This certainly fits here...and, while not recommended for early morning reading (I did it anyway) it should be noted that reading it at anytime is going to influence your attitude.
It is long but worth it.
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/political-conflict-in-the-age-ofI think this may be one of the best lines in there, certainly memorable for me...even though more than this snippet rings true to me...
Now put the political context aside for a moment and consider Ted Gioia’s The State of the Culture, 2024. Gioia makes the point that traditional entertainment media has been eaten by Big Social. People aren’t reading books or watching movies anymore, and that shows in the negative growth the legacy media giants have been dealing with for years now. Instead, people are glued to their phones, scrolling through infinite timelines that feed their attention the endless little hits of micro-rewards that nucleate the dopamine doom loop.Later on we get the term "doomscroll" for the numbed minions.
I'm not forgetting that anytime soon! NPC's with their faces stuck into their phones is all too ubiquitous in modern society. I reckon when the SHTF and the grid goes out we won't have to worry about that so much...what a shock it will be for the harmfully addicted though...
After reading it I feel like my once natural skepticism and resentment was running down and it just got a recharge. Whew, thanks!
Also, fear not, it does get a little brighter at the end.
PS - Hope we aren't just goats in an echo-chamber...and their killer-drones are loosed yet... Explains why it feels like living under occupation too many days...
Escape the silos!
Will be fun to see how AI evolves...the catch-22 mentioned will be hard to avoid.
And hopefully, flexibility, humor, individualism, awareness, perseverance and faith will see us through.
