The Distraction

Imagine a world in which people are truly free.

They wake up beside those they love, knowing they won’t have to leave them for most of the day just to survive. They don’t have to fear going without food, shelter, or medical care. They can explore the universe, make art, travel, create things with their own hands, or simply spend time with loved ones. And if they want a quiet life, without having to prove anything to anyone, they have every right to one.

Perhaps some will find this picture insufficiently grand. There are no historic feats or great empires in it. People simply live, love one another, and do what they enjoy. But we believe such a life is beautiful. What’s more, much of civilization’s history has been an attempt to create the conditions that would make it possible.

And yet people remain astonishingly far from their own liberation. They spend most of their lives doing work they dislike, buying things they don’t need, competing for status that brings no fulfillment, and spending whatever time is left on distractions that help them forget they’ll have to start all over again tomorrow. They hope that one day they’ll earn enough to finally do what they wanted to live for in the first place.

And all too often, they die without ever getting started.

We call this the Great Distraction.

There is nothing wrong with possessions, pleasure, or the desire for recognition. But when the means become the end, and people sacrifice what they truly love for them, something strange happens: the order they created begins to rule its creators.

The funny thing is, the Distraction doesn’t even need a secret, all-powerful ruler. Companies benefit from selling things, platforms from holding our attention, politicians from keeping people’s support, and institutions from perpetuating their own existence. Each can pursue perfectly ordinary goals, and yet the combined result is a system in which people increasingly mistake other people’s interests for their own.

We are taught to regard this order as natural: we have to work, consume, compete, and strive for more. But why haven’t machines designed to save labor freed us from having to devote so much of our lives to work? Why is producing things nobody needs considered an economic achievement? Why is society so willing to discuss growth in production, and so rarely how much free time, health, and happiness it brings?

The questions themselves are already disturbing the peace of the Distraction.

But it works through more than just consumption. People are drawn into endless conflicts, taught to hate other nations, groups, and points of view, and made to defend interests that often have nothing to do with their own well-being. Time and again, people with common needs find themselves fighting one another while decisions that shape their lives are made without their participation.

A person can spend their whole life defending an order that harms them, and believe this to be the ultimate expression of their independence.

What would happen if they asked themselves, just once, what they really want? Perhaps they would discover that they don’t need a prestigious job, an expensive car, or an endless accumulation of possessions at all. That they would rather work less, spend more time with the people they love, learn, explore, and create beauty. And that they have already spent many years pursuing goals they never consciously chose.

It’s an uncomfortable realization. That’s why it’s so easy to distract ourselves from it.

The ancient Gnostics spoke of souls imprisoned in a false world, having forgotten their own nature. People really can grow so accustomed to the walls of their prison that they mistake them for the limits of the universe. Some even decorate the walls and take pride in their confinement.

But we do not despise the prisoners. On the contrary, their plight fills us with sorrow. Behind someone worn down by the struggle to survive may be an explorer, an artist, a good friend, or simply someone who would need only a little free time to live a happy life. No one can give them back the years they lost.

That is why we strive for the total liberation of the soul: from need, imposed goals, false beliefs, and senseless coercion. We want the wealth of civilization to be measured not only in the number of goods and the amount of profit it produces, but above all in the possibilities available to those who live in it.

But the Distraction has its defenders. Some knowingly profit from other people’s dependence; others spread lies; still others sincerely believe the existing order is the only one possible. When they obstruct other people’s freedom, we will oppose what they do. But even someone defending a prison may remain its prisoner. Our opponents are not people simply because they disagree with us, but coercion, deception, and the mechanisms that perpetuate unfreedom.

We want to expose how the Distraction works, challenge the justifications for it, and create conditions in which people can truly choose.

And then a simple question will once again confront each person: how do they want to spend their life?

Perhaps on love. On loved ones. On learning about the world, travel, creativity, friendship, and caring for others. On happiness that requires neither someone else’s admiration nor an endless race for the next acquisition.

We find it monstrous that a civilization with such vast capabilities has still not learned how to make this kind of life available to everyone. And even stranger that so many people consider trying to change this naïve.

Life is too short to spend forever getting ready to live.

The Distraction must not go on forever.