I Worry About Our Future

To whom it may concern
Right before the sky gets too tired to hold up the stars
Right before virtual reality becomes too real
Right before we smoke ourselves out and the oceans turn black
Right before it all goes to shit
There will be a brief moment
When the world will remember my name

Artificial intelligence taking our jobs, porn getting more and more stimulating, people getting more and more isolated, and labels… Labels put on everything you do and are. Are you goal-oriented, stoic, and tough? Then you’re surely toxically masculine and misogynist. Are you empathic, loving, and open about your insecurities? Well, then you’re feminine and a soy boy. Right oriented? You’re a fascist! Left oriented? Communist! Working out? Fatphobic. Not working out? Thinphobic(?) Labels, labels, labels.

Our progress as a specie and as a society troubles me. All those new technologies, ideologies, and labels lead to one alarming fact. People are lonelier and more isolated than ever before and I fear that this is just the beginning.

Imagine a class of people that are so castaway from the society that they’re unable to find any job but some part-time irregular gigs for minimum wage, that are unable to connect with other people, that are unable to afford normal living, that are on the edge of homelessness, that spend their nights in cubicles of not more than a few square meters with just a computer as a way to escape this painful reality. Imagine people so disconnected that they have no one whom they can call. No friends, no love. The family hates them because they’re absolute failures. Imagine people whose only way to forget about their lives is to dive deep into the depths of the internet. Endless porn sessions, meaningless brainwashing YouTube videos, arguing on subreddits and discord servers, and raging on some game. Just try to imagine this class of people, how do you think they would look? Terribly groomed, fat, lazy, smelly? Probably.

What if I tell you this class of people really exists? That it’s not just an imaginary exercise. And that they look nothing like you would think. What I mean are so-called Japanese net cafe refugees. Thousands of people—mostly men—aged from their 50s to being barely adults are unable to fit into Japanese society. They depend on the services of internet cafes that they use as a cheaper alternative to other types of accommodations. If you met a member of this group on the street you would never guess this is his life. He is well groomed with fitting clothes looking like a perfect member of society, and yet once he comes “home”, he turns into this hopeless being that supposedly lost in life and there’s no other option for him but to barely survive on minimum wage while he’s exterminating every moment where he could’ve reflected about his life by the endless stimulation on the internet.

Even though those people are an insignificant minority of the Japanese population it is still alarming that there are people like this. And quite frankly, they’re not the only kind of people who gave up on being a part of society and instead lost themselves in the endless opportunities the modern internet provides. Many guys from the incels and MGTOW communities would sadly fit the definition of a Net cafe refugee fairly easily.

Now with the common trends when more and more jobs are being automatized or turned online and at the same time algorithms on the internet are getting more and more precise and invasive, the future can really seem alarming.

Sooner or later if we won’t change our economic system, governments will be forced to implement some kind of a universal basic income as there will be more and more unemployable people because of automatization and because everything moving online. How do you think those people will be spending their time? Sadly it probably won’t be in a park, playing sports with their friends. It will probably be again on the internet, constantly stimulating themselves with porn, games, and endless Netflix series just to forget how much they lost in life, how big of failures they’re that they’re unable to find a job and be part of society. But why? Why would they feel like that in the first place? Why will they feel like failures? Because of social pressure.

So far I’ve mentioned around and around two factors that can contribute to this dystopian future, but they’re not the only ones. The next is our obsession with individuality and control. Lately, it feels like everyone is trying to convince you that the only way that you will be able to succeed in life (whatever that actually means) is to have absolute control over your own time. Only by having all of your 24 hours in days under your own control, there’s a chance for you to win in this world. Do you work a job? You’re a slave. Are you participating in some organized activities? That’s ineffective! You’re having a hobby you’re not trying to turn into a business? You’re wasting time!

Today’s obsession with time and control makes you feel like there’s no other way to win in life than to completely isolate yourself, build your own business, and grind grind grind. But is that really true? Of course not.

Have you noticed that usually when you’re trying most to control your schedule the less you’re actually able to do it? It’s ironic but the more you plan your day the more distracted you become, the more prone to procrastination you become, and the bigger chance you waste your time scrolling reels there is. I don’t say you should never plan anything but you should change your mindset about planning.

This obsession with time and planning, even though not obvious at first glance, goes hand in hand with the previous two problems. Imagine a person in a society where it’s nearly impossible to find a good job, where everywhere he goes, he carries his drug of choice inside his mobile phone. He’s in a world that is constantly telling him that only if he worked harder, if he took more control if he did more work if he did more self-isolation, then he would simply succeed. He’s trying so hard and yet the more he tries the more he finds himself drowning in the endless stimulation. How do you think this person can feel on a daily basis? Lonely, burned out, hopeless, angry? It makes sense that he would try to forget about this life through endless stimulation. But why is that? How did he come into this place? By putting his energy into places that DOES NOT EXIST.

The main problem I see is that we’ve capitalized our time. We look at it as an asset that has to be used. The more optimally we use our time the more we shall be successful. Don’t you dare commute to work without listening to the podcast, eating breakfast without reading the news or watching YouTube videos, training without listening to something, taking shit without staring into your screen. Don’t you dare sitting in silence without doing anything. And if you do, you have to have a specific reason for doing that, you need to do it to improve your future. Are you meditating? You shall do it so you can be more productive later. Are you journaling? Well, you should do it to have a clear mind for work. Exercising? Again, there are benefits to your productivity.

We no longer do things simply for doing them. We shall meditate just to meditate, journal to journal, and exercise for the sake of exercise. Sit in silence, sit with a friend, talk with them, go on a walk, and do all those things only for the sake of doing them not for some kind of delayed gratification, some investments into your future self because guess what, there may not be any future self, you may die tomorrow so you may as well try to live a little. I’m not saying you should sacrifice everything to live in a moment but you should stop thinking about your time as an asset that shall be maximally used.

This notion of optimizing your life has infected every place of our life, even things like shortening workweeks. The entire premise of shortening work days/weeks is rotten to its core. The one and only argument I hear is that more rest time equals more productivity during work hours. Why the fuck shall I rest, chill, and spend more time with my family only for the sake of being more productive at work? Why can’t I simply rest because I want to rest? Why do I always need to rest only to be more productive sometime later? Productivity, productivity, productivity. This wicked mantra is repeated over and over again. And why be more productive? Why of course to make more money. Because time is money right? No!

TIME IS NOT MONEY

Having more time won’t make you richer, more time is not always better. Sometimes having more time can only force you to waste it. The value of time does not grow by increasing its amount but by increasing its net value. We’re social beings. Spending time with other people is a core part of our society, the more lives you can affect with your time the bigger value you get from it, the better net return you get if you want to put it this way.

in today’s society, everything is isolating, you no longer have a chat with a cashier because of home delivery, you no longer meet people on commuting to work because you work from home, you no longer talk to people at the gym because everyone has headphones and you’re scared to be called a creep.

Do things differently, go against the common trend, talk to people, be social, don’t isolate yourself, connect yourself, more and more and more only by that we can avoid this future where everyone will be alone, living in a small cubicle constantly stimulating themselves only to forget how shitty and terrible this life is. You seek stimulation and escape because your life sucks, because it’s unnatural to isolate yourself, it’s painful that’s why your brain is trying to escape.

Add a healthy amount of social and even organized activities into your life and you will see how better it will become.