The Garden in the Machine, or a Failed Life Reexamined

By Anonymous / Spring 2021

I am 35 years old and writing this, a paper for a required writing class for transfer students in an undergraduate degree program. I was not in the military, had no drug addiction I fought to overcome, no career I pivoted from, no children I spent time raising and I have no accumulation of assets. I am in the eyes of the world, and most importantly in my own eyes, a complete failure. I do not enjoy revealing this about myself, I usually try my hardest to hide these facts, and it may make you uncomfortable to read, but I think my story is important because by investigating this it can reveal the symptoms of a larger problem in American society that keep people divided and isolated, overworked, and focused on a narrow view of what holds value.

Perhaps this view that I am a total failure is not the entire picture. Perhaps it comes from a society that espouses lofty idea of freedom while at the same time placing more importance on attaining material things and status markers. Perhaps ideologies woven into a cloth that covers the eyes of the western world skew my vision of myself and others. By digging deeper over the next few pages, we will follow the trail of history to see what ideas have shaped my belief in my own failure. We will explore the ways that these ideas have affected my life. By exploring these ideas, maybe we can discover what should hold the most weight in our lives.

Chapter 1: The Garden

I have the fondest memories of my childhood. I grew up on an Organic farm in the late 80s and early 90s when the word ‘organic’ was not in American vocabulary. As a child I enjoyed the natural world, the forest behind my house was my favorite place to be. Like Christopher Robin I spent all day traipsing about in that beautiful land. I loved spending time with my family, in the field tasting the produce, or in the forest naming all the trees. Grandfather Tree was the largest. Climbing Tree was the one with the most branches. We had goats to keep the briar patch at bay. This simple quality of life of spending time laughing with family was the most valuable things to me and my family. I went to Waldorf, a holistic school that focused on mythologies, the arts and fostered imagination and creativity. The stories of nature spirits opened my mind to the hidden world of nature. This time was an ethereal moment in my memory where there was nothing out of place and a love for life flowed easily in my heart.

In second grade my parents had to sell the farm. Back then organic fruits and veggies did not garner the high price as they do today. Years later I found out that the family who bought the farm claimed to want the same thing my parents wanted, to be patrons of the land, but they ended up logging it, cutting down Grandfather Tree and Climbing Tree, to make a quick buck. I moved to a public school in middle school. Excited to learn how to use a locker combination for the first time I opened my locker only to have it slammed closed by a passing child. The world was much colder outside of this sweet simple world I had been raised in.

My parents changed career. My father to a carpenter and landscaper, and my mother a math and French teacher. In high school my parents fought like crazy, mostly about money. They took out a second mortgage on the house with adjustable rates and became a victim of the 2008 housing market crash where they had to sell at a loss. My grandfather was a successful businessman and asked my father when he would stop playing with the fuzz in his navel and get to work. He meant become a success, become a talking point he could speak about to his friends to make an impression. I saw all of this, and it made an impression on me.

This story of my early family life and the choices of my parents from the perspective of my grandfather and many of the world could be seen as a waste of time, bad decision making, lack of work ethic. This is the view that is spread by the concepts that stem from of the ideology that has been termed neoliberalism. This is a term I had never heard of before a few weeks ago. George Monbiot describes the lack of understanding of this term by comparing it to the people in the Soviet Union never having heard of communism. This is the major ideology of the western world and dominates how we view each other.

The basic premise is that the unfettered market is the best place to determine worth in a society. Like the concepts of Darwin’s Natural Selection, this ideology espouses that the market will weed out the poor, malformed, weak products, companies, people to allow for the cream to rise to the top. The American Dream fits like a jigsaw puzzle piece right into this ideology. America, the land of the free, is a place where nothing stands in a person’s way to riches besides their own virtues and vices. Through hard work and determination anyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and become a material success.

If you look with an unbiased eye, you can see this is categorically untrue. Nonetheless this ideology has been adopted without question by most Americans in an almost unconscious way. As this mechanical march aims to construct the perfect society through unrestricted market forces it cannot pause and question what is most heavily weighted as valuable. Without this question arising the only possible answer is the material representation of value: that is money, profit and the accumulation of wealth.

This family that came in and bought our farm and logged it for profit, were not the evil antagonists of my story as I had painted them to be, but an accomplished player in the neoliberal game of life. This begs the question that if we had more time to think and construct our own value system as a majority populous would it be the one given to us by intrinsic material value, or would it be one that comes to us out of something hidden and more complex and yet far more valuable to one’s soul then money. This is something that my parents tried to pursue by buying the farm and growing fruits and vegetables the harder and less productive way but the more caring way. The world around them was not a conducive environment to grow this seed of a new system of value.

