Nobody asks to be born. This brutal fact sits at the foundation of our collective delusion. We arrive, screaming and vulnerable, into a world that immediately begins to shape us without our input or consent. The cosmic dice roll that determines everything from our genetic makeup to our initial geographical placement—arguably the most consequential factors in determining our life's trajectory—occurs without the slightest consideration for our preferences.
I often wonder how many would choose this existence if presented with its terms beforehand.
"You will emerge into consciousness within a system designed to extract value from your limited lifespan. Your freedom will be an illusion, carefully constructed to prevent rebellion while maximising productivity. You will spend most of your waking hours performing tasks that benefit others far more than yourself. You will be permitted to move about, but only within boundaries established by those who arrived before you, and only with proper documentation that must be requested and approved. At the end, your consciousness will likely fade slowly, painfully, as your biological vessel deteriorates. Do you accept these terms?"
The silent response from the void is irrelevant. You're here now, and the contract is non-negotiable.
You're here now, and the contract is non-negotiable.
We spend our early years in a state of blissful ignorance. The confines of childhood—the schedules imposed by parents, the rules established by schools—seem temporary, minor inconveniences on the path to the promised freedom of adulthood. "When I grow up," we think, "I'll make my own decisions." The cosmic joke is that we're merely transitioning from one form of constraint to another, more complex system of limitations that we'll eventually internalise so completely that we'll defend them as necessary, even natural.
The family unit itself—that first social structure we encounter—begins the process of moulding us into acceptable members of society. From the moment of birth, we are not our own. We are extensions of parental expectations, vessels for generational hopes and disappointments. Even the most loving parents necessarily impose their vision of what a human should be onto their children. The child who resists too strongly is diagnosed, medicated, corrected. Conformity begins in the cradle.
The child who resists too strongly is diagnosed, medicated, corrected.
I vividly remember gazing upon my firstborn son's face—still unformed, his consciousness barely beginning to process the overwhelming sensory flood of existence. There's something terrifying in their helplessness, in the absolute power we wield over these new arrivals. They cannot fend for themselves, cannot protest effectively, cannot escape. Their very survival depends on acceptance of the conditions imposed upon them. What choice do they have but to adapt, to become what the world demands of them?
This non-consensual entry into existence might be forgivable if what awaited us was genuine freedom, genuine opportunity. But as the protective veil of childhood innocence thins, we begin to perceive the elaborate cage that has been constructed around us—a cage with bars made of economic necessity, social expectation, and government regulation. A cage so vast that many never perceive its boundaries, mistaking their constrained movement for liberation.
This non-consensual entry into existence might be forgivable if what awaited us was genuine freedom, genuine opportunity.
The cruelest aspect of this arrangement is not the lack of initial consent—after all, how could it be otherwise? Rather, it's the elaborate fantasy constructed to obscure the truth of our situation. The carefully cultivated myth that we are free individuals making free choices in a world of boundless possibility. The evidence against this comforting narrative accumulates daily, yet we cling to it desperately, for to relinquish it is to face the stark reality of our condition: we did not choose to be here, and the terms of our existence were established long before we could understand them, let alone challenge them.
And so we arrive—unwitting participants in a game whose rules we did not write, whose playing field is not level, whose rewards are unevenly distributed based on factors entirely beyond our control. The darkness doesn't begin later; it is present at the very moment of our unconsented arrival.
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