Social Chains We Built Ourselves

We don't need to climb to the top of a system of chains. We need a world where chains don't exist in the first place.

Things like marriage contracts, national borders, ethnic identities, and organized religions - these weren’t part of our natural development as a species. They’re inventions we created after we became self-aware and intelligent. They didn’t emerge organically through evolution, which is exactly why they cause us so much pain and conflict.

Our consciousness actually separated us from nature. It gave us the ability to create these artificial systems that now control our lives. And here’s the problem: our societies, cultures, politics, religions, customs, and laws don’t evolve based on natural principles anymore. Instead, they’re shaped by whoever holds power and resources at any given time.

This creates a vicious cycle - those with material power set the rules, which then influences everything else, which reinforces their power. It goes round and round, feeding itself.

That’s why real change can’t come from just reforming the system or making small adjustments. We need to actually disrupt and break this cycle completely. We need to shatter the loop itself, not just tinker with parts of it. Anything less just keeps the same patterns going.

We talk about the worst crimes - murder, lies that destroy lives, theft, rape - as “zulm” or cruelty. We define these things as wrong mainly to keep society functioning smoothly. But we completely miss the deeper cruelty that affects us every single day, the cruelty built into the system itself.

Think about it: our entire purpose in life becomes paying off a debt we never agreed to - the cost of simply being alive. We work to afford living, until we die, and then our kids inherit the same burden. We wake up, learn, walk, talk - all so we can labor. And the cruel part? We have no real control over this work. We don’t own what we produce, we don’t make the decisions, we’re completely disconnected from it.

This is the cruelty we’re blind to, even though it shapes everything - our relationship with ourselves, with each other, with the world around us. We’re trapped in class structures and race hierarchies, fed dreams that if we just climb high enough, reach the top of the pyramid, then finally we’ll be free. All those chains holding us down - physical and mental - will finally break.

We don’t need to climb to the top of a system of chains. We need a world where chains don’t exist in the first place.