Tag Archives: generations

Tyrants Fear Peasants Getting Knowledge and Making Money

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Been having a rough go the last several days. I think most of my friends have been too. I just know something is bugging my friends, especially my bestie out in Denver. I rarely hear from some of my friends anymore. I guess I came from one of those very rare families where cutting people off and going completely silent just wasn’t a thing. I may have to tell my family numerous times or even yell at them occasionally, but we have never let the lines of communication completely die. It wasn’t until recently that I figure out that the vast majority of families aren’t like that.

I’m in my 40s and actually have a better relationship than ever with my family. I still find it unnerving that I can do things and say things to my family as a 42 year old man that would have gotten me in severe trouble as a teenager. I grew up in one of those families in 1980s rural America where things like yelling at your kids for yelling at the parents first, regular physical discipline, which I have zero problem with until it’s used excessively or as a first resort, parents always siding with the teachers, even when it was obvious that I was in the right, and ignoring things like bullying. I think it’s one of the reasons I became self sufficient as much as possible. Even on disability and being in a wheelchair (at least for long distances) I try to be as self reliant as possible. It’s just not worth the hassle to get other people involved.

I love using computers and typing even though my typing speed never exceeding 35 words per minute. I also love economics. Yet I never took computers and economics in high school because of the only teacher who taught such things in my dinky rural school just had it out for me and a few other students. She used to call me ‘stupid’ in front of the whole class. I took her for only one class in high school, typing. Got a C+ in that class first quarter. It was the only class my freshman year I got below a B+ in. Yet, it was enough to keep me off the honor roll. But, had I never gone to college I would have never discovered my love for computers or typing. I actually far prefer typing to writing. I find it encouraging that grade schools in my country are now teaching computer and typing skills to kids. I had an inkling that I liked computers as I started taking computer classes when I was in fourth grade. We had a good computer class teacher. But that one high school teacher that I had several run ins with almost killed my interest in things that I found out I have an ability for in college.

I cringe every time I hear someone say ‘college is worthless.’ In reality, being able to learn and relearn new skills even into old age is now more important than ever. It’s only going to get even more important in the future. The era of being able to specialize is dying, as many white-collar workers are figuring out with automation and AI. And it’s not just rich countries like USA, EU, and Japan that are automating. China is starting to automate much of it’s workforce. Probably why 1 in 5 Chinese recent college graduates are unemployed. Youth unemployment is no longer an American issue. It’s actually worse in China and EU. Multi generational homes are becoming more normal now. In the Renaissance, most rich families had as many as four generations living in the same house or on the same estate. The kids usually inherited the property and houses after mom and dad died. These estates and fortunes stayed in the family, and even grew larger, over the course of the centuries. The idea of children leaving home without support at age 18 and then getting sent to nursing homes as elders is quite recent. In fact, the age of adulthood even in the US was 21, not 18 for most of our history. The voting age used to be 21 until the 1960s. Even I wouldn’t have been able to vote for at least the first 50 years of my nation’s existence as I’m not a property owner. With as much as some politicians are trying to make voting harder to “counter voter fraud”, I imagine that someday some politician will propose changing the voting laws to allow only property owners and income tax payers the right to vote. As if the peasants, like me, who have to rent don’t have a stake in this country succeeding. I’ve read bloggers proposing this exact same thing as far back as 2013. I swear that we now have a society that actively wants to make things tougher than they used to be. Any wonder why there’s more hatred between the generations than there has been in recent history.

