Pessimistic Futures – Day 3
30-Day Writing Challenge
The world is in a weird place at the moment, at least from one man’s perspective.
All of humanity has been placed in “time-out” inside their homes to prevent the spread of a pandemic, American society has finally hit a tipping point for police brutality on minority populations, India and China are getting a little too close for comfort, and we humans don’t seem well equipped to solve any of this.
For the first time ever, I actually struggled to fall asleep due to my anxiety and imagination playing out future scenarios of what could happen in the next 2 – 3 years. I’m usually really good at this whole sleep thing, but not this time…
If humanity wants to survive for another 100, 200, or 1,000 years we need to improve our ability to think.
The two areas we suck at most are long-term perspectives and second-order effects… We’re living in a complex system that has knock-on effects, so the decisions we make today will impact us months, years, and decades into the future.
It’s not just our inability to respond quickly to a real-time pandemic, it’s the way humans treat other humans, and the equality embedded in the systems we’ve adopted from previous generations.
… It’s not all doom and gloom though… 🙂
Even though I’m struggling to see a bright future at the moment, I know it’s definitely possible!
I see each situation as oxygen feeding the flame of humanity and there are two directions we can take here… Either we rise out of all the chaos like a phoenix creating a much better future… Or collapse under our own irrationality.
The only way we’ll ever revive as the phoenix is through good judgment.