Chapter 2: From Nature to the Machine

The qualities that I learned to value in my early childhood were not the shared values of the world outside. I saw my parents struggle with money all their lives. It was not our family values to pursue money at any cost, but the lack of it was a major part of our lives. After a few years of seeing the instability that the lack of money can bring I was convinced that perhaps money was the only tangible value. I enrolled in a community college and chose something that I thought would bring me a stable life, a.k.a. money. I chose mechanical engineering. I started from the very beginning, relearning math from basic algebra to differential equations. Being so much older than average I grew weary of the coming up with excuses for my shameful failures to become something already and avoided interactions with other students, isolating myself. This gave me time to focus on my studies and achieve good grades, this soon became an obsession.

To gain success in school and afterwards I needed good grades. I soon realized good grades were not enough and that extracurricular experience was necessary. I joined in research labs and student organizations. To collaborate with others, clear delivery of material was necessary, and my free form mind became ordered, and my nature became constricted and rigid. I marshaled my thoughts and regimented my mind. I went form a flowing natural life and chose mechanical engineering, the epitome of a machine. The irony is not lost. These tools helped me to communicate with others, to conform to the consensual way of thinking. l built the skills to play the game well.

Writing this, I am incredibly proud of the work I put in to build up my mind. The other side of this is the cost it took to get to this point. I lost touch with all my friends ashamed to tell them I was enrolled in an undergraduate degree at my age. I overworked myself to the point of exhaustion, leaving myself squeezed empty and sad at the end of every term because the mad dash was over, the adrenaline rush was fading. I pushed out my innate joy for life to chase the thrill of winning. Instead of pride for my achievements, I felt a fear of being graded poorly and elation at getting better grades then others. This was part of the process that it takes to be put into a machine.

To get a gear to fit in a machine and have the properties desired you must heat it, melt it, extrude it by squeezing it through a small hole, roll it into the shape, machine away the parts not needed, heat it again and put it through extreme testing. This is the process that all my classmates and I went through to get the skills to win at life. This is the process it takes to make a cog in a machine. This is what we become in the end: a cog ready to enter the well-oiled machine of capitalism. The driving force behind this uncomfortable process is the recognition of being a success that comes with material wealth. Though it is extremely rewarding to learn something new, to achieve something you thought was impossible this was not the focus of myself and most of my classmates. The thing that I heard most of all from classmates was not this joy of the process but the salary that a recent grad attained alongside the words ‘I’m so tired’ repeated like a mantra.

There are many skills that are learned in school that are valuable and fulfilling to the soul. There are others that are detrimental. The one that is most detrimental is the idea that we can make it on our own. The idea is taught in the way examination is structure and it follows much further after the classroom. It builds a world separated. Just as I isolated myself from relationships, I learned that I am self-reliant. This is not a bad thing it just neglects the simple truth that there is no way any of us would have survived had we not been helped by others every day of our lives. I did not grow the food I ate today. I did not build the house I lay my head in last night. I did not build the car that gets me to the jobs that I work. In a perfect world the material value we receive from work would reflect the amount we helped the world out. The service we provide, and the recompense would reflect how much we alleviate the difficulties of another, how much we served our fellow man. This is not the value that is given to a student.

The intrinsic value of a student is based not on the relationships fostered, the helping hand given, the companionship of a collective struggle endured together. The value that is ascribed to a student the grade point average, the extracurriculars, the leadership and degree pursuit that will gain the highest market value post-graduation. There is a different type of value than the one defined by material value and it exists in the educational system. The value in learning from people who have blazed a trail and are shining a light on new vistas, the ability to participate in helping fellow man through some skills gained through education is beautiful and there are many who desire to do this.

Chapter 3: In the Machine

I am nearing the end of my time at school.  In many ways I have made it. I have the internship that will turn into the job. I can speak to strangers in a way that sounds impressive and full of accomplishment.

The internship I work at is a parts manufacturer for military and civilian aerospace companies. The work is interesting, but the context is conflicting. The parts I help make are used to kill people. The culture born out of this industry epitomizes the worst ideologies of the machine. My boss sat me down to tell me that climate change is a hoax put on by Leftist politicians. The subject of George Floyd was brought up. Instead of compassion for a man who lost his life, he cast Floyd as a drug addict and “low life.” This is the culture that has fully embraced a view that simplifies life into a binary of success and failure, winner and loser, good and bad.

