Dogito, ergo sum. I fast, therefore I think.
That’s the brilliant, ridiculous premise from a Franz Kafka story about a philosopher dog, which I read about in an essay called Dogito, Ergo Sum, and I can’t get it out of my head. It feels less like literary criticism and more like a diagnosis for the 21st century. We’re all that dog, aren’t we? Sniffing around for answers, trying to figure out where the food comes from, completely oblivious to the giant, invisible hands that drop it in our bowl.
We call our frantic sniffing "research." We call it "due diligence." We call it "optimizing our lives." But it’s all the same thing. We’re just dogs, trying to make sense of a world run by unseen masters.
The Ergonomics of Submission
I stumbled down a rabbit hole this week, and it all started with that word: Ergo. As in, "therefore." As in, a logical conclusion. But the word has been co-opted. Now it means "a thing designed to make you comfortable within the system."
Take the Derila Ergo pillow. I read a review, Derila Pillow Reviews: Is the Derila Ergo Pillow Worth It?, from some guy who documented his journey from skeptic to true believer. He talks about a "challenging adaptation period" where the pillow felt too firm, where he had to learn to sleep on it. It’s a pillow. No, wait—it’s a perfect microcosm of our entire relationship with modern "solutions." You buy a product to solve a problem—neck pain, bad sleep—that your life has given you. But the product demands you change for it. You must submit to the high-density memory foam for two to four weeks before it grants you relief.
You have to conform to the object that was supposed to conform to you. What kind of twisted logic is that? It's the logic of a system that sells you both the disease and the cure. The pillow is just a symptom. It promises to align your spine while you sleep, but what about the 16 hours a day we spend hunched over desks and phones, destroying our posture in the first place? The Ergo pillow isn’t fixing you; it's just making you a more efficient, well-rested cog for the machine that breaks you down every day.
And offcourse we buy it. We read the reviews, we track our sleep, we do the "research," just like Kafka's dog trying to understand the metaphysics of kibble.
Charting the Great Beyond
If the ergonomic pillow is our attempt to control our physical decay, then crypto is our attempt to control the abstract chaos of finance. And what do you know, there’s an "Ergo" for that, too. The Ergo coin, ERG, is apparently showing a "falling wedge pattern."
Give me a break.
Traders are staring at squiggly lines on a screen, drawing triangles, and telling themselves a story. "This pattern means the bears are losing strength!" they say. It’s pure divination. It's financial astrology. They're looking for an invisible hand in the market, a sign from the gods of the blockchain that their investment is sound. This is the same impulse as Kafka's dog, who, baffled by the mysterious appearance of food, devotes his life to figuring out the source.
These traders, with their technical analysis and their moving averages, think they’re scientists. They're not. They’re shamans reading goat entrails, desperately hoping to predict the rain. They’re trying to impose a narrative of logic—of ergo—onto what is essentially a global casino built on pure beleif. And when the market wipes out $19 billion overnight, they just call it a "painful event" and go right back to drawing their little wedges, because admitting it’s all random is too terrifying. They need to believe the master has a plan... and we're just supposed to nod along.
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one. Maybe there is a secret logic to it all. But what does it say about us that our search for meaning leads us to a memory foam pillow and a speculative altcoin?
The Pain We Don't Talk About
Here’s the real punchline. While we’re lost in these heady investigations—philosophical dogs, ergonomic pillows, crypto charts—the real world keeps turning. And it hurts.
A new report from the National Safety Council just dropped, and it’s a brutal dose of reality. Nearly a third of frontline workers who experience pain on the job don’t even report it. Another quarter don't know how or if they even can. More than 40% say they rarely or never have the proper ergonomic tools to do their jobs safely.
This ain't some deep philosophical text or a risky digital asset. This is the simple, ugly truth. People are in physical pain because their employers won't spend the money on a decent chair or a better-designed workspace. They are the dogs who can very clearly see the master, but the master doesn't care if their back spasms, as long as the boxes get packed.
They don’t need a new science or a falling wedge pattern. They just need a desk that doesn’t slowly cripple them. Kafka's dog was driven mad by the mystery of his condition. For millions of real people, there’s no mystery at all. The cause and effect—the ergo—is staring them right in the face. You do the work, therefore you are in pain. The end.
So We're All Just Chasing Our Own Tails
Whether it's a philosopher dog trying to understand food, a side-sleeper adapting to a pillow, a crypto bro reading charts, or a warehouse worker ignoring their aching back, it’s all the same story. We're all performing our own "investigations," trying to find a logic or a solution within a system that's fundamentally indifferent to us. We think we're making choices, but we're just picking from a pre-approved menu of comforts and distractions designed to keep us from asking who built the kennel in the first place.
Tags: Ergo
