I feel like the entire year of 2018, both nationally and internationally – economically and politically, can be reflected pretty well by my own working life over the same period. So, it makes sense to touch on that a little bit.
I’ve been a productivity machine these past few months. I’ve been learning new skills, prepping myself for new careers (if I want), and discovering new tools which allow me to get past stuck points of the past. My reading has been focused and constant. I’ve been using my time running or sitting in the car to listen to podcasts and educational lectures. I’ve been writing, revising, and researching. To give some idea of my progress here – in 2018, I’ve co-founded a cryptocurrency, started a podcast, launched a new blog, relaunced an old blog, become a featured blogger for a major publication, developed an app, started a new business, developed another app and taken on investment in it, and am working with a partner to co-found a third app. All of this in addition to working hard to be a caring and present father – which means that time needs to be dedicated there – and to working at a job that actually pays my bills – because despite the fact that I’m doing all that stuff listed above – none of it is earning a dime – in fact, most of it, the education, the books, the development, the hosting, the domains, the licensing, the business registrations, the research, the parenting – none of it earns money (yet) and it all costs money.
That’s what I’ve seen in the U.S. economy, the international political world (and the U.S. political scene), and in the overall progress of the human species as a whole. There are a lot of great and powerful things happening right now but none of them are paying the bills (yet) and as a result – there are a lot of short-term thinking people who are complaining about the waste of energy, resources, and capital that these things currently look like (from a short term perspective). It’s as if my wife were nagging at me for reading too much or spending too much time on things that don’t provide for us – and forced me to go get a job at McDonalds- which, to be fair – might actually end up paying more than everything I am currently doing in the long run. It might. And the money and energy going into genetic research, industrial automation, cryptocurrency, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, and other forward thinking technologies – it might be wasted.
But probably it’s not. (And I am still hopeful that my efforts will yield more than $15/hr as a fast food worker as well.)
Planet Earth is in a bit of a dark spot right now. There are really two camps. Those who want things the way they’ve always been – and those who want things to be very very different. The hard work being put in, is yielding results. However, there are those who don’t want to see things change. They are the know-nothings or more accurately the don’t-want-to-know-nothings who deny climate change, poo-poo on concepts like Universal Basic Income and they don’t want to see anything like equality between people who have been separated by oceans of hate, racism, and mysogeny. They are in a position that is likely to lose power – so they don’t want to see anything actually change. Yes, I’m talking about old white men but more broadly I’m talking about the military, industrial, economic, government power structure and the elaborate control systems that it has constructed world-wide. Old Asian men, old African men, old Arab men, old Indian men, and also the women who are entrenched in benefitting from that system too. There’s a reason all those old white women voted for Trump, Brexit, and right wing racists…it’s called power and privelige.
A few days ago, the societal index measure I built – the ‘vagorithm’ dropped below the level that I have suppossed would be reached only by a massive collapse on the scale of a government. That level was 287.5 – we dropped below that and then an additional 18 or so points. I watched with breath held as Russia seized Ukranian war ships and protestors took to the streets in France…and then…something shifted and as I write it is a bit above 300 – still not an ideal range – but much better than collapse. It appears to have some tendency to rise – which makes me hopeful for the future.
I would like to think that the Vagorithm Index is going to go up above it’s all time high of 900+ in 2019. It would be nice to have all that going going going actually lead to somewhere we want to be…on both a personal and a professional level.