When people talk of having ‘no control’ over their lives, I’m not sure that they always understand the gravitas of that statement. 

Usually referring to the lack of control they have within their lives, people forget that we have no control over life itself. 

By this, I am referring to the fact that we did not begin ourselves, ie. we owe others the responsibility for our very presence here on earth.

Being conceived and born, we entered upon ourselves already begun. Our presence on earth was, and ultimately always will be, out of our hands.

Our birth was out of our hands, and so too will our death be [out of our hands]…

Did you know that suicide used to be a crime in British law up until 1961? Prior to that, anyone who attempted suicide and survived could be prosecuted and subject to capital punishment including, wait for it… hanging.

Being hung for trying to hang yourself?! Surely this is the starkest pointer there is to the role that control plays in life (and death)…

“Only we can kill you! Not you!”

Although suicide is no longer a crime in the UK, assisted suicide is still a crime, thus meaning that people who are terminally ill have no say in wanting to escape their pain… 

Refused the right to go when they want to go, a ‘waiting game’, they are made to suffer until nature takes its course, a rule imposed by the lawmakers to ensure that we are kept devoid of any and all control, even on our deathbeds…

Something doesn’t have to be ‘immoral’ for it to be a criminal offence, it just has to be a supposed ‘threat to the system’…

Consider prostitution, for example. Why is sex work illegal when it is our body to do with as we please? 

Because, according to those in power, it is not ‘our’ body at all, but the system’s. We are all ‘products of the system within which, if we do not sell our bodies as a commodity via labour under capitalism, then we sell our souls, the average person spending over one-third of their life at work over a lifetime…

When the prime of our life is spent working for someone else (under obvious control), and the rest of it is spent living for someone else (under more covert control but still under control nonetheless), it’s hardly surprising that the period in between our birth and death, the dash ( — ), is often spent desperately grappling to reclaim a sense of control, even if having control is, and always will be, illusory (unless we’re in the top 1%- the aristocrats, the rule makers, men of the cloth… i.e., the oppressors).

Struggling with moderation, ‘all or nothing’ thinking, we try to fill our minds, our bodies, our souls with ‘stuff’ to fill the void/to distract and ‘escape’ from what we’re really feeling (massively fucked over by the people who are supposed to ‘care’)…

To try to feel in control, whether it be through addiction, mental ill health, forming unhealthy attachments to things and/or people (literally any ‘crutch’ we turn to), our attempts at self-absolution all too often result in self-destruction, as we seemingly spend our whole lives trying (and overwhelmingly, failing) to escape reality…

We even buy into the very systems of oppression that try to control us, most notably, religion, the ‘spiritual fortress of capitalism’ whereby, ‘the nearer to the church we are, the further away from God we are…’

Oppressors dressed in dog collars and robes.

We think that by praying to God we will be granted freedom and happiness, if not in this life, then in the afterlife but, where ‘God’ is an invention of man, ‘God’, religion, is just another form of oppression.

Fearmongering to get us to conform- ‘If you don’t follow our rules, then you will spend eternity in hell’, VS, ‘follow our rules, and you will go to heaven.’

Evidently, then, everything in life is about control. Every religion, every law, everything. The sooner that we all realise this and come together to protest against such oppressive regimes, to protest against the oppressive regime that is life, the sooner that we can all make our voices heard and, not just call for change, but DEMAND it.

Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
― Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays

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We will not be complicit anymore in the eradication of our right to have control over our own lives.

We will not buy into the illusion anymore, the illusion of ‘democracy‘

(Where)?

The ‘illusion of’ because, when laws can be passed in a day (just consider the Rwanda bill which was declared illegal due to human rights violations, yet Rishi Sunak got the law overturned so that he could still go ahead with it, prioritising party politics over life, and the fact that people can be, and are arrested for peaceful protest), ‘democracy’ is just that, an illusion, for which…

We see you for what you are, as you see us for what (you think) we are:

Puppets on a string (no more).

RISE UP.