✨ Gentle Reminder That Taking Part In A Once-Yearly Event Where All Crime, Up To And Including Murder, Is Legal, IS Self-Care
by Boobie
The stresses of modern life are not something that human beings evolved to handle. For tens of thousands of years, people lived as hunter-gatherers, roaming from place to place in small packs to find what was needed to sustain the group, never staying in one place for too long, the instinct to simply survive and procreate as prominent a driving force as we now see in wild animals. The shift to agriculture and, by nature, civilization set us on a path for the technologically advanced but defendant lifestyle we live today. Life is easier, at least physically, and safer; there’s very little chance, for example, that I will be beaten out by a wolf for my only chance at sustenance, and then eaten by that wolf, like there was for my ancestors. But with any advancement there comes an accompanying set of unexpected problems.
My ancestors, for example, never had to deal with the crushing, dehumanizing monotony of working in an office for 40 hours a week, a life where their most prominent contribution to their capitalist society was something they could just barely be paid enough to care about. They never had to deal with the physical alienation of a world where most human interaction is done either by text message or social media rather than in person, the possibility of a front or an idealized image of all parties lingering in the ether each exchange like a blemish-reducing SnapChat filter. Because of these types of unquantifiable but very real modern stressers, self-care is perhaps more important than ever.
It’s not just more care such as working out or taking time off from work to relax and decompress. It’s little things that people simply forget to go on a day-to-day basis that can make an enormous difference: drinking enough water, putting down your connected devices to read for a bit without distractions, and yes, participating in a once-yearly event where all crime, up to and including murder, is legal.
In the same way that staying properly hydrated helps all facets of physical health, from clearing up skin blemishes to aiding digestion, unleashing all of your pent-up frustration with a system that crushes your spirit each and every day helps alleviate that frustration and give you a feeling of agency over your life, an agency that many lack to such a degree that they experience a psychic ache so omnipresent they hardly notice it anymore. Participating in the yearly Purge is, of course, self-indulgent, but the fact that “self-indulgent” as an adjective has such a negative connotation is part of the reason such an event is so necessary to begin with. You spend all day working for others, following society’s rules both written and unwritten; continuing to concern yourself with others’ well-being on the one day when you’re allowed to violently attack them and make them pay for the sins they or someone like them have committed against you is not only neglectful of your needs, it’s borderline self-harm.
Violent impulses used to be able to be focused on the animals that would feed a person and their family or tribe, or on a violent beast marauding tribe that threatened them. If you don’t Purge now, they’ll probably just come out as passive-aggression in a group chat, damaging the relationships that make the interminable inter-Purge bearable. Better by far to simply wait until the big day, go to your friend’s house in a bandana and beaked plague doctor mask, break both of his kneecaps with a crowbar, and move forward again as pals and equals once he recovers (assuming no one else comes around and finishes him off after you leave to take down your aunt for tagging you in an unflattering picture on Facebook). Ultimately, this ends up making a night of that dreaded “self-indulgence” selfless.
When Ancient Romans needed to be better hydrated, they built mighty aqueducts that are still standing. Similarly, when they needed to unleash a little blood-lust, they went to gladiatorial games at the Colosseum. Participating in the Purge is nothing an updated and improved version of this, the same way our current plumbing systems are updated and improved versions of aqueducts; it’s more democratic, open to participation by anyone and everyone. So this year, remember: drink plenty of water, take a walk outside to remind yourself that humans are at their core just a part of nature’s delicate ecosystem, and spend a night killing and terrorizing whoever you please to remind yourself that humans are at their core also killing machines driven by self-preservation. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did ✨
