Abiding is the inner stance. Slack is the outer boundary work that makes it possible. If you don’t protect your attention, the modern world will rent it back to you as “wellness.” God forbid it’s packaged as a “self-help” course.
“Take it easy” gets treated like a temperament, like it’s something you’re either born with or you aren’t. In practice it’s closer to hygiene or operational security: a set of boring decisions that prevent your day from being hijacked. Calm doesn’t survive on good intentions. It survives on friction, boundaries, and refusing the bait.
Because the environment is not neutral. A lot of modern life is engineered to keep you reactive: notifications calibrated like slot machines, feeds that reward outrage, work culture that pretends everything is urgent, and “staying informed” that mysteriously turns into doomscrolling every night. Stress is profitable. Distraction is profitable. And exhausted people buy more convenient solutions than rested people do.
That’s where the SubGenius concept of Slack stops being a joke and starts being useful. Strip away the lore and it’s just a blunt description of what gets stolen first: time, attention, libido, play, curiosity, sleep, self-respect; anything that makes you less predictable and less rentable. The Conspiracy doesn’t need to be literal. The mechanism is enough.
And to cover for what’s been taken, you get False Slack: pre-approved relaxation that works like a relief valve. It “recharges” you just enough to go back and keep producing. It always costs money. It never changes the underlying terms.
Phineas Waldorf Steel said it in his own theatrical way: fear as control, despair as the output, and people left with “no constructive focus in life.” Corny delivery, accurate diagnosis.
Abiding is still the goal. But if you want to Abide in a hostile system, you need the unsexy skill of reclaiming Slack.