Adventureous & Obscure

Hello there my fellow readers! How are you doing today? Welcome to Earth in 2026. It's a wild and wonderful place bursting with unbelievable joys, naughty mischief, tragic horrors, and gnarly traps at every step. One thing is clear, you won't be bored here. That's right, anything can happen in this mad, mad landscape full of surprises, but there are some things you can expect.

Kids can expect tons of shiny toys and fun rides. The elderly can have medicare and lifesupport. But for everyone in between, there is one thing worth considering: What would you like to do every single day of your life? It's a pretty wild question, one that inspires a lot of discomfort, but an important one regardless. 

Now, while most people are nice enough to console you, saying that you don't really have to settle on a single thing for most of your life, that's far from the truth. In fact, the vast majority of the world would love nothing more than to stick a label on your head and stick you in a box for when they need you. But that's not that bad, is it?

I mean, really, there's a certain comfort in that. On one hand, you can play pretend and fight invisible monsters on uneven ground, risking to break your neck over nothing. Or, you could fight reality on its own terms, and actually make some progress. The thing is, if people know what label to stick on your head, they can trust you to fulfill your role from there.

Those that need you can find you whenever they want. They know what you can offer then and what to rely on you for. There's a crutial sense of safety in that. Once, we had to fight for our lives against harsh and cruel natural forces, forces that were relentlessly unforgiving to all creatures alike. Food, water, shelter, safety, everything was a struggle.

Today, we enjoy a certain level of comfort and countless other bounties birthed from civilisation. All of it is given by other people. If a farmer takes pride in their work and dig their heels in, that's good for the world at large. Of course, there's a lot of contention about capitalism, and rightfully so. The rich get richer off the backs of the poor under the guise of the free market.

Yet, the only way to solve this problem is to face it head on. Anarchy and revolution are just a self-serving escapes, the destructive catharsis that burns everything down. No, the real answers are simpler and far more difficult. First, we must accept the things that cannot be changed: redistributions of wealth have never worked out because people don't do well power. 

We all share the trauma of being born weak and dependent. The memory of that vulnerability always haunts us, and positions of power feed those flames to an inferno, until it makes monsters out of mere mortals. Communism is about the community, but as an economic system, it fails to deal with scale. Community requries everyone to know each other, and a certain level of uniformity.

Our current world, however, enjoys a rich variety of diversity. We differ in wants, aims, hunger, goals, values, lifestyles, and more. To force a communal system, then, requires a hierarchy or organised system of governance. The moment a group of people stands above the rest of the world, power gets centralised, and peace begins to unravel. 

Unfortunately, our shared traumas make most of us quite horrbile at dealing with power in a productive way. We were all weakl and dependent once, and it was horribly traumatic for us all. That's why, the mere possibility of power excites us, and we fetishize it. That's why we commit the most atrocious horrors and act out our wildest fantasies, forever chasing the idea of being all-powerful. This leads to a lot of mess, to say the least.

What's interesting about diversity is that people across the board will see the same situation differently. The following facts that I am stating as unchangeable truths, some might feel the need to challenge. If anyone feels compelled to fight for a cause, they should heed its call. However, this is my own mission statement, for my own faction of fighters. 

Perhaps others might find it more compelling to unite humanity under a unfied system of values. I find a uniform world unbearably boring, so I accept differences as a fact of life. Coming back to it, there are many big criticisms against capitalism that must be addressed, but the alternatives are clearly unviable. 

- The biggest issue is with ownership of the means of production by capitalists. On the ground level, we all know that to make real money, you need to start something yourself that you own, because ownership is a lot more profitable than earning a wage. Working in the factory, you get a negotiated and set wage, while also being replaceable. Owning the factory, you can keep the profits and do what you want with them (assuming you make a lot of profits). I think the best example is property. People in London just own buildings and because so many people really need to live there (just like New York), they can charge absurd rents and live in a coastal area. 

- Another issue is the need for constant growth. When a country prints money, it's like taking a loan from the future. A long time ago, value was negotiated based on how badly one needed the resources others had. Now, the exchange of values has been ironed out by the proxy of money, a universally exchangeable currency. The world's resources are not exponentially increasing all the time, but benchmark stocks always goes up in value. How does that work? It's not like new inventions are being made all the time, is it? How can the value of human resources, skills, knowledge, training, products, systems, and technologies always keep increasing? Even when things stagnate, massive beauraucratic systems have a nasty habit of betting. They simply assume that things will keep increasing, that people will keep having healthy children, that students will keep getting smarter, that customers will grow and businesses thrive. Who is making these bets? We all do it when we invest in the stock market. Governments do it when they plan their budgets, as do companies, businesses, and individuals. We assume that tomorrow will be better than today, because it has to be, and then we try our best to make it so. Unfortunately, it's not enough for us to gamble, we also end up hedging our bets. 

