In the "Insanity" workout videos, the instructor, Shaun T, says at the beginning - "Are you afraid of what's to come? I am". Whenever I hear that, I always think you know I've heard better motivational speeches. I should be afraid of the future, but I'm not. I've come to terms with less in my own life - having taken my spend rate down 90% in the past year due to "unforeseen" circumstances. The nature of which I've written consistently about for the past decade. And yet, I've never been happier. With respect to the future, we have nothing to fear but ourselves. For some reason, due to an absence of worthy natural adversaries, the hairless monkey has decided to become its own worst enemy. We have been raised in a corporate toxic waste dump. From birth, brainwashed to be dissatisfied in life and to need "more". And then when we get more, we find out more is never enough. We are given happiness at birth and from that point forward, taught to do everything possible to undermine that happiness in pursuit of competitive materialism.
Now of course it's all ending. It has been ending for weeks, months, years, even decades depending on the person. Only the people at the very top of the Ponzi pyramid have been unaffected by the war of corporate attrition. And yet, people make the blithe choice to be used and exploited to pursue the mirage of happiness that glimmers ever more distant into their future. And so I'm not afraid, because I've been forced to accept "now" with respect to my happiness, and because the only enemy is oneself. We see it all around us - self-destruct mode is rampant. My own cousin died this week at age 48. He had been burning the candle at both ends with a blow torch. Arguably lucky to live to that age based on some of the stories. He could never be happy. We are all somewhere on the continuum of self-destruct mode.
Finding the "now" for happiness is not that hard, but it means accepting less. It means accepting that more is not more, it's less. We are witnessing the final stage collapse of what began in 2008 - the consumption of the status quo for corporate dividends. Trading long-term economic revenue for short-term profit. The conflation of debt for GDP. On the other side of the "recognition event" there will be a glut of EVERYTHING, except money. So we will transition to a barter economy. Big deal. My parents already buy their clothes at the second hand store, and I kid them that they're taking away from homeless people. The fact is that trading IS the future. We are already witnessing the collapse of shopping malls in real-time. And it's not just because of Amazon, it's because everyone has too much shit already. I am optimistic that the Millenials will survive just fine, since they are the sharing generation. They share rides, AirBnBs, and even themselves - there's an app for that. The student loan debt however has to go, and I foresee maximum rioting until it does. We let corporations buy stock back from insiders to paper over dilution using borrowed money and then discharge that debt in bankruptcy, but Congress has decided student loan debt can never ben discharged. It's Congress that is going to be discharged. Meanwhile, those who have welded themselves to "more" and who are already self-medicating are going to find this adjustment "difficult". Why? Because it's already difficult. They've turned life into a competition, and the chemicals are just there to help them cope with the fact that they can never win.
The important thing for the planet and the future is that the corporate toxic lifestyle is eradicated. It's a personal choice of who goes along with it. The hardest part will be watching the people around us who've already made that choice. I know.
