Human Condition and the People of the Future
By a stroke of chance, last few years i've had an opportunity to live in more than one country and, for the first time, experienced what's it like to spend time in the countryside.
What made me head in that direction is this accumulated frustration with city living, in terms of alienation, and the wish to forge closer connections with fellow human beings.
Idealising simple and coherent communities - I imagined them as healthier and less exposed to the informational and material consumerism. I craved new perspectives that I thought would inevitably emerge as I prepared myself to fully embrace whatever wisdom this new world would throw at me.
Now in the 7th year of living this nomadic life - alternating between the cities and the countryside, I've discovered an abundance of new insights and learned a lot about myself too.
What I searched for, ultimately turned out not to exist, but what I've found possibly more profound and valuable.
This is a large topic and my own confusion can easily sink the message, so let's start with something and that might as well be social normativity. I have always dwelled within the constraints of what I'd call "western ideals", in particular individuality, meritocracy, propositionality, self-reliance and incessant striving for material wealth, as the key to emancipation and freedom.
I always felt that the genius in people usually places them on the extremes of the "normalcy" spectrum, but their rationality pulls them back towards the centre. The desperate need of a modernist child in me forced me to quantify this rationality and defined it as "success". That inevitably had to translate into material wealth, because that's the only way to really free yourself and live the life on your own terms. So, the deduction was that the successful people are the ones who temporarily sell their soul to the devil (or swim through the sewage) in order to find enlightenment on the other side.
And being wealthy simply meant - not having to deal with frustrations of the mundane and hostile aspects of life, so that you can focus fully on creativity - live life as an art form.
Back to the city living - we are all anonymous zombies walking the streets, shopping at supermarkets, commuting on public transport, taking kids to parksā¦ They say that living in the city is unhealthy. We're experiencing mental health crisis. More and more people are diagnosed with various neuro divergencies and mental disorders. It's only normal that we dream of a greener grassā¦
But what about the countryside?
As this is already becoming too long for a LinkedIn article - I'll jump straight into it.
There's a huge polarisation of the society and it's out in the open. On the one hand - the disillusioned nihilists who are constantly drunk or on drugs, whose lives are dedicated to artful experiences and socialising and on the other - "normal" people who go to work, who work in their gardens or on their houses in their spare time and watch TV until late hours.
The "creatives" are kind, friendly and enlightened, but there's always a tinge of depression and the sense of life without meaning. They easily open up and you find intellectual depth and provoking conversations.
The "robots" are utterly selfish, self-centred, devoid of any humanity and friendly only on restraint-protocol terms. The only interaction is a transactional small-talk and jealousy.
So, we have these 2 types emerging and they are totally incompatible. It's almost like the human race is splitting up and, depending on the dynamics of forces, we'll build a new world - but which one?
There's so much more to probe here, but would be interesting to hear some thoughts.