And it’s not just the different generations that hate each other. Workers and bosses hate each other too. It seems like that most people I know just can’t wrap their minds around the fact that no one can make it on minimum wage anymore. And any time workers try to unionize anymore, they are dealt with by firings, outsourcing, and automation. I wonder how long it will be before striking workers are getting shot and killed, like at the Homestead Steel Mill strike in the late 1800s. And that is just one example of strikers getting killed. Small business owners often complain “no one wants to work anymore” when in actuality people don’t want to work for unlivable wages dealing with unreasonable customers and stupid work policies that actually destroy productivity and morale. These kids you complain about “not wanting to work anymore”, many of them are working in gig jobs, starting their own side hustles, starting their own small businesses, and even becoming “digital nomads” by being able to work from anywhere in the world that has wireless internet service (i.e. everywhere on Earth anymore). I myself would have become a digital nomad if not for my mental illness. So I did the next best thing, I became a digital monk. Even one of my college friends recently suggested I would have made it as a monk. But, the church I grew up in didn’t have monasteries. I mean, a life of study, prayer, contemplation, isolation, and making money from selling anything from baked goods to theology books sounds like it would been good for me. Certainly better than trying to survive on minimum wage with retail jobs while waiting for disability to come through.

Many employers are downright ungrateful of the workers. And the customers are even worse. One of my best friends from college was laid off from an IT job in a major urban center even though he had been there for almost ten years, had two teenage children, and a wife with terminal cancer. And he was classified as an ‘essential worker’ during the pandemic. Caught covid at least three times. Still got laid off. I’ve already talked about my work experience in previous entries. What I got was mild compared to most people. And people, mostly under the age of 45, are using social media to talk about such problems. Since we are sharing our stories, and finding out that we aren’t alone, is probably why those in power want to shut down and regulate social media sites like reddit and tiktok. It has nothing to do with foreign nations spying on citizens. Every nation spies on their own citizens and everyone else. Besides, all of our online information has been public knowledge for many years. How do you think Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube remain free and their companies remain massively profitable. Pity they don’t share a pittance of that profit and pay us for said information. Even mining and oil companies in the early 1900s had the decency to pay land owners for the use of their land and mineral rights. We are truly living in Gilded Age, version 2.0.

I don’t see things getting better for workers and renters anytime soon unless we can elect some politicians who will actually get legislation passed to reel in the worst abuses of big business and landlords. We used to have such politicians even in the early 1900s like Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan. We don’t even bother to enforce anti trust laws, which have been on the books since the 1890s). That’s precisely why we have ‘Too Big To Fail.’ Greed is every bit as bad now as it was back then. We are essentially living Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ except we have computers and gas powered automobiles. I swear some people will fight against progress no matter what. The same people who complain about ‘no one wants to work’ were the exact same people who fought against labor laws. People in the early 1900s were worried about big businesses cannibalizing the world and killing democracy and capitalism. Changes in attitudes by a younger cohort of politicians and younger industrialists like Henry Ford and Milton Hershey might have saved capitalism from it’s own abuses, and thus saved democracy.

Unfortunately, even in the early 1900s positive changes didn’t start happening until elder cohorts of politicians and business managers started retiring and or dying off in large numbers. I see the same problems in the early 2020s. I say this in fear of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but it looks like just enough people in places of power and prestige want the current state of things. It like some people actually want civilization to fail. It’s like those in power don’t want the masses to learn for themselves. I think would be tyrants fear the thought of a few billion people all over the world figuring out how things can be a lot better than they are. People aren’t angry because they don’t have electricity and running water. This ain’t 1900 no matter how bad some want it to be.

People are starting to realize how far below our potential we are living. It’s why younger workers want more work life balance. They’ve seen their parents and elders work for decades at the same place, often to be laid off and outsourced due to management’s short sighted greed. They’ve also seen their parents pensions getting cut and their parents 401(k)s become near worthless. One of my best friend’s fathers worked as a travelling repair man for a tech company his entire career. He lost a significant chunk of his retirement when his company went bankrupt. Now he’s working as a museum tour guide to supplement his social security. These managers are intentionally killing the gooses who lay golden eggs. The younger workers know this. And they are very angry, especially since they found they could be just as productive working from home, get their work tasks completed in only two or three hours (rather than the minimum eight in an office), have time for their children, and have time to cook healthy, better tasting, meals. Heck, even I lost over 180 pounds in the last three years on a disability pension while not being able to exercise much due to heart failure. I did far better on my own and in long term care during the pandemic than I ever did with nutritionists and Weight Watchers. Now some companies are trying to get rid of the work from home option entirely. I’m glad the workers are fighting back. I think the managers know work from home is productive, they just don’t want to give up their power. Some of these companies should just remodel their office buildings into cheap apartments. The futurist Buckminster Fuller (pioneer of the geodesic dome and prefabricated housing among numerous other innovations) predicted work from home, downtown offices going vacant, and said offices being refurbished as low income apartments for displaced workers as far back as at least 50 years ago.

