keeping it objective here
while i'm skilled at imagining the worst of what's to come, my weakness is that i'm not clever or imaginative enough to know what i would do to escape -- or even, somehow, to prevent from happening? -- the consequences that will follow for years to come from the actions in today's american government. and with that, i've answered a question i've held in my mind since middle school: how did people continue to go about their daily lives when people were being sent to concentrations camps? an unending series of unprecedented events, "the new normal" (gag).
i mourn how human-led societal contracts can supersede scientific, biologic, genetic fact. pure objective fact. and the overall education system of the country prevents a significant portion of the population from appreciating that fact. the old, and quite frankly, un-evolved ways of living, consisting of conquests, power, legacy -- i don't think any of that should continue to be brought into our modern society and all its gifts. we are all more connected through screens, there is no more land on this earth to discover, so isn't it time to, i don't know, figure out how to take care of it?
when i came into graduate school, i had the full realisation that we live in an incredible age of technological advancement and computational sophistication, that cognitive offloading on our personal machines, some of which are portable and handheld, allows us to synthesise information more efficiently since we don't have to use precious brain resources to remember frivolous details anymore -- that we can and do have the resources to sustain human life, to discover and implement climate solutions, to make housing a human right. humans aren't meant to remember clearly, we all know that memory has its flaws. and i'll say it from anecdotal experience that i believe in the ability of psychedelics to form novel neural pathways in the brain and thus expand the ability to learn and help yourself work through your own struggles. power hungry people could do well with a guided trip and see their potential to contribute to positive changes to the world.
why shouldn't everyone just be able to do what they want in their lives? we do only live once, so why can't we live it with discovery? why can't we create all day, read all day, know that there's a possibility for a sustainable way of living where we don't have to work ourselves sick and have to keep pushing through n order to exchange our labour for access to getting better? if we lived in a society where people were taken care of, hell, i would find more meaning and satisfaction with working in drug development. so it's depressing to see that we're wasting these gifts to chase money (which is technically infinite and ultimately made up -- a useful system, sure, but not a coveted material object by any means) instead of being able to do create really cool shit.
i think there's still time to do right. i feel a better world is possible.