When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. I soaked up the vibes of a high-tech, utopian future. I internalized the trajectory we were on was good, that we had reached the End of History. There might be a few bumps on the road, but the direction was inevitable and the destination was inexorable.
It turns out that the fastest a human being has ever traveled was 39,897 kilometers per hour. That was the crew of the Apollo 10 mission returning to earth. That happened on 26 May, 1969.
Fifty-four years ago. We peaked more than half a century ago.
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I see a lot of depressed people say “oh I feel so bad, I’m such a burden on the people in my life.”
And, yeah, you are. You’re absolutely a burden on someone. I am a burden. We are all of us a burden. And that’s ok.
My kids are young and for a lot of my time with them they were helpless blobs. They have been so much work! They have made me tired, they have made me sick, they have made me worried, they have spent my money, they have punched me in the junk. Don’t let anyone sugarcoat how hard it is to be a parent.
And I would do anything for them. I would die for them. I love them more than anything and would do it all over again, gladly, a thousand times.
It’s ok to be a burden. Literally every human being is, at some point, a burden on someone else. All of us need help almost all of the time.
Because we take care of each other.
David Graeber once noted that we’re fragile biological beings who die without each other. It’s ok to be a burden. Be a burden. And take care of someone else when they’re a burdens. It’s the only thing we can do, really: take care of each other.
It’s ok.
“[Anti-capitalist system] could never work because people won’t do things for each other for free!” yells someone who only survived childhood because adults labored on their behalf without pay.
People like Peter Thiel are #libertarian in the sense that they want the liberty to do whatever they want to you without censure or consequence.
We are within living memory of the worst war in human history, in which literal nuclear bombs were used on civilian populations, and still someone will show up in my mentions to remind me about the Mongols and the Black Death.
“Don’t you know how good you’ve got it!” they scream over the Holocaust.