I’ve read some news articles about work from home people are sometimes able to work more than one full time job just from their home laptops and collect multiple full time paychecks. I see zero problems with this because we don’t stop people from owning more than one rental property or business. It’s the same principle except it’s the working class getting in on some of the action. Online investing platforms like Robinhood and Stash allow poor and working-class people to invest on their own. Pity these weren’t available ten years earlier. I’ve seen plenty of articles about students being able to pay of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans by investing their stimulus checks or start small businesses off their earnings. Most of my friends invested their stimulus checks. I invested most of mine too, still have most of it in the market, and had over a ten percent year on year return, which is better than the whole market did. Half of hedge fund managers and financial planners can’t beat the market most years.

Some of my friends did better than even I did. Some more than doubled their money but still left it in the market. Before you dismiss that as the exception and not the norm, the Fortune 500s started out of garages are not the norm either. Besides, many successful business men like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, etc. got started by borrowing some money from their own families. Elon Musk came from a wealthy family in South Africa. Mark Zuckerberg was a college dropout, but even he dropped out of Harvard, not University of Alabama. The original modern business magnate, John Rockefeller, borrowed $1000 dollars in 1860s money from his own father to buy his first oil refinery. Even my dad had to borrow some money from his father in law to start his dental office in rural Nebraska because the banks wouldn’t lend him money. And he stayed in the same practice for 30 years, sold out to a young dentist, and that dentist is still practicing in the same office. The banks were too short sighted to see that our rural county needed another dentist. Sometimes the people with the most money aren’t the smart money. Even Warren Buffet missed out on the computer and internet revolutions. And his company is making the exact same mistake with AI. I’d invest even more in the market but social security won’t allow anyone on disability to have more than $4000 in savings at any time. Otherwise I’d get kicked out of the program and lose my medicaid. In short, I stay poor so I can keep my necessary treatments. That provision not only chaps my hide, it’s making me less prosperous and self-reliant. God forbid poor people be able to make a little more money and be a little self reliant. Used to be the US government encouraged self reliance and even enabled it through things like the Homestead Act and GI Bill. Those days are long gone.

Investing isn’t that risky, especially if one were to buy into dividend paying stable mutual funds like the Dow Jones or S&P 500 and just put in a little every time you get paid. ‘Pay yourself first’ is the advice I got from every business instructor I ever had in college. It’s a crime against humanity that money isn’t taught in most grade schools and high schools. It’s why guys like Robert Kiyosaki and Dave Ramsey are worth millions, they are merely filling in the knowledge gaps that our schools won’t. They recognized that the public at large didn’t know much about money. Their advice has freed millions of people from debts, allowed others to get out of dead end jobs and start their own businesses, and taught the poor and middle class how to make money work in their favor instead of against them. I applaud such people. I wasn’t required even a year of personal finance in high school. I hope that’s changing. Lack of knowledge about how money works can be just as destructive as unrestricted greed. Even poverty stricken people on disability are learning these lessons. I am far from the only person on disability who has had some financial education. Amazing what one can learn from a few books, youtube channels, and a few years. It’s why tyrants fear peasants with knowledge. Heck, tyrants might fear peasants with knowledge as much as they do peasants with guns.