- I think this need for growth is interesting and worth explore more deeply, especially because it feeds directly into my biggest gripe with the capitalist system of economics: the insatiable culture of consumerism. The bottom line of this final nail in the coffin is that nothing is ever enough. The poor want to survive, the survivors want security, the secure want safety, and the safe want celebration, luxury, abundance, niravana, and transcendance. Everyone needs, no, deserves or are even entitled to be happy. But happiness? It means the perfect body, a sharp mind, a sense of community, thrill, invention, discovery, exploration, exhilaration, and there's always more because it never ends. You always need a new shoe, shirt, car, house, yatch, driver, chef, meal, ingridient, drug, or service. Whatever is, can never be enough, it just needs to keep growing forever. Because there's always a shiny new thing around the corner and if you don't claim it, you miss out on it.

- The natural next step of this relentless growth is constant competition. It's always kill or be killed, sink or swim, master or slave, predator or prey. If you're not fucking winning, you are definitely losing. So sharpen your fangs, set your traps, and ready your weapons; there's a new sucker born every minute. If you don't do it, someone else will. On the flip side, if you're not part of the problem, you have to be part of the solution. Either way, it's pick a side and do or die. My problem with this aspect of the system is the fatalist extremism. Not everything in life is a battle, even if you are wired to think so, because life is not just about survival anymore. Once you have secured your life, you should be allowed to move beyond the fight, but we're all stuck fighting futile battles because we feel compelled to win.

The problem with thinking of problems is that the brain will do whatever you ask it to. If you sit down to analyse what's wrong with something, you are sure to find. This is not to say that there's nothing wrong, or that analysis doesn't have its place, but if you have the ability, viable solutions are generally better than clever criticisms. 

Out of all the gripes I've heard about the world and how it functions, those were the biggest ones that stuck with me. If certain people like Mamdani are willing to take some of those on in a meaningful way, I'm more than happy to cheer for them. But when I think of what I can do, I don't have to look very far. It seems to me, that on the most basic level, people need to create value for each other. 

Prople often look to monkeys and pets as having such ideal lives. They don't need to work for a living or pay bills, they say. They look at rich people and choose to see only part of their lives, at the cost of their own inner peace. Perhaps subconsciously they find some sort of comfort in being pissy. Like you can't be disappointed when you already believe that everything is full of shit.

Yet, no matter the animal, every creature on Earth must earn it's keep. Pets must bear the uncomfortable cuddles of their owners and live with the weight of being unable to communicate themselves clearly. Wild animals have it far worse, they need to fight for their lives every single day. The rich? Expenses and luxuries are rarely investments that offer any returns. 

Cars, jewelery, mansions, companies, and yes, even portfolios, all need to be managed constantly. If the rich don't manage it themselves, which they most certainly don't as it requires a metric ton of efforts and skill, then they must depend on others, and trust begins to fade very quickly when you have a lot more to lose. 

Then comes the second horror of being well-off, the vultures and leeches. In short, more money, more problems. Of course, there is a massive amount of corruption, greed, abuse, and exploitation at the top. It is absolutely oozing with some of the worst sins one can imagine. There's also tons of sin right below the top, and at every single stage, all the way to the bottom. 

If the rich are exploiters and slave drivers, then the poor are also scavangers and criminals. That's the way bad things go, they exist in a perpetual cycle of misery instead of vaccum because wounded people that have suffered are the ones who inflict pain onto others. The image of Christ comes to mind, when a lone individuals offers to sacrifice themself for all of humanities sins, because we are all sinners, making it a particularly powerful idea.

That's what it takes at times, to see the full picture and explore the other side, where all people also have the highest good within them. Only then can people become wise and offer everyone the benefit of the doubt, giving them an opportunity to do good with no prejudice or punishment. It's so important to expect and hope for the very best in people while preparing for the absolute worst. 

We must give people time, space and careful attention. With time, they will reveal their true nature with absolute certainty, and then you will not need to assume anything. We shall simply do what is necessary and move on while continuing to wish them the best and think of them as highly as possible. This is courage, faith, and kindness in action.

