If you are old enough — you are over 30 —, you know that the world we live in today is not quite normal. The changes we are witnessing are accelerating in such a way that, likely, in 30 years the world will bear no resemblance to the one we have known.
AI and climate disorder, two elements that will shape tomorrow’s world
If you don’t like change, you are living in the wrong era. Everything you know about your daily life is going to be upended in a few years to such an extent that you will suddenly have the impression of waking up one day in a totally new world. Total global wealth production is going to experience an exponential surge, but its evolution at the individual scale will remain linear barring rare exceptions. In a word, the concentration of wealth is going to strengthen.
Biology is not made to adapt to exponential changes
In a world changing at full speed, only a minority adapts; the rest remain frozen in the past and are no more than spectators of what surrounds them. In such a world, it is futile to try to keep up with the pace: everything changing all the time, you will no longer really know which foot to dance on. The best thing you can finally do is to choose a philosophy — preferably one that has proven itself in times of change like Stoicism — and try to stick to it despite being out of sync with the world, but it will be the same for almost everyone in the end.
When everything accelerates, everything loses its meaning
If speed has certain merits, it also has obvious problems such as the impossibility of truly creating a common culture. If everything we think, say, or do changes, it is impossible to create a common frame of reference that has time to permeate minds. This culture of the instant is not a true culture in itself, because culture, for it to be enduring, needs foundations, stability, immutability, yet this will become less and less possible.
The world of the future has nothing glowing about it
If in the past a certain optimism emerged from the contemplation of the future, today it is quite otherwise because we already see the effects on our lives of these dazzling changes. You no longer desire the future because it is already here and threatens you now. This fear creates a refuge in the past as shown by the craze for vintage objects that are not even that old by the way (Pokemon cards, etc.). Young adults already have nostalgia for their childhood because the present terrifies them. By failing to control the present, one ends up idealizing the past.
The best thing you can do starting today is to be happy right now
If the future is uncertain, future happiness is just as uncertain. What slips out from under our feet every day are not only our certainties, but also the hope of simply being happy, so why not seize the day, as these lived moments cannot be taken from us. This does not mean wallowing in bodily pleasures; on the contrary, it may be the time to find a certain pleasure in philosophizing and finding joy again in things that escape matter: the mind, the soul, or the heart. If the world to come looks entirely devoid of poetry, perhaps this is precisely the moment to show poetry, to reconnect with one’s poet’s soul, the one we had no doubt abandoned or neglected a very long time ago.
By wanting to be too pragmatic and efficient, one ends up losing the meaning of life
If modern life is a race, it is above all a race in terms of efficiency and talents. Yet, what awaits us is perhaps a world where man no longer really (or at all, I should say) has the leadership in terms of ideas, productivity, or creativity. Having built his identity around values where man will no longer excel tomorrow, one can feel a certain emptiness. And what if the reality is that we are all going to feel this anguish one way or another to the point of making us doubt ourselves? If certain people have ‘exited the system’, it is very often because they have given up the fight. But tomorrow, can we say that the fight is nothing other than vain? How can we project ourselves into a world that looks at us with contempt bordering on repulsion. If there was a era when people without work could find their utility by ‘producing’ children as future consumers, tomorrow it may be quite otherwise. An economic model that doesn’t know what to do with its unproductive citizens and no longer needs consumers to function will mechanically move toward a eugenic culture that will want to ‘cleanse’ society of its undesirable elements. The man of tomorrow will no longer be a potential rented servant of society but a presumed guilty party of parasitism. This default accusation will act as a Sword of Damocles suspended above our heads, operating like a guillotine on our most basic rights such as accessing property, finding a soul mate, or even traveling. The future of the world is perhaps what China is drawing right now with its social credit system, and that is enough to send a chill down the spine. We are getting there little by little. The Orwellian world will have nothing to envy from what is already being hatched over there… Enjoy the present moment because your freedom today is a luxury that may be inaccessible tomorrow, and this freedom goes by the name of anonymity, freedom of movement, respect for personal life, or what have you?