More Overnight Musings

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Just today, I read an article on CNN.com that it’s forecasted by the World Economic Forum over 14 million jobs worldwide could be lost to automation by 2027. While I am glad that even traditional news outlets like CNN and 60 Minutes (when they interviewed the CEO of Google about AI and automation a few weeks ago) are starting to report this, I am disappointed that it seems like none of our elected officials (at least not here in USA) are discussing this. Back in the 2020 election, the only candidate that even addressed this is Andrew Yang. I highly recommend watching his interview with Joe Rogan on youtube even if it is a few years old. I also recommend Rogan’s interviews with Elon Musk.

I am convinced that mass technological unemployment is coming by the early 2030s, at least in developed countries. I’ve been convinced of this since 2013. As much as I love economics as a subject, I haven’t seen many economists discuss even the possible problems this could cause. Traditionally, automation has created more jobs than it destroyed and lead to enough resources and revenue being produced that social safety nets like unemployment insurance, public education, social security pensions, disability insurance, and Medicare could be funded. But, will this always be the case? If not, how do we adapt our society and cultural norms if it comes to where we have a society where less than half the working age citizens can even find employment that pays livable wages? Seems like a lot of people are at least 20 years behind on what the tech is already doing, let alone what it can do in the near future. Politicians are even worse, at least in my country. Then again, I don’t look to politicians to solve problems related to tech and science. Most simply can’t as most are lawyers by trade, they aren’t trained to solve problems related to tech or psychological problems associated with a loss of meaning and purpose.

Yes, tech has made it easier to communicate and learn new skills. Yet, has it made us happier and more hopeful overall? Probably not. Physically, our lives are far less taxing than even our grandparents. Yet, they are also more mentally stressful. Maybe that is why we are seeing more cases of mental illness, mass shootings, extremist politics, doomsday preppers becoming normal, and conspiracy theories becoming mainstream. Our Stone Age hunter brains are simply not adapted to dealing with issues like loneliness, information overload, abundance of resources yet lack of meaning and purpose. The human mind reacts to things like getting cut off in traffic or dealing with internet bullies the same way our Stone Age ancestors dealt with tigers and bears. Fight or flight may have been great survival strategies for most of our history, but it’s now causing us needless anguish and pain. I think one of the main reasons most people I know are nostalgic for past decades is that the world is changing technologically and culturally faster than most human minds can process and adapt to.

I don’t know how many of my readers have heard of the concept of Technological Singularity. But it’s a term for a hypothetical time in the future when our science and technology advance to the point where the changes are too fast for the human mind to comprehend and civilization is changed in ways that can’t be reversed. Some futurists, like Ray Kurzweil (chief AI engineer at Google) are convinced it will happen by mid century. Others, like Michio Kaku, think it won’t happen until the 22nd century. Others are convinced it won’t happen until centuries from now. Others are convinced it’s not going to happen ever. I imagine if our great grandparents could see the world of 2023, they would think “Aren’t y’all already there?” While I’m not necessarily worried about a Terminator or Matrix scenario, I am worried that most people simply won’t be able to mentally and emotionally keep up with changing skills and careers every few years. Being obsolete (at least in terms of job skills) is more likely than war against the machines I think, which will cause lots of problems on it’s own. Even I can barely keep up with just the news of changes in tech, culture, and geopolitics and I have the time to research these because my disability pension takes care of my basic needs. I think mainstream media is doing the public a disservice by not devoting more time to science and tech advancements. That’s why I haven’t watched 24 hour cable news since 2007.

