Hello Friends, Family, and Fans;
There’s a meme going around about The Matrix, saying that the movie was right, that 1999 was the height of human civilization.
It’s easy to agree with. Finances, war, politics, the environment, and almost everything else feels like it’s gotten worse over that past quarter century.
This doom and gloom has been rampant on social media since around 2015 and in the past ten years we’ve sort of started to accept that everything is a dumpster fire.
As much as I agree that there are a lot of issues and in some ways it feels like we’re fighting for the last breaths of western democracy, a lot has improved too.
I was reading Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz recently, and was taken aback by the overwhelming amount of homophobia, fatphobia, transphobia, ableism, and misogyny. I can’t blame it all on the author either. In all forms of media from that time period, you are bombarded with the message to be different but in a way that is acceptable. As a closeted and fat neurodivergent kid at the time, it wasn’t a great world. The push toward conformity was a reaction to a world that was quickly changing technologically and socially.
If that level of judgment, hate, and fear is the pinnacle of human civilization… then I don’t want anything to do with it.
I have to believe that the current political climate is a temporary shift backwards. That love, tolerance, and humanity will win out in the end.
The answer isn’t idealizing the past, it’s improving the present. Even if it’s just in little ways, small kindnesses, and being able to be happy for others’ joy. Even when we can’t understand it.
Beyond that, we need to find the joy in ourselves, no matter how “cringe” it might feel. Love yourself, your neighbours, and your hobbies unabashedly.
Be kind and stay safe,
Éric