I was blinded by this view for many years and lived as though I was a disgrace. I have been given the opportunity to look deeper at my life and see where value was derived from in my early family life. I now understand that I have the power to choose what is of most value to me. Though I find many problems with my current job, I will continue to work there. I will search for something else also but while I am there I will bring my perspective to this world, because If I leave the person who follows me may just be a sounding board for these perspectives.

Looking back at the place, I see it held none of the values from my childhood. Qualitative value. Quality friendships. Quality time with people. The work I spent on my relationships. The time I spent with nature. I see that the value that our culture places on objects is not the wholes story, not even a quarter of it. I could now regret that I did not see how much of a success I have always been. This is not entirely my fault. Karin Fischer in her article on neoliberal think tanks lays out how business groups and billionaires with very specific aims for society and their own profit fund think tanks to sway public opinion. The winners of the game want to make sure we all keep playing.

It Is not a simple think tank here or there that Is pushing the agenda of winners and losers and pushing us to rely on self and not see the interconnected web we are a part of. This documentary shows how since early in this century war propaganda techniques were rebranded and called public relations. This was started by a man named Edward Bernays and he devised such things as planned obsolescence, helped to influence women to start smoking cigarettes and laid the groundwork for later generations to use his techniques to build a society fiercely obsessed with winners and losers and putting value exclusively on material value, and neglecting the extrinsic value that is far more valuable and a much better gauge of failure and success.

Chapter 4: Getting Back to the Garden

Some consider our era the second Gilded Age. The first Gilded Age was the time when Rockefeller, Carnegie, and the other robber barons exploited laborers, enriching themselves and their businesses at the expense of the common good.

Today’s inequality is the worst it has ever been in America since the first Gilded Age. This current way is not sustainable, and we saw this from the first Gilded Age. The hangover from that era of unprecedented wealth was the Great Depression. Dust bowls resulted from unsustainable farming practices, and much of the country was thrown into extreme poverty.

The social movements of the Progressive era responded by fighting for a government that put the public good above corporate profit. FDR’s 1944 state of the union, titled the “Second Bill of Rights”, exemplifies that period. In that address, Roosevelt described the rights that people should have in order to be free:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

•  The right of every family to a decent home;

• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

• The right to a good education. 

These rights remind me of a scene from John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. In that novel, a man is given orders to bulldoze a tenant farmer’s house because he has been unable to pay the bank rent. The scene unfolds with the farmer threatening to shoot the man driving the bulldozer, or the man who gave him orders, or the men that gave them orders. It ends with his realization that it is not man’s fault. The men kicking him off his land are part of the capitalist machine. Killing them would not stop the machine.

This fits so well the story of my early life. We were cast out of the garden. The winners of the capitalist game came in and took our land. They cut down Grandfather Tree and Climbing Tree. Again, these were not evil people. They had learned to play the capitalist game well. And, in doing so, they became parts of a machine that subdued the garden.

It is easy to get caught in the gravity of this machine. It is loud, fast paced, exciting. Winning is a rush like nothing else, but like any stimulant there is a comedown. But at what cost? The qualities that make life wonderful are often pushed aside to feed this machine. The value embedded in relationships and people are not what the machine values.

By seeing what it is we value we can break the cycle and come back to the natural rhythms of life. Martin Luther King, during his fight against injustice, stated that we must move from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.

This reminds me of Joni’s Mitchell’s song “Woodstock.” Mitchell reminds us of our origins. We are children of Nature. “We are stardust/we are golden/billion-year-old carbon.” We forget this. We see ourselves as separate, as above nature. But, as Mitchell says, we need to “get back to the garden.” For me, getting back means valuing what my parents valued all those years ago: a simple life that put people and nature above profit; a life where I can feed people good food; a life centered on love for one another and enjoying the experience of existing together.

These are not scarce resources that one person can horde. They are equally distributed because they are intangible. Yet they are far more valuable than treasures that can be buried in the ground. They are far more valuable than the shiny things churned out by the machine.

Works Cited 

Century of Self. Curtis, Adam. 2002, Documentary Film

Fischer, Karin. “Neoliberal Think Tank Networks.” Global Dialogue. July 9, 2018

Monbiot, George. ‘Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of our problems.’ The Guardian. Friday 15 Apr 2016. Accessed 7 June 2021

Requiem for the American Dream. Hutchinson, Peter, Nyks, Kelly, Scott, Jared P., 2015, Documentary Film

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Continental Book Company, 1948.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. Harper, 2017.