we are not our ancestors
and we will have no descendants if we do not change course
hey y’all,
today i’m attempting to enjoy a spicy cucumber margarita at the mexican spot near my house. it’s a 3 minute walk, and the al pastor is to die for. their drinks are way too big, but since this place is also a tequila bar, they’re high-quality. i’m a big fan of mezcal, and they have a full mezcal menu. you can even get a flight.
i enjoy craft beer, coffee, and cocktails as a hobby or special interest of sorts. i imbibe responsibly and never in excess (anymore). this chalice of smokey tequila, pepino, and tajin was delicious. one of the best i’ve had. i say attempting to enjoy, because i’m fighting the malaise again. it comes over me every now and again, and i can’t do anything but sit with it.
i attempt to bring hope and a path forward to my writing. i look for action steps. i search for the glimmers that tell me we’ll make it out of all this someday. i do that because i must, or i will not get up in the morning. i laid in bed until 1pm today lamenting, so instead of fighting it, i thought i’d tell you about it instead.
i don’t know how to communicate with people who do not care about evidence-based claims. i am an academic, at the end of the day, who learned that if i wanted to make a claim, i had better have supporting documentation. i had to show my work.
for one thing, no true academic relies upon their own knowledge alone. the human mind is fallible, and while i might be right, i can’t be certain. certainty is the opposite of truth. i grew up during a time when you couldn’t just say anything and expect people to believe you. anyone could google what you were saying, locate a reputable source, and dispute or verify your stance.
additionally, i do not hold identities that default to expertise. in other words, no one ever believes what i’m saying if i can’t prove it. being able to demonstrate that the things i know are reputable claims, and have been verified over decades of research, became a defense mechanism professionally. if my knowledge alone was not sufficient to be respected, then i needed an army of citations to prove myself.
the bell curve of knowledge is cresting. google AI is wrong 60% of the time, and it’s the first thing anyone sees when they search for truth. (did you google that statistic, or did you just believe me?) i am beginning to fear that those of us in the West have lost the ability to think critically. we are addicted to convenience. we don’t want to know.
i presented a leadership model to my executive team recently, and they refuted its adoption because “it is ineffective.” i asked for evidence that supported this leadership model being ineffective. i asked what their alternate proposals were, and what school of thought their perspective was rooted in. what i got in response was in essence, “because i said so.” they simply did not want to do it, and therefore decided it wasn’t effective.
the death of intellect is alarming to me. i’m ringing the bell. i’m slamming the panic button over and over again, but no one seems to hear me.
we are in a knowledge crisis.
in children of time, adrian tchiakovsky builds a fictional world around the survivors of our own demise. he posits through this exploration of dystopia that these survivors are but a cheap imitation of the greatness humanity once held. the ship that carries them to galaxies unknown in the hopes of finding a land of milk & honey is shod together by what little the engineers still understand from the days before. the old world tech is more sophisticated. the old world tech is more reliable. the old world tech endures.
like ivrana kern herself, the terraformer whose coordinates they are pursuing in the first place.
upon my first readthrough, i found this to be unrealistic. human beings are born to learn! to discover! tool use and literature and philosophy and innovation! how could a future version of us be less knowledgeable?
now i see that an endless pursuit of wealth and power and luxury inevitably leads to sedated intellect. what is there to yearn for when you can have anything you want delivered to your door, and financed with klarna? what is there to discover when you can no longer venture outside? i used to truly believe that humanity would only advance. how arrogant and naive i was to think we all had the same definition of advancement.
are people truly satisfied in their sedation? is the burden of existence too great for us that we must numb ourselves to stay alive? do we really not care about what is true?
how many warning novels can a man read before he gets it? how many book bans until we can’t read at all?
xoxo,
kuya von
i showed you my gooey center, please respond 👉👈
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“don't you remember how we used to split a drink? it never mattered what it was. i think our hands were just that close. the sweetness never lasts, you know.”
jet pack blues, fall out boy
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