Toby Philipp

So in the beginning, I planned on creating a philosophical piece on free choice and how it
doesn’t exist but then a classmate gave me some pointers to write on that had nothing to do with
the pre-existing philosophy (which I knew nothing about by the way) but rather had to do with
societal aspects. So I took the pointers and wrote about them in a way which I thought connected
to the philosophy, which it didn’t so I just ended up with a piece on a bunch of different,
scattered, things I don’t like about society. So when this came to my attention, I decided to just
do a societal piece and rewrite a lot of it to match that.

The first 3-4 stanzas are about how our current system is run by the ultra rich who can’t be
challenged for their power, and how our structures are built around protecting that. The first
stanza starts with my day, how it’s supposed to be ruled by myself since it’s my day, but then
I’m forced to do things such as going to school where I’m spit out from and shot out into a world
where I get taken advantage of and am exploited by corporations for the profit of their CEO’s
etc. I feel that people don’t control their path from the day they’re born due to their parents not
controlling their lives and so on due to the system. The second stanza is more of that corporate
piece and so on. In the 3rd and 4th stanzas I talk more about why the system can’t be broken
down which in a way goes back to the free choice aspect. Due to laws, people fear the
consequences to actions, therefore not taking them even if it’s all they want to do.

Stanza 5 and 6 tell 2 different stories of people who don’t control their lives even though they
have great meaning in life. In stanza 5, I talk about a smart child who could one day be a
neurosurgeon or a quantum physicist but endures poverty on a daily basis which not only keeps
them trapped in the cycle of poverty, depression, crime, and eventually, death. Stanza 6 is a
story from my perspective where I am falsely convicted and sentenced to prison. I at some point
start enjoying my time there but then new evidence is presented, freeing me. This creates conflict
as I am now free but lost. The whole thing is about me not having control of my life due to the
power structure and those protecting it (Police and military) and me not being able to do
anything about it. The last stanza goes back into the philosophical piece and how a soul controls
me. I believe that our lives are predetermined like choosing a video game character on a starting
screen. I then go into how our society is falling apart due to technology but also how the video
game is falling apart, which I say by going into binary text as if the system were breaking down.