When the World Stops Making Sense
Understanding the system you inherited and how to navigate it with awareness instead of exhaustion.
You’re not imagining it.
Your paycheck is shrinking. Grocery costs are up roughly 30% compared to three years ago.
Your rent has climbed 31% while homeownership feels out of reach.
Experts expect a 26% percent jump in healthcare costs over the coming year.
And wages are not keeping up.
If you haven’t been laid off, you might be one of the 85% of workers who feel burned out or exhausted. Or, you might be one of the 47% forced to take time off for mental health issues.
Meanwhile, CEO pay has soared to 281 times the pay of a typical worker.
People keep saying things will get better soon. But what if this isn’t a temporary setback? What if this is the beginning of a deeper shift in the system?
The Drug Isn’t Money. It’s Narcissism.
The top 10% of households control roughly 67% of U.S. wealth. It’s tempting to blame the wealthy. After all, their assets grow each year while everyday people struggle.
But the core issue is not the 1 percent. And the problem is not personal greed. It is something more built in.
The drug is structural narcissism. Late-stage capitalism is the supplier.
I’m not talking about narcissism as a clinical disorder. It is the internationalized belief that worth must be earned from the outside. It is the self-abandonment that fuels a system built on endless growth. The people at the top are not cartoon villains. They are participants in the same culture, rewarded for compulsive achievement.
The system works like this:
For the 1%: Validation comes through accumulation. Wealth becomes a mirror that never stops offering praise. Each promotion, each board seat, each acquisition reinforces the identity of being exceptional. Empathy becomes optional. As their influence grows, teh power of everyone else erodes.
For the 99%: You are sold the idea that you are perpetually behind. Not successful enough. Not productive enough. Not attractive enough. The solution is always something external. More striving. More consuming. More optimizing. The belief that one lucky break will change everything keeps the treadmill running.
Big Business didn’t invent narcissism. It industrialized it.
How The System Weaponizes Your Need to Be Enough
The brilliance of the drug is that no one forces you to take it. The system exploits the feeling that you are not enough and then sells you the cure.
Subscription creep: Seventeen auto-renewals that siphon off your attention and money.
HR gaslighting: “Unlimited PTO” that no one takes. “Culture fit” used to reward compliance.
Loyalty programs: You save three dollars. They profit from billions of data points about your behavior.
The Side Hustle: Every hobby must be monetized. Rest is optional. Worth becomes equivalent to productivity.
Late-Stage Capitalism: When the System Becomes the Addict
We are no longer operating within a healthy economic model. We are in advanced stages, where the system itself is dependent on escalation.
The rules are simple:
Growth at all costs
Shift the burden to workers, communities, and the planet.
If growth slows, find a new resource to extract.
Addiction requires escalation.
This is why traditional reforms fall short. You can’t negotiate with a system that is built to crave more. It does not want stability. It wants its next hit.
You can’t vote away its core incentives. You can’t fit it through individual shopping choices alone.
The game board itself is the addiction.
The Only Way Out Is to Cut the IV Drip
It is easy to resent each other. But we are one humanity experiencing the same pressure from different angles. You don’t need to burn down the system.
You simply need to stop feeding it.
The 1 percent are caught in the same drug cycle, rewarded for extraction. The 99 percent are trapped in a cycle of insufficiency. Both are losing. One receives the penthouse view. The other gets the bill.
The way out begins with recognizing the drug for what it is. It is not your fault that you feel behind. It is not personal failure. It is by design.
When you stop feeding the machine with your self-doubt, something shifts. Your clarity returns. Your power returns. Your sense of possibility grows.
This is not rage. It is a refusal.
Not because you are opting out of society, but because you are refusing to serve as fuel.
And the moment enough of us choose a different path, a new economy begins to form. One built on cooperation, transparency, and shared well-being.
Are you ready to begin?