A little while ago I sent a message to a friend seeing how she is coping with life. I check in with her occasionally as a reminder that I am thinking about her and she can always reach out. And it seems that she is now getting to the point I have been for a long time.
Like watching a train crash.
Unfortunately, we humans tend not to be very bright, considering how much intelligence we have. Because we wait until we feel the change enough before we acknowledge that there is even a problem. The world has been heading rapidly downhill for decades and it is speeding up, but we have been largely insulated from the effects, because we have been so distracted.
Much has got easier for us in terms of our access to distractions, which means the slide down can happen while we are staring at a screen, avoiding eye contact with reality. And the changes are incremental, small movements that can seem imperceptible, or disconnected from each other, but are actually a widening stream heading to a high waterfall, with sharp rocks at the bottom.
Those who are more observant of our surroundings, we would have seen this slide happening, but even if they mentioned it, they would be diminished, ridiculed and what they say tossed away, by those who couldn't feel it yet. Personally, I have seen this time and time again, where years later the people who dismissed my observations, are now on the bandwagon because they can feel it. And I think now with the intrusion of AI on our working capabilities, many, many people are going to feel the impact soon enough, even though they have dismissed it so recently as not applying to them.
But it isn't just AI to worry about, because society has been collapsing well before it made any kind of practical noise. Social and news media have been degrading our ability to concentrate, eroding relationship potential, disconnecting and isolating us. The internet has give us access and ability to connect with like minds on the worst of human behaviours. Family units have collapsed globally, birth rates have fallen to disconnect more, and people are increasingly lonely and depressed.
Yet, the distractions keep innovating and increasing.
Even when we see the problems, rather than looking for their cause and developing solutions, our attention is soon turned to something else that has been put in front of us. This is because there are small groups making excessive wealth from keeping those problems in place upstream and they don't want them stopped. They don't want to end mining oil. They don't want to end polluting the air. They don't want to stop generating wealth and control for themselves, at the expense of the rest. And that means, they don't want people turning their attention to the problems that matter, because the people will inevitably find that the root cause polluting the stream, are the wealthiest governments and corporations.
So instead of aligning our attention and resources and dealing with the issues to solve the problems we face, we accept a normalisation of the problems as if nothing can be done. The problems are too big, I am just one person, it is too late. Rather than preventing the issues from happening in the first place, we are conditioned to be reactive, whether it be dealing with the effects of climate change, or youth crime. And then of course,
*Who is responsible?
Who is responsible for dealing with climate change? Who is responsible for dealing with failing family units? Who is responsible for dealing with cultural shifts? Who is responsible for dealing with the impacts of AI on humanity? All these companies are making money, all these governments are designing tax laws yet, none of them are actually taking responsibility in any meaningful way to deal with the existential problems we face.
Not are we as individuals.
We have created these problems over the space of a few centuries and each individual has played a small part in their creation. Yet, for much of that time we didn't really know better and the land, water and air seemed endless. But for a very long time now, we have known better, yet we keep on with the mentality of the industrial revolution that progress means using more resources and wealth is the indicator of success. And here we are, a species collapsing due to our inability to align wellbeing and manage our resources effectively.
There are major problems we face as a species, yet what are we doing about them? I mean, Really doing about them? Very, very little. We keep on worrying about balancing government debts, while some get excessively wealthy, while others fall into illness and lack of opportunity, and the world conditions keep changing to the point it is largely unliveable.
If we did turn our attention upstream to the causes, what would we find?
The silver lining of seeing it all collapse, doesn't seem like a good strategy for a species, but I guess it is another form of entertainment that we can utilise instead of doing something to improve the situation.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Be part of the Hive discussion.
- Comment on the topics of the article, and add your perspectives and experiences.
- Read and discuss with others who comment and build your personal network
- Engage well with me and others and put in effort
And you may be rewarded.
It's definitely a tough position to be in. Even when you have people who want to effect change like over in France, you have bad actors shifting the focus to something else and detracting from what they are really hoping to achieve. People need to see the reason for the unrest versus making excuses for it.
It's interesting to see the peaceful protests were fine until the police attacked the crowd with tear gas, water canon and pepper spray.
The only reaction is self defence which is what the protesters did.
Of course it isn't portrayed that way in the press.
Watching trump is like watching a train wreck on fast forward and those that could stop him do nothing.
It's not entertaining at all. It's horrifying.
Trust me, it's even worse when you live here (the US)!
I know many Americans and have family in the states from previous generations.
The American people that I know are wonderful people.
There are about 80 million Americans that really need to pull their heads out of their butt's and take trump to jail.
Sadly, I don't think it would really change anything. People still feel the way they feel. He just makes it okay for them to feel that way.
He accepts the worst in people, encourages it, nurtures it, and then uses it to control them.
I think he thrives on chaos. The things he says just to get people going is proof of that.
Exactly straight out of the dictator handbook. The USA always had a core element of racism and he just exploited it.
It is all horrifying. The dictators of the past must be chuckling away in their graves.
Trump laid out precisely what he was going to do. He used everything he could from the dictator handbook and nobody stopped him.
He stuffed the administration and courts with his own people just like Adolf did.
Machiavelli wrote that guide a very long time ago :)
I know. I read the Prince many years ago.
I wonder if younger people read these types of books?
At the highest levels also. We are getting scammed and tricked out of a decent future.
Heads on pikes. We need more of the heads of those upstream on pikes.
That would be a good start.
At the end of the day people rarely ever want to acknowledge a leak in the boat until their own feet are wet.
Yup. and we are wet up to our necks.
Mr Taraz Honestly, I think creating art and paying attention to the small things around me help me keep going. The world can be overwhelming, and sometimes I feel the same way you do. But I still find something worth noticing in a sunset, a painting or an ordinary moment of life. Maybe we can't fix everything, but we can still choose what we pay attention to and what we create out of our experiences and sometimes, that's enough to keep going 🫂
The problem becomes that you (and others) won't be able to keep doing beautiful things, because the world is being ruined all the time. Ignoring it doesn't fix it and that means, the art becomes another distraction mechanism. If we were truly artful, we would artfully fix the issues we face as a species.
Yes, I agree with you that it seems like we entertain ourselves with art or relieve our pain with art. Of course, this pain, suffering, hardship, etc., has existed since the time of early humans until now, when we live in the world of artificial intelligence... The famous painting The Scream by Edvard Munch, one of the most well-known works in the history of modern art, is not simply a picture of a person screaming; it is a visual embodiment of deep anxiety, a sense of loneliness, and a human existential crisis. In a note about the experience that inspired this work, he talks about walking with his friends at sunset. Suddenly, he feels that the sky has turned red and nature seems to be shaking with intense anxiety. He feels that an endless scream is passing through nature. Overall, The Scream can be seen as a reflection of existential anxiety, human loneliness, psychological fragility, and the experience of a world that no longer seems calm and reliable. This is compounded by social media, which creates a kind of confusion and loneliness for everyone. Sometimes I tell myself that it seems like nothing matters to anyone and that it's taking up a strange amount of time. This is a great topic to discuss...
I think checking upstream is a useful way to think about so many things, from personal habits to politics and the economy.
It really is. I have been approaching many things this way for a long time it is really helpful.
The bad thing about human is that they thinks that the world is all made for them and can do whatever they wants with nature