Even if you were no use to me, I wish you the best. We often look around us and see only abstractions, as we are all cursed with the illusion of duality. We see systems and institutions, like governments, companies, industries, and nations, as unfeeling, mechanical engines that purr away to fulfil their functions. 

That's also why we imagine someone at the top who has designed the machine that runs the world, now operating and manipulating its mighty levers for their own benefit. We have learned this image from decades and centuries of ravaging the land, as mighty farmers use mencaing crop harvesters that magically pull nutrition out of the soil and into our stomachs.

Perhaps that is part of our collective sin as a species, that this image is so deeply ingrained in our psyche and continues to harm us in our day to day life. Just as we imagine these powerful figures at the top, we see ourselves as helpless little worms and critters at the mercy of these titans. This triggers our shared trauma as well, making us feel anxious, insecure, and ready to fight.

Tragically, or fortunately, that's not at all what it looks like on the top. The ones we imagine as pulling the strings are more vulnerable and powerless than you might think. They must play all sides and manipulate so many just to do things that are a birthright to countless others. We look at Donald Trump and Hilter as power-hungry megalomaniacs while ignoring the decades of sharpening their fangs before they could execute their acts of violence.

Meanwhile, in the jungle, a lion is always on the hunt, just as hunters make sport of killing every now and then. It's just the hunting grounds that differ. We look at Epstien or Diddy and see the worst kind of monster that takes pleasure in physically penetrating the most fragile and vulnerable creatures with their most intimate body parts.

Yet, across the world, behind closed doors, inside family bathrooms, schools, police stations, hospitals, ophanages, juvinile facilities, and even churches, such acts are practiced with little repercussions for the perpetrators. Fathers rape their sons and daughters. Men ravage women. Evil, does not care about one's paycheck. Yet, values are what truly matter accross the board.

We think that food is more than abundant, that clothing and shelter is some kind of birthright offered by this Earth, yet no matter who you are, someone did a lot of real work to put clothes on your back and food in your stomach. Even if you feel like you earned your keep, the thousands of years of accumulative efforts and sacrifices that lead up to your current life this moment, the very rythm of that beating heart in your chest that was forged with the sweat, blood, and tears of some primordial, rudimentary animal, the same beat that has been handed down from creature to creature until your parents gave birth to you, can you really put a price on that?

Can you ever really say that, "I've studied X subject for Y years, and I spend Z time everyday to work at Q, so after working for W more years, I can just rest as I've paid my dues."? Alternatively, should you say that, "It's impossible to pay it back, and none of those things were my choice. Those creatures made their decisions, I'm simply going to make my own."? The latter seems far more honest and justified. Plus, it has zero entitlement or cowardice.

Yet, I belive it is still incompatible with the popular narrative of capitalism and the current conversation around our world at large. My point is, that this is what it means to be born in sin: To owe our existence to the rest of the world. Where the best way to live life is as an act of service. The happiest people on Earth refuse to accept themselves as completely autonomous, separate individuals, cut off from everything else. 

At some point or another, to live a good life, we must accept our reality as small parts of a greater whole. To ask ourselves, then, "What do I want to do every single day, for my entire life?" is the beginning of choosing our role within that whole. Yet, even that is just a small part of the picture. As this is the most wonderful and magical part of the world as we know it: our greatest curse is also the most extraordinary blessing.

Why? Because even this narrative is a small part of waking life, and even smaller of the world at large. Embarking on our paths, we will also find that:

- We are not individuals at all, and are far more complicated, deep, and elusive than we can ever know.

- Work is not some dreadful duty, but a fun game and a priviledge. 

- Our gravest illusions allow us to relish our grandest pleasures. Lonliness lets us feel love and connection, weakness offers the high of power, and repulsion shows us our way to freedom.

In this wild and wonderful world, nothing is set in stone. Whether you run away from this so-called "truth" about worldly economics, or stick around to join the service, there's plenty of joys and horrors in store for us all. 

So, while it helps to know your place and have a set role in this maddening play called civilisation, deep in your heart, you'll always know the world's truth as a wild, wonderful, and wholly incomprehensible notion. If nothing else, that in itself, should be plently of cause for celebration!

Play it safe in heavy armor, or gamble to sail empty handed, no matter what you choose, get ready for a grand adventure. No matter how smart and precisely you level up, we will all reach the same fateful end: The same sacred shores where it all unravels. 

Is that when we will all see, that it was always a mystery? How did we all come to be? Was anyone ever, truly free? No matter your conclusion, we can all agree it was all about the moment. So rather than fighting scary monsters, live your life and don't just dwadle. Just pick a lane and enjoy the process!