Some people I know can’t do a proper Google search, get frustrated with automated customer service, and hate self check out at the Wal Mart. Yet I know children as young as five years old who can already use computers and smartphones, I know children who can already write computer programs and games, I know teenagers whose knowledge of internet, 3D printing, and robotics I probably will never be able to match. I worry about the widening knowledge gap even more than the widening wealth gap. Personally, I don’t bother with self check outs because I get everything delivered to my house. I even had Amazon delivery when I lived in the long term care facility. I guess my opinion on self check outs taking away jobs, well, people said the same things about self service gas stations in the 1970s and gasoline powered automobiles taking away jobs from horse stable workers in the early 1900s. Besides, delivery drivers and warehouse workers will probably eventually get automated too. As much as I love my parents and have known some really cool elderly people over the years, I fear the cynics may have been right when they said ‘science advances only one funeral at a time.’ I think the same could be said about cultural norms and social attitudes.

Speaking of funerals, there are now doctors and scientists who are researching longevity treatments and even age reversal medications. They’ve already been able to double the life span of lab mice and even reverse some aging in mice already. But this tech creeps me more than even book banning and cancel culture. Part of me hopes they fail, like everyone who has ever looked for the Fountain of Youth. I just fear that if we are successful in finding longevity medications that we will have a stagnation in culture and science. We already have wage and economic stagnation. Also, the gaps between the generations and the socioeconomic classes will become impossible to navigate. OK Boomer and Triggered Snowflake could just be a warm up for what’s to come in the next few generations. I mean, we already have 80 year old politicians and businessmen who obviously don’t need the money and past their prime who refuse to retire. I guess that power and prestige are just that addictive. I wouldn’t know. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Altered Carbon and Black Mirror. But even the Bible and ancient folklore talks about elders who lived for over 900 years. Maybe that really is possible with the right treatments. We are only in the beginnings of a new industrial and scientific revolution. Our institutions like politics, education, organized religions, legal, etc. have lost the confidence of the public at large. I think it’s because we haven’t figured out how to adapt to this new world, at least not yet. We’re just figuring this out as we go like with every other revolution. It could get real bumpy before we adapt. Buckle up.

These are just a few of the thoughts I’ve had in recent weeks even though I’ve been studying these topics for years. I am convinced that many people are not prepared for the advances coming within the next several years. We weren’t even ready for the covid pandemic even though pandemics have happened many times over the centuries. I don’t think we as citizens, our politics, or our institutions are ready for what could happen in terms of science and tech that we are already researching. There’s a Chinese saying that goes something like ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Could be both a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Things I’m Looking Forward To In The Future

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I’m composing of list of things that probably will be coming within the next generation or so that I am looking forward to. My entire life I’ve been accused of being too much of a dreamer and having false hopes. I’ve even had people tell me I think long term too much. I’ve always been bothered by how short sighted most people, at least in my culture, seem to be. But here goes with the list.

Things I’m Looking Forward To In The Future

People back on the Moon

People on Mars

5G tech

3D printed houses

Eradication of malaria

Seeing people my age and younger in places of power, wealth, and influence

Seeing my nephews and niece start careers and families

Being seen as a wise old man instead of a young smart ass with attitude problems

Blockchain tech truly come of age

Having people do favors for me because of my age and not feel guilty

Being old enough to not only know what others think doesn’t matter, but not being able to remember anyway

Truly amazing Virtual Reality

Seeing friends and classmates become grandparents

Not repeating the mistakes of my elders and previous generations

Lab grown replacement organs

Mile tall skyscrapers

Fusion energy

Having a robot neighbor

Cures for mental illnesses (It’s my blog, I can dream can’t I?)

Riding in a driverless car

Getting to watch what amazing breakthroughs come by the time I die

The end of the pandemic

The end of cable news

The end of unneeded paper work

The end of junk mail

Personalized medical treatment

Getting to watch the development of the next trillion dollar industry. My bets are on biotech and space based resources

Just knowing we have armies of really smart scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, etc. figuring out new things and solutions while normal people cry doom and gloom. Then again, good news never has sold well

