Yes, I fully recognize the privileges of modernity. I know that rights, longevity, and comfort were worse in ancient times. I understand that my perspective is warped by constant exposure to the internet, a tool that stripped away the comforting ignorance our ancestors had. I know that growing up alters our mindset and concerns, and that big corporations actively weaponize algorithms, surveillance, and demoralization to profit off anxiety and public polarization.
Yet, I cannot shake the feeling that the world is actively collapsing. The volume of cruelty, deceit, gaslighting, propaganda, and sadism, whether from politicians or everyday people, feels higher than ever. It often feels like humanity is descending into a deeply dark place driven by ego, bias, and a disturbing pleasure in other people's suffering. Frankly, I feel like I wasn't made for this world.
The weight of global tragedies is paralyzing as well: recent pandemics, endless wars, modern slavery, environmental crisis, potential resource shortages, and governments across the world that completely disregard human life and rights.
Closer to the everyday person, the systemic rot is just as heavy, including unaffordable basic necessities, wageslavery, economic injustice, rampant crime and homelessness, social inquality and more.
Then there are also additional pains of existence: chronic illnesses, disorders, neurodivergence, trauma, abuse, addictions, and the slow, lonely decay of aging toward an inevitable demise.
Contemplating this pervasive evil and suffering has profoundly changed me. I have become numb and desensitized. It feels as though a significant part of me has died from a form of existential trauma.
In this state, the thought of our finity--the fact that this existence will end--is a source of solace. It has become difficult to find something good to hold onto.
I know I am far from perfect myself, and I realize much of this frustration stems from the natural order of a universe we cannot control, or simply human nature. No matter when or where I was born, these fundamental truths would remain.
At times I feel empy, hollow, like a small cog in an industrial machine accelerating down a cliff towards an inescapable doom, or a ghost trapped in a horror simulation with no quit option.
Frequently I experience nostalgia for "better days." It isn't a desire for a utopia, but just for a time of slight sanity, stability, and peace of mind. A time when I felt more alive.
It's also surreal how little value a human life holds. A lifetime of complexity can be erased in a second by a car crash caused by a texting teen. You can be drafted into a war built on lies and killed in three seconds by a $150 drone carrying explosives. You can be born into a life of forced child marriage and stripped of bodily autonomy and human rights by birth, or used as a child slave in a cobalt mine to fuel the very technology that wil soon displace millions of workers and further enrich the pockets of a few.
We don't choose the cards we are dealt, yet we are forced to play this brutal game of Russian Roulette. Everything you are can be destroyed in a single blink of an eye.
Perhaps I sound insane, but I think losing your sanity in an insane world is far more sane than remaining sane. Perhaps embracing total apathy would make life less scary, but to me, the only thing scarier than caring is not caring at all.
I had to shorten this post due to limit, so sorry if it seems disorganized.
