crisis
Explanation
The Joke
An older man is giving a speech, declaring that "humans weren't meant to live like this" -- that they should not be "sitting in cubicles, tapping away on plastic boards, making dollar bills for other people." He argues that humans don't understand their true nature because "we were born on the savannah of Africa." He then proposes that society should be ruled by tribal bands, with governance by council of elders who exchange loyalty and service. A listener responds with "Actually, that actually sounds really..." and the speaker finishes: "I forgot to add: also I want to give you attendance certificates and a sticker chart, and to bind you to 30-year loans on dwellings called 'starter homes.'"
The joke is that the speaker initially sounds like he is making a radical "return to nature" argument -- the kind of romanticized primitivism that appeals to people disillusioned with modern corporate life. But his actual proposal turns out to be functionally identical to modern civilization, just described in slightly different language. Tribal bands governed by elders exchanging loyalty for service is essentially a corporation with a management hierarchy. The final reveal of attendance certificates, sticker charts, and 30-year mortgages makes it explicit: he has just reinvented the very system he was criticizing.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the "noble savage" or primitivist fantasy that is common in modern culture -- the idea that if we could just go back to a simpler way of life, everything would be better. Weinersmith's point is that many of the things people complain about in modern society (hierarchies, obligations, long-term financial commitments) are not bugs of civilization but features of any organized human society. The speaker's inability to imagine a genuinely different social structure, despite his passionate critique, suggests that these patterns may be deeply inherent to human social organization rather than artifacts of modernity.