Thoughts on My Upcoming Birthday

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My birthday is this Sunday.  I will be forty years old.  I guess the thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that I do have more aches and pains, especially in the mornings.  I have to be more careful about what I eat too.  I’ve noticed that too much caffeine makes me irritable and short tempered.  Too much carb rich food like bread and pastas will make me lethargic and sleepy.  Too much milk will unsettle my guts.  It’s also easier for me to fall asleep.  I do wake up at least once a night to visit the bathroom.  I don’t desire sugar as often.  I have little to no interest in sex, certainly not enough to start dating again.  I have come to be more accepting of my weaknesses and drawbacks.  I’ve learned to compensate and work around those weaknesses and drawbacks.  Instead of looking for what’s going wrong in the world, I spend much of my time trying to figure out what’s going right.  Even though I’m middle aged, I have more empathy for kids and young adults.  I didn’t have much empathy for kids and young adults when I was a kid and a young adult.  I’ve come to accept that everyone has their own struggles and problems, so it’s best to go easier on people overall.  I’ve developed more of an appreciation for customer service workers like waitresses, cashiers, delivery drivers, shelf stockers, gas station clerks, etc.  I have found that a good cup of coffee and a home cooked meal will give me more joy than going to clubs and chasing women ever did.  And I learned that we as humans are far more adaptable and able to change than we realize, especially in the long term.

Hope After A Mental Breakdown

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Had a bad breakdown a few days ago.  I am quite sure, after twenty years with a mental illness, there is a seasonal aspect to my illness.  I regret having breakdowns and I especially regret taking my breakdowns out on people I love.  I had felt it coming on for awhile and then it finally broke a few days ago.  I hope this is the last one for a long time.  I hate the fact that I can’t just sob and cry my way out of a breakdown rather than lash out and be angry.  I don’t know how much of that is just my personal illness, or always being told a man showing emotions is a sign of weakness, etc. But it’s part of the illness and part of the price of admission into adulthood.

In spite of the illness, and the contradictions and nonsense I am fed on a daily basis by society and popular culture, I do my best to not let this crush my spirit or kill my love for my fellow humans.  I know I am often harsh and short tempered with my fellow humans, and my countrymen in particular.  But, contrary to popular belief, I do not hate humans or my countrymen.  It’s the polar opposite actually.  I love humanity and I love my country and my countrymen.  I see the cool things we have accomplished in the past and are accomplishing on a daily basis.  I see the potential for greatness every day.  And yes, it does bother me when I see people not living up to that potential greatness.  I am tough on people, not because I hate them, but because I believe everyone can excel at least one thing and I can’t stand to see a person waste their potential and time.  I am often tough on my family members because I know they are capable of excellence and have often shown it, especially in times of crisis.  I’m sorry but I don’t have much respect for mediocre work and apathy.

A significant portion of the time when I’m reading science journals online or articles on sites like Bloomberg, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc. I have to remind myself that this isn’t the science fiction it was when I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s.  I saw the movie Fight Club the other night, and even though the movie was popular when I was in college, I was amazed how people still used land based phone lines, phone booths, primitive looking desktop computers, and even how many people smoked in a movie that came out in the late 1990s.  I personally haven’t had a land phone line since 2007 or 2008 I think.  I haven’t had a desktop computer in 10 years.  And even this year, I was able to email my bank statements and tax information and social security information to my landlady to renew my lease.  All I had to do in person was sign a few documents and pass an annual room inspection.  And since I now have a cleaning lady who drops in once a week, spruces the place up, and allows me to chat with her while she works, the whole process took about a half hour of my time.

I sometimes overlook the progress my fellow humans, myself, and civilization in general has made when I’m bogged down in the day to day struggle.  But when I take a step back and look at it over the course of a few years, it’s quite amazing and gives me hope.  I get even more hope and feel in awe when I look back at over what has happened in the life time of our current crop of world leaders and elders in my life.  I know I am often too harsh on my elders.  I know I need to cut them more slack when I look back and think about all the changes they saw since their childhoods in the 1950s and 1960s.  My father can remember his family being one of the first in his hometown to own a black and white television.  And his uncles used to come out to my grandfather’s farm just to watch the test patterns in the evenings.  Both my parents were typing their high school and even college term papers on electric typewriters.  My mother keeps and old style manual typewriter as a decoration in her house and my eight year old nephew is aghast that people used to write on those things.

