When I first heard Woodkid’s ‘Minus Sixty One’ on the TV where my husband was playing Death Stranding 2, something in me paused. The music didn’t just play in the background; it echoed the way modern life has been feeling. Vast, mechanical, and heavy with dread. Since then, it’s been looping in my mind, not just as a song I like to listen to but as a reflection of how we measure our worth in this world.
Capitalism thrives on productivity, on measuring human worthiness in units of efficiency, numbers that can be charted and sold. Life under capitalism often feels reduced to a metric. Hours that are clocked. Tasks completed. Followers gained and dollars earned. In the pursuit of these numbers, the human spirit is slowly pushed aside.
This ideology doesn’t merely shape economies; it reshapes all of our relationships. We become competitors instead of neighbours, brands instead of people, assets instead of companions. Loneliness creeps in, even when others surround us, because everyone is too busy surviving in a system that rewards constant motion and punishes stillness.
Existential Dread in a Measured World
The lyrics of “Minus Sixty One” echo with this existential dread. The feeling of looking at your life and wondering, “What is it that I’ve become?” I realized that the same question haunts many who live with borderline personality disorder, anxiety or depression. When self-worth becomes tangled up in unstable systems, relationships, or external validation, the ground beneath us feels unstable. The fear isn’t only of being alone, it’s of not existing in a way that feels real or meaningful.
Capitalism intensifies this dread by teaching us that value lies outside of ourselves: in money, status, and productivity. It breeds the same kind of gnawing emptiness that Woodkid’s orchestral arrangements capture. Grand, overwhelming and almost unbearable in its intensity.
Individualism and the illusion of Self-Sufficiency
Layered into this is the ideology of individualism, which insists that fulfillment is found in standing alone. We are taught that to need others is weakness, that worth is proven by independence, and that success belongs only to the self who works the hardest. The problem is that life doesn’t actually work that way. No human thrives in isolation. Individualism replaces community with comparison, turning neighbours into competitors and belonging into performance. Social media also heightens this by transforming connection into endless measurement against someone’s curated life.
For those living with shifting identities, as in BPD, this pressure is even heavier. When the “Self” feels fragile or uncertain, a culture that demands self-sufficiency becomes suffocating. You’re told to hold yourself up when you can’t even find your own ground. Causing the dread and sense of failure to grow louder and the fear to compound into chaos.
The turn toward Connection and Wholeness
A symphony is not made of one note, but a cascade of many, woven together and converging to create something beautiful. In the same way, collective action, empathy and genuine human connection can push back against the isolating tide. When we pause to listen to ourselves and to others within the quiet between the noise, we reclaim the possibility of warmth in a cold, calculating system.
Our place in this world should cultivate a different rhythm in our daily lives. One that doesn’t measure our worth in numbers or demand self-sufficiency and isolation with the shameful glorification of status. We should honour our humanity through intentional practices and creative tools. Reach back out to our intuition, to each other and to a way of living that is more holistic, compassionate and grounded in communication and connection. We can rewrite the score to be one of solidarity, care and belonging.
The world often tells us to measure our worth in numbers and stand alone, but healing comes from choosing connection. If you’re struggling with these feelings, you might explore practices like radical acceptance, opposite action, or building mastery. They’re small shifts, but over time, they create space for wholeness in a culture that often feels hollow. Remember, even the smallest act of reaching toward another person, or back toward yourself, pushes against isolation.
Sometimes words can only go so far. If you want to feel the atmosphere that inspired this piece, you can listen to Woodkid’s ‘Minus Sixty One’ as it plays in the opening of Death Stranding 2 below.
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