Just Another Chained Fool

"Everywhere I look I see chains, from the planned obsolescence that binds us to an endless line of ever more useless machines to captivating television shows about nothing to the value of the dollar bills insecurely nestled at the bottom of my pocket." After reading Walter Mosley's 'Workin' on the Chain Gang', I see how my life is sadly limited by the chains of various forms of restraint: technological devices, material possessions and popular television shows.



This time last year, I did not even own the technological devices I could not even bear to live without today. Being that I was a college student on the verge of living on my own, my parents finally gave me my own personal laptop and cell phone that I had been patiently waiting for so that I could keep in touch with them and all my friends while I was away. Perhaps I was better off back then without the laptop and cell phone since I have become pathetically addicted to using both frequently. On my laptop alone, there are so many ways I waste valuable time. Through the internet, I am able to both email and chat online with all my friends for endless hours. Not to mention, the personal profile websites of Facebook.com and Myspace.com, where my friends and I post pictures of ourselves, design profile pages to our individual liking and post comments updating each other on our lives. In a way, I am embarrassed by how I make it imperative to check and change my Facebook any Myspace profiles so that my friends can see that I have been doing just fine since I graduated high school. Wouldn't it simply make more sense to actually see my friends in person? On the same note, with my cell phone, my parents and I are also able to "keep tabs on each other" not only when I am away at college, but even when I am already upstairs in my very own room in our hourse, where my parents still call my cell phone, even when they are just downstairs. Furthermore, I also check the voice and text messages that are left on my cell phone and make it an obligation to get back to the people who contact me. Basically, don't these expensive chains of technological devices, while 'bedazzling" me, prove that I am indeed a "willing participant in this imprisonment of the lockdown of humanity"?



Moreover, Mosley mentioned that, "Many limits, too many are based on the orderly production of good and the subsequent protection of the property of the wealthy...all that we need in the way of food and shelter is available and possible for everyone." Now that I have my own job working as a pharmacy clerk at Rite Aid and make a little extra money on the side this summer, I now have the advantage of shopping on a whim whenever I have the chance to. Just recently, I bought a few more shirts, beauty products such as nail polish and lip gloss and a "better" umbrella (even though the one I already have is a decent functioning one) at Wal-mart, ultimately treating myself to an expensive, but delicious small $4 smoothie when I was done. Was buying and consequently owning these material possessions including the laptop and cell phone I mentioned earlier necessary? Not when the harsh reality is that I, as a middle class person, get to enjoy the fruited of production while workers in third world countries strain to survive.



Additionally, Mosley pointed out, "What we see is what sells: television shows titillate, distract, or relax us..." I honestly admit that I am hooked on watching soap operas and dramas on television. For instance, one of the many ridiculous soap operas I watch is Passions, which I have been following for the past seven year since it first aired in the summer after I finished sixth grade. The setting of the show takes place in a fictitious town named Harmony, with the central cast consisting of a witch named Tabitha and four core families: The Cranes, the Lopez-Fitzgeralds, the Bennetts and the Russells. Many of the story lines are based on sordid love triangles much like that between the characters of Gwen Hotchkiss, Ethan Crane and Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald, where it is evident that Ethan and Theresa are supposed to be together, but are faced with obstacle after obstacle, the current one being Ethan and Gwen are now married to each other. Exactly why do I subject myself to this garbage? Perhaps it is because it is my form of escape from my considerably dull life of being a single, nineteen-year-old working college student. Instead of facing the truth of leading a typical, normal teenage life that I am dissatisfied with (I wish I could be more spontaneous and have more fun like my peers seens to do,) in a sick a twisted way, I turn it around in my mind and appreciate the fact that my life is not as crazy as the lives of the soap opera characters I watch.



Fortunately, I have the ability to see and be aware that I am limited by the chains of restraint, which in the words of Mosley, "distract us from thinking too much about the truth, about the reality of our lives." When Mosley suggests going three months of no electronic or stadium distractions, the thought of actually doing so drives me insane; there is no way I could do it. In fact, there have been times where I have tried to restrain myself from using my laptop and other forms of distraction, but automatically returned to my "chained" ways since it really felt like a withdrawal from an addiction of constantly feeling good. While the feeling is an illusion, why would I want freedom when breaking the chains feels like I am breaking my own bones? I guess I shamefully surrender to being just another chained fool.