I also have to remember that, for some of the elders, old Jim Crow laws and criminalization of things like homosexuality, inter racial marriages, and sex outside of marriage were the law of the land in many places until as recently as the 1970s.  Sure, it feels like some people are backsliding at times.  But the forces at work against such backsliding are far more overwhelming than they would have been even forty years ago.

I can’t even begin to imagine what I will see if I make it to age seventy, if I’m privileged enough to make it that far.  That will be in the year 2050.  I’ve seen some scientists predict everything from bases on the moon and Mars, driverless cars being almost everywhere, nuclear fusion based electricity, to where we no longer use oil and gasoline for transport, to even people augmented their physical strength and mental powers through computer based implants and prosthetic and Iron Man type suits.  I guess I don’t know if I want someone rooting around in my skull planting in chips or injecting me full of blood cell sized machines (at least not right now), but I definitely wouldn’t mind something I could wear that would make me smarter or stronger that I could turn off or take off at a moment’s notice.

Even as much as I love science and tech, I am still adjusting to what is happening and what can be.  And only the best minds in science fiction would have even imagined such things that we are working on now when my father was a kid and reading Dick Tracy comic books in the 1950s.  I know eventually I will be the old man that has trouble keeping up.  I imagine even now my nephews would think it odd I don’t know how to run a 3D printer or a VR headset machine.  My twelve year old nephew set up a flight simulator game on VR for my father (a licensed pilot and former Air Force man) recently that my father occasionally uses.

I don’t know what the future holds, certainly not in terms of working.  The only advice I give to my nephews and niece is ‘stay flexible.’  No one knows.  Maybe people like Mark Cuban will be proven right and that the humanities and arts degrees we have called ‘useless’ and ‘worthless’ degrees for a couple generations will be in as much demand in ten years as STEM and medical degrees are now.  Even though I majored in business in college, I am grateful I took some time to read a lot of philosophy and classical literature when I was young and had more energy.  And I was able to do it for free via my college’s library.  Levitt Library on the York College campus was a second home for me when I was college.  If I wasn’t at my dorm room studying, I could easily be found in the library or with a few buddies discussing philosophy, football strategies, history, or even medieval military tactics at the all night truck stop over chicken fried steaks and 99 cent unlimited cups of coffee.

In spite of my recent melt down, I am hopeful again.  Zig Ziglar was right when he said that positive attitudes and behavior is like taking baths every day, it requires daily maintenance.  No one gets mad when they are extra dirty some days, they just bathe for a little longer.  And of course, some days are dirtier and tougher than others.

Nostalgia: It Ain’t What It Used To Be

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Been spending most of my time alone the last several days.  And I’m actually quite happy with this arrangement.  And why not?  Most of my friends are going through the mid life crisis deals as my friends are in the mid thirties to early forties range.  I have a college friend who was diagnosed with cancer several months ago who’s only a year or two older than I am.  Most of my friends are struggling with debts and dead end careers, so they are constantly on edge about money.  I’ve had friends suffer through divorces.  I have a cousin whose son was diagnosed on the autism scale last year.  My best friend from my teenage years lost her mother to cancer two years ago.  Even in myself I don’t have as much get up and go as I did even three years ago.  But I am in my late 30s.  I’ll be 40 next summer yet I don’t dread it.  I don’t dread aging as much as most of my friends.  Most people think I’m weird  or lying when I say I actually look forward to being a wise elder.  I’m not lying or weird.  I’m just ahead of the curve and no longer fearing the inevitable.

