When I walk down the halls of McCaskey, I can feel the stress in the air. It’s palpable. When I talk to my friends about their days, I hear it echoed in their frenetic voices as they describe their struggle to balance marching band, varsity sports, musical, a job, advanced classes, the mountain of homework from the history teacher who waitresses at night. 16-year-old fledgling grown-ups are shuttled into career paths. And these are the privileged ones.

The U.S. has been the world’s largest economy since 1871. Our culture has long emphasized upward economic mobility as both the highest goal one can aspire to and the most accurate indicator of intrinsic worth, from the myth of the American Dream to the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric of 20th century politics to the Obama administration’s insistence that a college degree is integral to a middle class lifestyle. And according to the World Values Survey, Americans are more than twice as likely as Europeans to attribute poverty to laziness. We also retire later and take fewer vacation days. Unique among developed nations, we attach our value to our productivity and then work ourselves to death to prove our worth. In essence, we’re suffering from internalized capitalism. 

This idea that self-worth depends on productivity has been baked into American values since the advent of our country. Consider the Puritan pilgrims, who thought that the most successful workers were the “elect,” predestined for Heaven, or the “prosperity gospel,” a modern day right-wing evangelical paradigm that associates spiritual worth with material wealth. This hyper-emphasis on productivity also stems from American individualism; self-determination and independence are some of our most cherished values. Yet in the capitalist economy, we’re not individuals. We’re expendable, replaceable employees, and we must be the best to keep our jobs. Our prioritization of the individual over the group leads us to compete with each other constantly, to advance our own interests above those of others. 

For instance, the way Americans overschedule our children exemplifies the intersection of individualism and competition. It’s scientifically proven that having unstructured time increases childrens’ executive functioning, and overscheduling can be detrimental to their development. Yet today’s children and teens are undeniably busy. In fact, Gen-Z is reportedly the most stressed out generation, with many citing school and extracurricular commitments as the primary reasons for their stress. And this proclivity towards overscheduling is inhibiting our ability to be with each other. On average, today’s families only spend about thirty-eight minutes of quality time together a day.

What do we do? Blaming individuals for the systemic failure of internalized capitalism is counterproductive. Instead, we need a conscious cultural shift. For some of us, the pandemic provided welcome respite from our busy lives. But for others, those who lost their jobs, families, or homes, the pandemic blatantly exposed the inequities of our economic system. While we strive to dismantle the capitalist economy, we also need to destigmatize rest and prioritize mental health and human connection, refusing to allow internalized capitalism to dictate our daily lives.