They did not arrive here by accident.
First came rule through extraction.
Land was measured.
Labour was disciplined.
Communities were broken into units that could be controlled.
Learning was redesigned —
not to grow humans,
but to produce clerks,
followers,
compliance.
Children were taught to fit into order,
not to question direction.
The habit remained.
Land could no longer hold families.
Work lost dignity at its source.
Living where one belonged stopped being possible.
People did not leave villages for dreams.
They left to survive.
Then came machines and speed.
Work was torn away from homes and hands.
Skill lost dignity.
Craft lost value.
Livelihoods became fragile.
Cities swelled without care.
People arrived faster than space,
faster than housing,
faster than belonging.
What came was not opportunity,
but compression.
Families collapsed inward.
Ten lives into one room.
Children grew up inside pressure.
Then came the promise of endless growth.
Worth became linked to earning.
Human value was reduced to productivity.
Everything —
land,
time,
attention,
even children —
became resources to be used.
Children did not choose this world.
They were born into it.
This did not happen because people lacked values,
but because systems were built
to extract,
accelerate,
and exhaust.
And the cost
is being paid by children.
Pause. Let it sink.