It seems as if we have all landed in a bit of a dystopian death grip.

[circuitbored]

I've been quiet a lot online lately... So have many of my friends been as well.

We've been swamped with ads, with mindless motivational video clips, with spam phone calls, with mediocre movies and television, with terrifying news headlines, and much more on top of a very post-pandemic existence. The dystopia has set in, as cities lower speed limits while installing opportunistic speed cameras, as states encourage us to gamble online and in casinos, and to buy their now legal weed.... After years of incarcerating our family members for selling it.

One would assume that the world is changing, but the truth is that morals change as profit changes. We're at a point in history where a small handful of people hold enormous amounts of wealth in their personal bank accounts, and they're the same ones that preach about hard work, morals, and integrity while many are literally themselves either descendants of or directly so people that have historically robbed the candy jar, or been children of people that did so (look up the discussion surrounding "nepo babies" for more background).

It's not for me to judge people, but there's a certain type of hypocrisy that thrives in capitalist and even communist work environments that a boss works harder than, and thus-ly should make more than their employees, dating way back to the beginning of history. As a matter of fact, this policy was rampant during the age of trans-Atlantic slave trade, where "bosses" made infinitely more than their employees. Fast forward to today, where things are "much better" for all of us, to where a CEO only makes multiple times the staff payroll of their entire company, which is.. Yep.. still dystopian.

While the CEO class typically comes from a background of wealth, it is in no way to be confused with nepotism or the well outdated "Ruling Class" system that England still keeps in place out of novelty. The CEO class world wide is ages more progressive than those of the past, because it is necessary in places where traditional classes do not want to live.

We thought the Internet would be this great unifying thing, that would create a sense of fairness and opportunity for everyone, but nope... It's dystopian A.F... It tracks us in absolutely every possible way, requires us to pay for many things, allows may groups to operate covertly and in an untraceable manner, It can "shadowban" us (without any indication or notice) leaving us confused as to why we work in quiet when there are billions of people online that don't see us at all.

This is rather maddening where we've come. It's not one individual, nor even a group of individuals that are able to apply this agenda to the Internet yet thank goodness, there are a few places where sanity and intelligent communication prevail online still, though they are constantly under threat. There are still places where you can go to talk to experienced and educated (real) people who can help with problem solving as well thank goodness, and luckily for us, we're not all totally confined to our homes in lockdown, so we can't be gaslighted by the internet as we were during our prior lockdowns.. We can still venture out and talk to people in real life, and ask them for their opinions -- which can potentially be the one thing that keeps us sane, instead of relying on the thoroughly manipulated Internet to tell us what is real and what is not.

As we dive into a new era, where chat GPT and various other iterations of "AI" become prevalent, perspective is going to become more and more important. Many things we read will become even more subject to manipulation based on political and personal agendas. It will in many ways become harder for everyone to be paid according to their work, and to run businesses of their own without vast amounts of money... As I've said before, the lack of opportunity leads to a rise in crime and victimization, which somehow those who hoard wealth seem to not feel a responsibility for at all. The new feelings of insecurity in your previously peaceful neighborhoods is a great reminder of how dystopia is settling in in our world.

It's often that we're so complacent in our own existence, and saddled with being toxically positive that we overlook the greed, corruption, apathy, and ignorance that leads us to points like this, but we also seem to constantly let go of personal accountability in times like this... No, Not the personal accountability of people that need to "lift themselves up by their bootstraps", I'm referring to the personal accountability of people that make 30 million dollars in just one year believing that it's justified as others struggle to make it by (working the same hours or more). It's easy to believe that if you are a millionaire that you gained that position from hard work (without luck involved) and on your own, but that's far from truth in any scenario in a world like this... I'm not saying that no one should be allowed to be wealthy, but at the same time, wealth has gotten dystopian A.F. in our world lately... It's time to be a little bit more humble with it and to stop thinking it will insulate you from a world of growingly desperate people left without opportunity.

I leave you with this video of Jay Leno, casually talking about making 30 million dollars in one year, while considering making a $15m (huge, but still not injurious) salary sacrifice to keep the remainder of his entire staff employed:

The distribution of wealth and opportunity seems dystopian A.F. in our world when you see the 4th wall broken like this. When a certain class of people can talk about a wealth of opportunity and positivity that others don't see... When there's a world of suffering that people of the means to make change never see. Many are busy looking glamorous on social media while their rent isn't paid, and while they are not getting paid... Pretty dystopian eh? The solution comes in asking why some become infinitely wealthy while others don't even make a living wage... Why some seem to have stable employment no matter what they do, while others are at the mercy of the wind. The more we become complacent with fairness being bent, the less we will see fairness in our own every day lives, and that's exactly the point when dystopia puts us all in it's death grips.