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
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