Desperate Letter to Hope
[Disclaimer: I am well aware that this article is not accurate to the T, and that it involves a decent amount of generalizations. However, I believe the thought in it is intriguing and fun to entertain]
Reading this, you are likely to have grown up in a time when a common perception of our lives on this planet is that of constant advancement. Been taught about scientific breakthroughs that are hard to fathom in a classroom. Witnessed technology sophistication making things easier. Not only that. Social norms are progressing and we’re seeing a common sense of humanity spreading into every corner of a world that’s getting more and more interconnected, but it hasn’t been feeling this way for a while...
The encompassing sense of optimism faded and turned into a looming anticipation of harsh times.
6 years ago we were locked out of a world that we can never return to. A world filled with seemingly prevailing peace and progress. Where prosperity was an inevitability.
Resurfacing the memory of a global pandemic may not be immediately easy, yet its magnitude leaves deep marks on our psyche. A new world has been born after a world-wide panic from the indefinite unknown, millions dead behind, and billions adapted abruptly to new norms. Wouldn’t it be mad to think such concessions will be unnoticed to our collective minds?
The shock awakened an instinct for immediacy and uncovered decades of sugar-coated bleak constructs we have been living under. And ever since, the normalcy of an overarching optimist tenet was disturbed. Normalcy itself got disturbed. It was a hint that normalcy is ungranted. Normalcy is a construct. And what existed of it might have been an illusion. The age of normal abnormality began to fit the modernity of post-modernity and the worries of then threatening disease stayed to become something else... an everlasting worry. Will it be another disease? Feels unlikely. Maybe it’s an economic downfall, a global war or something to do with technology and its commanders...
On the technology lines, this mighty realm has been limited into a digital spirit only. The screens that were portals of escapism from the pandemic stress, became accelerators on a one-way road to techno-dependency. Dependency for entertainment, socializing, and chores. Eventually habitualised then turned its users into data and engagement farms ripe for harvest. Opting out of the tech-dependency is impractical and taxing. Essential services like banking will be inaccessible. Social and cultural events in your area will be missed out; they are only advertised online now.
Every passing moment the web is getting better at capturing us with its abundance of information fragments and noisy data*. The machine endlessly casts too many ‘ground shifting’ data points taken outside contexts and we find them in every corner of the web. Its narratives are designed for illusive novelty. It fills the uncomfortable silence until we no longer can face it.
But the fragmentation makes constructing a consistent outlook impossible. It drives genuine attempts for sincere discourse hopeless.
The distortion is overwhelming. The more something makes sense, the more a bigger picture doesn’t. The ability to comprehend the bigger picture and meaningfully dissect it is inconceivable. This digital clutter with the uncertainty of the times to come invited an unwelcomed guest. It’s a notion doubting the worth of civil decency*.
In a reality where everything is flattened to content; every content is monetizable; and money is all that matters, we are struck by grim events revealing human smugness, further feeding our cynicism and making doomerism a valid destination. Behold the decay of civility before your eyes.
Indeed there is civility in despising the selfish* and the greedy. There is wisdom in favoring long-term affluence over rushed gratification. There is nobility in spreading the common understanding that collective flourishing benefits every individual and that beauty is a virtue to be sought for its own sake.
Shan’t we resist to regain the sovereignty of our attention that’s getting cloudier by the minute? Shan’t we strive for a reality with alternate objectives?
A quarter of this century closed. For better ones to come, we ought to cling to the belief that collective thriving is possible despite the obstructions. Betterment is a conscious struggle, never to be taken for granted. Least by not giving up on the principle and reminding one another of its possibility.
I write this to remind myself to look the savagery in the eyes, call it out and die on the hill overturning it.
1 Noisy data: Interesting plausible factoids used for entertainment yet not particularly useful stripped out of any context.
2 Civil decency: Conviviality, justice, grace, peace, mercy, kindness
3 Selfish: Lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure over others
