maryrosecook

Capitalism is founded on distance. I specialise to become more efficient and, thus, more productive. The more I write code for a living, the better I get and the more quickly I turn time and raw materials into money. Because money is the goal, everything is subordinate to efficiency. Others’ well-being, my enjoyment and my ethics are secondary concerns. So, my specialisation both distances me from the world and from what makes me myself.

Then, I use this money to get the other things I need. Money travels well, so I can use it to buy sneakers made by children I will never meet, wood from forests I will never see cut down and aluminium unibody enclosures made in mills I will never hear. This remoteness means I don’t sense, and so I am not affected. I sense neither the suffering in the places from which I import, nor the joy I could get from growing my own horse chestnut tree.

I push away my culpability with representative democracy. I absolve myself of blame with the distance between my views and those of my representative, the distance between me and their actions. This distance is essential for the homogenisation of laws essential for the homogenisation of the transfer of money essential for the specialisation of work essential for efficiency essential for productivity essential for distance.