When you were young, what did you expect your life to become?
Granted, we aren't "meant to have expectations" as it only leads to disappointment and assumptions, and they are apparently dangerous. But from the eyes of the child unyet broken down by the pains of experience, I believe that most start to have a sense of what their life may become. They might not know exactly, exactly what will happen, or what career, but rather a general sense of the future. Will their life be good or bad, healthy or ill, happy or sad.
As a child, I never had a sense of what I might become and the only real sense I had of the future, was that I was likely going to have to do it on my own. As a young child, I faced a bit of a struggle socially and in the family and this caused me to be independent, even though that isn't part of my nature. Essentially, I had to overcome myself in order to be able to survive, because the environment wasn't suited to my kind of person. So my expectation was that if a person is to succeed, they have to do what it takes, even if conditions aren't favourable.
I feel I have never had favourable conditions.
Well, that is not completely true and I assume (dangerous remember) that everyone feels like this sometimes, but it was because every time life looked somewhat up, something dramatic happened to take it away, with most things being completely out of my control. Before I was an adult, I had the sense that life was conspiring against me, though logically and ideologically, I know this isn't the case, because "life" is blind, random, inconsiderate, because it doesn't care equally about anything.
The universe is unconscious.
What I thought as a child though was that whatever happens in life, I will be able to handle it and so far, this has been the case. Yet, what does "handle" mean - is it coping, survival, thriving? What are the boundary expectations of a "life worth living" and what happens when our living standards and wellbeing expectations are not close to met?
I question this because I think that everyone has some opinion about the way their life (and the life of others) should be at some level, and I don't think that most people feel completely fulfilled in the experience they are living. At least for me, I see a lot of apathy and avoidance, which I think is caused by the constant pressure and chaos that the world has become. Yes, some people shut it all out, but avoiding it doesn't take away the relationship.
What you resist, persists.
It takes energy to resist something, which is why so many of us suffer the costs of temptation when we do not have enough mental or emotional resources to deny ourselves. The obesity, depression and loneliness "epidemics" are lagging indicators of how our lives have degraded, even though from a technological level, we should be enjoying greater health, wealth, and wellbeing.
The other day, I was talking with friends about resilience and again, I somewhat disagreed with their position. They were saying that we should be "more resilient" with which I agree, but I also think that resilience has become an autoresponse conditioning that is made to convince us to do without, to do with less, to crush ourselves down and be happy with dwindling availability and opportunity. Yes, "happy with less" has value, but what I think is happening is a manipulation of the masses to drive more wealth and control into the hands of the few.
It is not new, it has been happening for decades, but with the advent of the internet and globalised corporations, it has been taken to unprecedented new heights and levels. A lot of children today have the lofty dream of being an "influencer" in the world, to be famous for being famous - the state of workless wealth as I have coined it in the past. Yet, think about that for a moment. When the majority is an influencer, who is being influenced? How many makeup tutorials can be viewed, how many models in bikinis, or men with sixpacks? There is a saturation point, and this is linked to the ability to consume. If everyone is selling products that have little supply chain, where is the money coming from to buy?
How resilient are we?
A couple of times I have mentioned ways to reformulate the global economy away from the US consumer mindset and policy of increasing debt to buy global control. The pushback on it is almost always the same, saying it won't happen because it is too disruptive. Yet, that very disruption is what is needed in order to make the world a better place, as the status quo is failing us all.
Yes, all.
Let's assume that global catastrophe happens and the majority of the population is destroyed, but the billionaires and their families retreat into their bunkers and underground cities and survive.
Is survival worth it?
I don't know many kids who think living confined in a bunker, unable to go to the surface due to radiation and contamination, living life as a prisoner, is a good life. The money might have kept the species alive, but is that something to be proud of, to celebrate, when the destruction itself is self-inflicted and avoidable?
It is avoidable.
Even the most pressing of issues, such as climate change is still able to be dealt with, But it cannot be adequately addressed in the status quo environment and economy we have, because to deal with it is going to be massively disruptive.
And this is the problem I have with resilience.
Because the people who generally claim resilience are the ones trying to hold onto what they have now, to make do in the current world, to avoid disruption. They don't have the resilience to embrace uncertainty and do what is necessary to change the world. Their resistance is flexible, it is rigid. They want to stay unchanged, they aren't antifragile. The pressure of change should grow us, not reduce us into a continually worse form of ourselves, where we are less skilled, less capable, less compassionate as humans.
We don't want resilience to maintain the status quo, we want the willingness to change.
Do you see the challenge?
We have conditioned our expectations to have a future similar to what we have now, when what we need is highly disruptive change that tears apart almost everything we have come to accept as the way it is. The economic policy and practices need to be adjusted so heavily, that the entire way our lives are structured will change and shift the supply chain to provide a different offering, a different experience. Our daily lives need to shift instead of trying to stay the same, because the conditions have changed since they were first set. We don't live in the same environment now, we have to adapt, we have to change, we have to grow.
Yet, those children of today looking to be influencers, are again looking to live in the world we had. One where profit at any cost is the mechanism used to drive all levels of decision making. Even though that mechanism, is exactly what has incentivised our behaviours and driven us to end up where we are as a society - collapsing. But it isn't their direct fault that they think like this, because they have been conditioned by the consumer model to behave and they are behaving exactly as expected.
They are not disruptive.
They are products of the status quo.
My life has not turned out as I had expected. I thought I would do better somehow than I have done, but I had no definition on what that would mean or look like. I wasn't clear in my projections and ass a result, the default life happened and here we are. But is it too late to make a significant change and pivot toward something meaningful? To become antifragile instead of resilient? To welcome disruption because that is what is needed right now?
Can I overcome myself again?
Taraz
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