THE INTENSITY OF IT ALL

We are in a radical transformation of our culture. We’re in it.

We’ve seen the spear come straight at us. It didn’t just pierce—we enveloped the technology that pervaded our attention spans, gave us cognitive dissonance, broke our understanding of truth, leaving us in a dimension of non-presence and now nihilism  

We continue to inhabit *here* even knowing it’s false and broke and corrupt and corrosive; the price of which is our reality, connectivity and self-esteem.

That said, and still, the whole of society is regenerating.

Brought to new light by disruptive forces from the top, universal values and demand for truth and equity has exploded our collective sensibilities. Paralyzing some. Activating others. Vibrating in is all. 

Change of this magnitude is born years in advance of showing up. It’s showing up. 

You are here—the less-than-25-year-olds looking at “normal” when it’s anything but that. Stressed by the seismic changes in opportunity, fairness and inheritance all of which you feel accelerating before your eyes. Powerless for the most part, you are just starting to organize and feel certain.

What you see is not real. What you feel is.

You are probably right about how systems change needs to happen.

You haven’t even realized the power of your ‘purse’, the power of your organizational capacity, the threat and risk that your unity creates.

You are learning how to fight. How not to stand still.

As wealth and political power coagulates, you will see what a demographic can do. What a generation can do.

Maybe you’ll be proactive.

With all the coordination, the speed of information, all the deciphering you can do between what is true and what is not true, what has to happen and what really doesn’t- all the scenario planning you can do—maybe you’ll be the ones that drive and architect the development of your generation.

As opposed to us. And every generation before us, which looks back and sees the impact of its generation on the world, never being able to control what it gets done, only to see what it didn’t do or what impact it had.

The fact that we are still being run by oblivious, disconnected, distrustful, uber wealthy, male, vertical-thinking—for example, fossil fuels, pushing gas instead of renewables even when it’s cheaper not to – must be a shocking display of irresponsibility for the generation that comes next.

They’re looking at us still arguing about what we know is true and is destroying us.

They look at us knowing what we know and still not doing enough to change the course of the future.

They look at us and wonder how anything will get done.

We’re fighting about red and blue colors when the icebergs are melting. We’re worried about transgender athletes and enough scholarships for white boys when the currents under the ocean are shifting their motors and the Amazon rainforest is still being treated like dirt.

The intensity of it all. 

The empathy I have for the next generation keeps me up at night. It grinds my teeth until I feel that I’m doing enough. It makes me feel shame.

Go back to ancient civilizations—each and every one of them, except for this modern western one, believed that the future was their responsibility. Not something to walk into. Something to create. Something to preserve.

Our idea of development, of supply chains, of energy generation and distribution, its violence to the world that we depend on for life.

The lunacy of that reality is beyond comprehension.

When you step back and look back and think about what the collective action and common goals could do to architect a positive future, and you compare it to how we live in our short-term, money-worshiping, narcissistic kluge—you seriously wonder how time has expired this far.

This is exactly the hope that I’m talking about.

This is exactly the hope that we’re losing because we’re always looking back and blaming. Finding differences instead of bridges

Anger is pain. We look back and get angry because of the pain that is ingrained in the DNA of our collective psyche. It’s trauma. We all feel it.

When nature hurts, we hurt. When kids have no hope, the oxygen leaves the air.

This is our job. This is our challenge: providing hope and solutions, good enough investment cases for every sector so that collective action makes political, cultural, and technological consternation look like the barriers to survival that they are.

This is a dreamlike meandering note to the next generation from my subconscious, with the goal of trying to corral what’s left of hope.

KJS DC 2.26