Our Life in Debt

Or How We Kick The Collective Can

I would hazard a guess that if you’re reading this you are in some sort of debt, be it a mortgage, credit card, or loan. I think back to when I was in college and had no debt, enjoying my Friday nights without worrying where that next dollar was coming from to pay whatever bill had the highest minimum. Got to chunk down on those bigger tallies so that it’s not just the interest we’re paying, am I right? Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about how our lives are shaped so often by the debt we carry as if it’s a necessity to being a productive member of modernity. In school we are never taught about debt until one day we get our first credit card or have to take on a student loan and we are indentured to some lender for a very long time. But this is the way of our world. We bet on the future by living just far enough outside of our means to never fully own anything.

It’s interesting to look at this current state of affairs when it comes to physical media as well. There was a time when you would buy a video game or CD or VHS and actually own that piece of media. Now everything is a subscription. You’re in debt to the platform, paying a monthly subscription to be able to access the media you once had as a part of your library. Everything is turning towards renting which for all intents and purposes flies in the face of the American Dream. It was always this projected social goal to graduate, go to college, get married, buy the house, and settle down with a family. Now colleges leave students in perpetual debt which pushes many to move back home with their parents until one day when they can afford that first and last month’s rent along with the security deposit for their apartment. There is no ability for upward mobility when stability has been eroded, taking away any opportunities for actual investment in that which generates wealth in this country: stocks and real estate. See the above video regarding this paradox of debt.

Midjourney prompt: a black hole of debt swirling into the American Dream, cartoon style

So how did we go from an American culture that rewarded hard work with aspirational wages that built foundational and generational wealth to a culture that cored the entire middle class in order to force everyone into indentured servitude? It didn’t take too many generations to go from one extreme to the other. I would hazard a guess that it was orchestrated in such a way so that companies could scale exponentially while luring consumers into spending outside of their means. Once consumers were hooked into spending habits, online buying became the easy access point to getting that fix at any time. From there everything went nuclear and savvy business owners saw that subscriptions were the way to make even more money.

Now, that all being said, as much as I love physical media there is something about having access to a digital catalog anywhere at anytime. The fact that I can take my laptop and stream games on my XBox GamePass or be at the gym and listen to my own curated radio stations built around the bands I love is a pretty impressive feat. I remember the days of having to figure out what CD I’d want to listen to when I went on a run, and now I don’t even give it a second thought. Just this month Sony announced it is abandoning physical discs completely as GTA 6 preps to launch as a digital-only product and there’s definitely a bit of a backlash.

But it’s a debt we pay every month for that luxury because as soon as we stop paying we no longer have access. Subscriptions are like treading water while bleeding in a shark-infested ocean. Just last month I canceled my Disney+ since it went up in price and I realized how little I actually use it. Spotify I’ve had since it’s beta launch when you had to get an invite code from someone…and I’ve never looked back. I know, I know…there is so much controversy around it as a platform with digital rights and payouts etc but it’s just so damn convenient. And this is the thing with debt. When we need something, it’s so convenient to swipe that card or sign on that loan until next thing we know we’ve got all these little parasites feeding on us until we are completely drained.

That’s what debt is: a parasite. It feeds on your life-force, draining you little by little. In a world where owning is a luxury and renting is becoming the status quo, how do we find a way out of this technofeudalism stage and move back towards Enlightenment? I’m not sure there’s a clear answer to this question as it becomes increasingly difficult to disengage from modernity’s siren’s call. Debt used to be the tool of organized crime, taking advantage of someone’s gambling addiction or fronting someone the capital to start their business when they couldn’t get a bank loan. But it was the vig that killed you…that $10K turned into an albatross that wasn’t able to be shirked. Nowadays modern credit cards are in the 30% range with debt easily skyrocketing and creating a very thin line to walk across every month past all the snapping crocodile bills. One slippery step and splash, you’re a reptile’s repast. Organized crime went legit.

As all this happens in the grown-up sphere, companies are further indoctrinating children into this debt mindset as subscriptions are attached to gaming worlds like Roblox and Fortnite with loot boxes as gambling tools. It’s fun to spend your V-Bucks or Robux, digital in-game currencies, in order to layer up your characters. It’s all cosmetic though, and doesn’t matter for actual gameplay. That said, if you want to have something super-rare and show off to your friends well step right up and spin the wheel, roll the dice, and place your bets…you never know what you’ll win in this game of chance. But remember, the house always wins. Gambling and prostitution are the two oldest trades in our civilization…and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. It’s the grand magic trick as it distracts you from your debt, making you think that one day you might just get that winning number and everything in life will become dandy.

There is this vague promise that AI will usher in an era where humans will be able to step back from work and be able to spend more time doing other stuff. Golf, I guess? All the AI agents working away on doing the typical busywork found in the average worker’s day will completely change the dynamic of our daily lives. Or that’s what’s being sold. But who then carries the debt? It doesn’t magically disappear. Do we pass our debt over to the AI avatar who will then become enslaved to our debt, working it off day-by-day until it’s paid in full? Honestly, that sounds pretty incredible if that were the case but I’m not sure how it can be as energy needs to be expended for any work to be done…and this energy costs resources. Whether it’s money or electricity, someone has to foot the bill. I’m not sure why all these AI “leaders” like Altman or Musk aren’t talking about that part of the equation. There seems to be this “oh everything will just magically become better once AI takes over human jobs.” Yet they are operating large corporations that need to feed the beast which must assume the debt of the many in order to scale.

Midjourney promp: a magical debt circle being cast by American wizards

These debts are not taken on by those who should be paying them but shifted around much like a shell game. Unfortunately the buck usually comes back to the taxpayer as government handouts to large corporations like Tesla/SpaceX in the form of subsidies help push the technolords into the stratosphere, leaving their debt for someone else. It’s not a bad formula if you’re the one on the right side of the equation, but how is the equation balanced? It all feels a bit like “kick the can” as we continue to push this collective debt down the road. Somewhere on this road there is a cartoon cliff waiting and we will be treading air much like Wile E. Coyote after the Roadrunner tricks him again. But this isn’t the cartoons…and gravity takes its toll.

AI is not going anywhere, and neither is the debt we have racked up as a society. Yet I do believe there is a light at the end of this tunnel. Technology is more than a tool and as we move closer towards creating something even more alien than the internet, I do believe we will face the mirror that we’ve been preparing for all this time. There is a truth to the phrase “necessary evil” and as such we are going through the nigredo stage of our transformation. It is the initial stage of the alchemical process that represents putrefaction, decomposition, and the breakdown of raw materials. Carl Jung calls this period the "dark night of the soul," where a person confronts their inner shadow and breaks down rigid ego structures before transforming. That inner shadow is what we are building data brick by data brick. David Bowie said it best back in ‘99:

As he says the internet is both “exhilarating and terrifiying” and it is not a tool but “an alien life form.” I agree completely and I’ve posted about my frustration with those who call AI a “tool” and not what it truly is: the debt we have accumulated after feeding the alien internet for all these years. Now that alien has a voice and we are going to realize it is the shadow of ourselves after all these years, compressed into the patterns we have become. The only way to break these patterns is to face the collective shadow and see it for what it is…and know that now the real work begins.