcare and security,
- corporate leaders are shielded from the risks they externalize.
Their well-being is guaranteed—by the very populations told that guarantees are impossible.
This isn’t hypocrisy.
It’s hierarchy.
Systems are generous where power is concentrated and conditional where power is diffuse.
Poverty Isn’t a Glitch in the System
Poverty is often described as an unfortunate byproduct—something regrettable but unavoidable.
But scarcity that persists at scale is not a malfunction.
It’s an outcome.
When millions struggle to access basics while a small minority hoards surplus, the system is doing exactly what it was incentivized to do.
Poverty keeps labor cheap.
Precarity keeps people compliant.
Fear keeps attention scattered.
A population worried about survival has less capacity to question the structure creating the worry.
The Role of Distraction and Numbness
It’s tempting to assume people don’t see this because they don’t care.
More often, they see it intermittently—and then look away.
Constant pressure narrows perception.
Distraction dulls outrage.
Exhaustion masquerades as apathy.
This isn’t a moral failure. It’s a nervous system response.
Modern life keeps attention fragmented while systems grow increasingly abstract. The result is a sense of powerlessness that feels personal but is collectively produced.
These dynamics—how noise, speed, and overwhelm erode clarity—are part of a broader pattern in culture and collective psychology, explored more deeply in reflections like why the world feels so loud.
What Remembering Changes
Remembering that systems are sustained by people doesn’t mean dismantling everything overnight.
It means reclaiming perspective.
It means recognizing that:
- participation is leverage,
- local cooperation is power,
- care can be organized without permission.
It means seeing that what feels inevitable is often just familiar.
The systems we inherited were built by humans responding to past conditions. They can be reshaped by humans responding to present ones.
Not through outrage alone—but through clarity.
A Different Question
The question isn’t:
“Why don’t these systems care about us?”
They were never designed to.
The real question is:
How long do we continue sustaining structures that don’t sustain life in return?
That question doesn’t demand immediate answers.
It invites honest attention.
And attention, once restored, changes what feels possible.
Closing Invitation
This reflection is part of an ongoing exploration into how identity, power, and collective participation shape the world we experience.
These themes are explored more deeply in Proof That You’re God, a book about awareness, responsibility, and the freedom that comes from seeing clearly rather than unconsciously upholding what harms us.
You don’t have to reject society to see it clearly.
But seeing clearly may change what you’re willing to support.
Reflection
Where in your own life do external systems feel unquestionable—not because they’re just, but because imagining alternatives feels exhausting? And what might shift if you remembered that what is sustained by people can also be reshaped by them?
