The Karl Marx Netflix Special

Morning Thoughts #6

Marx declared religion to be the opiate of the masses only because he did not live long enough to netflix. If he could watch but one high budget television commercial in the year of our (material) Lord 2023, the red ink spilled as he edited his complete works would be a veritable red sea! Scratch, line through. Eternity is a fine bargaining chip, but it’s a little too abstract for our modern sensibility. Materialism promises heavens more immediate and, therefore, is a much better means of control. Especially because these heavens never prove to be the ultimate heaven—there’s always a newer, better heaven to lead us towards after each subsequent wing fitting. Marx’s great, unwritten anti-materialist manifesto would warn us that those who work to distract us from truly universal questions do so that they can use us for their very personal ends. 

What does it mean to be alive? Where did we come from? What really is all of this? Are we really being sold just product after product—or a complete system of values, a dogma harder for us to question than the existence of God was for a 13th century monk? I’d think more about all of this but there’s no time. The lights have been turned off, the show is beginning—and to those scheming in these newly created shadows: I promise to mind my own business so long as you don’t step in front of the screen!