I created this blog because I have so much to give and share. During my daily life struggles I feel that I rarely get to say to anyone, and this includes those closest to me, what I really think would be the most helpful and beneficial things that sometimes need to be said.
Unfortunately this blog was also created right in the epicenter of the most emo phase I’ve ever been through in my life. I’m all over the place and sometimes I just don’t have the energy to write unless anger, fear, or hatred get their claws into me. They’ve been the best motivation for pure survival in these dark times.
If you have read any of my posts, I hope you will believe me that I don’t just have complaints to offer this world. I am so much more than that and everyday I’m getting better and better. The counseling is really helping. So is the physical therapy. I feel that once more there will be a time on the horizon where I can again share knowledge and truth in ways that are more holistic.
I did end up writing that whole book about international travel in the connected age. I think I’ll be releasing excerpts of it here for free. Hopefully somebody will read them and choose to buy the Kindle book once I’ve finished the editing and publishing processes. There are many other projects in my mind. I’m writing about the future of my city – a utopian dream of what it could look like by 2040. It’s inspired by a TED talk I watched about local community action and politics. Additionally I got inspiration from a great book that does the same thing for the whole country of Japan. It’s called “Japan Revisited: How Japan Can Reinvent Itself and Why This is Important for the World.” It’s a bit policy-heavy, but it’s a great read for those of us who truly believe deep down that humanity can do better and IS doing better bit by painstaking bit.
You see deep down I am an optimist. I do believe that we humans are pretty awesome little creatures that have an amazing ability to be kind, compassionate, helpful, selfless, and just….better. Of course we are filled with historical repetitions and fuck-ups. That’s to be expected I think. The main narrative emerging of the human story should be one of hope, courage, bravery, and perseverance. We cannot give into that hate all the time. We must each of us struggle with ourselves to be better and learn and help. That’s what being human is. It is creativity and innovation. It is building something from nothing. It is laughing. It is crying.
Yes it’s war and concentration camps and ethnic cleansing and poverty and disease too. It’s economic inequality and 56 people owning half the world’s wealth. But I think we are slowly learning as a species. I think we will save ourselves ultimately. I think we will learn to be real thinkers and to stray away from the destructive forces of willful ignorance and dogma. I have plenty of historical evidence that shows that we can do it.
Yes we can eliminate poverty. We are getting closer. Yes we can utilize renewable sources of energy – hell solar production costs went down by 1/3 in the past year alone! Africa is on the up-and-up. Losers are becoming winners – look at China! We need to dare to dream the best and the worst so that we can be prepared for the future.
Dan Gilbert argues in the beginning of his book Stumbling Upon Happiness that we are different because of our ability to peer into the future and imagine it. This is coming from that prefrontal cortex he asserts. He also says we’re really bad at it. Nonetheless, it is a unique human characteristic and even if we’re really bad at imagining this future, we can do it better collectively perhaps? We can dare to dream these worlds and then work to actively shape them before our clock of life has elapsed. Bit by bit we are here to struggle for the future of our species and we must keep doing it no matter how bad it’s going.
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