I guess we’re transitioning from the fuck around to the find out stage

i am tired

(Verse 1)
Covid pandemic, life’s tragic,
Work From Home, no more traffic,
Elon Musk in the space race,
Twitter falling from its grace.

Netflix plateau, lost its glow,
Reddit blackout, a serious blow,
Interest rates, an upward hike,
Donald Trump, another strike.

(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.

(Verse 2)
Decentralisation, global reformation,
Tech Antitrust, digital conflagration,
Ukraine crisis, world’s at bay,
In this whirlwind, we lose our way.

Artificial Intelligence, the next experience,
Climate crisis, deadly seriousness,
Nazis, Fascism, old fears return,
Democratic backsliding, when will we learn?

(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.

(Verse 3)
Automation, job annihilation,
Mass unemployment, rising desperation,
Homelessness in the city streets,
Wildfires burning, the heat repeats.

(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.

(Bridge)
From the pandemic to the space frontier,
Through the crises that we all fear,
From the ashes, we’ll still rise,
In our hearts, the human spirit never dies.

(Chorus)
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
But when we are gone, will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on…

(Outro)
We didn’t start the fire,
But we hold the power, in this defining hour,
We can tame this fire,
Though we didn’t light it, we have the strength to fight it.

Notice how 90% of that are rich people causing or amplifying those situations to happen?

COVID - Trump sabotage any effort made to prevent the spread and we lost 1 million people due to that.

Climate Crisis - Oil Giants/Automobile industry sabotage the public transportation which would have a long term ramification to reduce oil consumption overall.

Nazis/Fascism - Rich People fund/outright purchase mass media to create chaos in public perspectives and polarize the political parties. Koch Brothers are funding far right politic and pushing hard for nazism. And of course, don’t forget about Sinclair broadcast.

Ukraine - Putin and the Oligarch

I could go on. Almost all of the problems begin and end with the rich people. #EatTheRich

It’s scary how greed has made the world so hostile. It’s hard to stay ignorant about these issues because it’s just one search away on a phone. Yet, people still choose ignorance. I feel a little lost and hopeless sometimes even though I try to do my part. Finding a safe space online seems crucial for my mental wellbeing. Glad I can be here

edit: grammar

It really does sound like a new version of We Didn’t Start the Fire.

To be perfectly fair, the world has always been screwed up in a hundred different ways at any given time. It’s just more immediately visible to every single person these days

Not feeling optimistic, but trying to stay positive and do good in the world regardless.

Remember to use these hard times to focus on the things that really matter. Enjoy nature, have empathy for others, be kind and supportive, stand up for what’s right.

We’ll all endure, some how some way. Peace and love to y’all.

Sometimes I feel like things are just moments away from falling apart. I worry that the leaders are doing their best to cover it up, but one day it will fall apart and it will fall apart suddenly.

History oft repeats itself. By reading a lot about the past, I feel more relaxed about the future.

A book I read recently was a history about a moral panic starting, how people became marginalized, how there were times of extreme terror, how a social movement started, and eventually entered the mainstream. Laws were reversed, the group of people became normal, and became part of greater society.

The goverment had gone from decade+ of progressivism with a opposition party in decline, to the accidental discovery of a powerful social tool to tap into the hate built into humans. They leveraged that tool to bring their party back to relevance in the face of declining power.

It’s victories were temporary though, and their very tapping into that hate was what undermined them. The boy that cried wolf couldn’t keep crying about it when people realized it was just a ruse.

Almost the exact same things are happening today. A similar moral panic kicked off. Someone is crying wolf and is trying to be the constant victim. Most people will be exposed to the alleged “wolf” (who turns out to be floofy and nice!) And America calms down again for another 20-40 years.

We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the worlds been turning

just try to keep my head down and focus on what I can realistically influence

To be honest, 2023 has feel relatively calmer than the past few, I guess covid being that all encompassing to life. Of the things on your list I do think AI is probably the first thing that comes to mind when I think of what we are “on the brink of”. This leap that happened the past couple years in LLM was shocking enough, wondering what the next couple are going to look like.

It think we have cycles because people remember things that happen in their lifetime but fail to adequately instil that knowledge in the next and subsequent generations. The wealth inequality of the 1920s was the catylist for much of the economic turmoil of the great depression and laid some of the context for the New Deal era. The strong rules for antitrust and managing monopolies were put in place to prevent a repeat and while the generations who lived through the great depression were dominant they survived. As those older generations died out and as the following generations grew in influence those protections were weakened and eventually mostly dismantled, resulting in massive changes from the 70s onwards. Those protections were eroded and wealth and income inequality grew until we reached and surpassed the levels of the 1920s.

I think the same happens for other things like the idea that Nazis are bad or must be resisted, or that religious ideologies should ve kept seperate from the government, or healthcare is something we can help each other to gain, or that workers can have power by working together. What I find hopeful is hearing discussion of all of these ideas in fairly accessible places and people do seem to be studying history in order to avoid repeating it.

Honestly, we are potentially on the cusp of the next great societal shift not only in how countries are ran, but probably also where the sphere of global influence resides. I don’t know how it will all end it, whether it will end with China superseding the US as a global influencer and power, or if we will go the way the Nazis have been trying to direct us since the 30s and the entire world takes a dramatic shift to the far right.

Quite frankly, it’s terrifying. Being in the United States and watching our political climate dissolve into a party who is afraid of embracing the young and go further left, and a party whose only interest is owning the libs and helping the 1% become even wealthier while the rest of us have to suffer through greedflation is really frustrating. My wife and I have talked about leaving, but we have JDs, and American JDs are basically useless outside of the U.S. unless you went to Harvard/Stanford/Yale and can land a job in Big Law, which we did not.

I’ve thought about going back to school and getting a degree in programming, or trying to find another way to learn and get the experience/certifications I would need, but I have absolutely no idea where to start with that or how to look for those kinds of jobs.