I admit I don’t have much nostalgia.  I don’t long for the “good ol’ days” because, well, the good old days kinda sucked in many ways.  When exactly were the good old days?  Was it back in the 1990s when President Clinton was screwing his interns, computers occupied entire desks instead of fitting in shirt pockets, and the music of Tupac and Marilyn Manson were going to be the death of Western Civilization?  Was it back in the 1950s when using the n word was okay but Lucille Ball couldn’t say pregnant on network television and the threat of nuclear war was real?  “Better dead than red” people said back in those days.  And people were worried about the corrupting influence of rock and roll music.  Or was it in the Old West when boom towns like Dodge City and Tombstone were far more violent and lawless than any modern slum, women couldn’t vote, and bounty hunters got paid for Native American scalps?  Or was it in the Stone Age when everyone ate fresh and natural food, drank clean water, breathed unpolluted air, had no laws, no villages, half of children died before adulthood, and writing didn’t exist.  Even the 2010s will be considered the good old days in twenty years by nostalgic fools.  Nostalgia is a desert mirage.  It is imagined.  It isn’t real.  I haven’t fallen victim to nostalgia even though I’m on the door step of 40.  Hopefully I never fall victim to nostalgia.

I definitely never want to be one of these bitter and angry old men who complain about the kids.  Let’s get some thing real clear: every generation of “lousy kids” was supposed to be the death of civilization.  And it never happened.  If anything, most generations built upon what previous generations did and left science and humanitarian efforts further along than when they started.  I have zero patience for people who complain about young people.  Elders were complaining about how stupid and incompetent my classmates and myself were even when were in grade school in the 1980s.  I have never forgotten how hurtful and unfair that was.  I never will.  And for that reason I will never pull that kind of crap on people younger than me.  And it burns me to see people my age complaining about the kids coming up now.  The kids are not more unruly or weaker now than in the past.  The only thing kids have ever been guilty of is making old codgers realize that they will someday become irrelevant, they will someday die, and they will someday be forgotten.  Kids make old people uncomfortable because kids make elders confront their own hypocrisy, stupidity, and that they were too scared or lazy to try to chase their dreams.

I’m now seeing many of my cohorts becoming bitter and resentful about the bad decisions they made in their teens and twenties.  You should have left that dead end job and started your own business or moved to a different city.  Yeah, you should have majored in STEM or went to trade school instead of majoring in humanities or general business.  Maybe  you should have paid off your credit cards before they become unmanageable.  You shouldn’t have spent your teens and twenties partying, drugging, and having sex like there would be no price to pay.  You shouldn’t have put up with abusive boyfriends or manipulative girlfriends.  You should have called your mom more often.  Yeah, you shouldn’t have cut ties with your siblings.  You should have road tripped and traveled to foreign countries while you still had good health.  You should have gone to seen your favorite musician the night they performed in your hometown.  You shouldn’t have ignored that geeky girl or boy in your high school history class in favor of the school bully or queen bee.  I could go on.  But there are no do overs.  Learn and move on.  Quit romanticizing a past that never existed.  Learn from your bad decisions and be glad for the good decisions you did make.

Changes Within A Lifetime and Reflections on Generational Differences

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I have changed in many ways over the years.  I’ve noticed changes in my friends and classmates too.  I’ve even seen changes in the people I knew in my parents’ age bracket over the years.

One of the changes I’ve noticed in myself with age is that I prefer to spend most of my time at home.  When I was a teenager I was rarely at home except to sleep or do homework.  When I wasn’t at school or school activities, I was at friends’ houses.  I preferred going to friends’ houses as my brother usually had his friends over all the time.  I imagine it concerned my parents as I rarely had friends over at the house.  I wasn’t anti social, far from it.  I just liked spending time at places where I wouldn’t be bothered by my older brother and his friends.  When I was in college, I usually spent time in my friends’ dorm rooms or in the student union when I wasn’t at the library or studying for classes.  I was on good terms with everyone at my small college, but had only a handful of confidants I felt I could tell anything.  Looking back on this years later, I know that most of my socializing and trust issues are because of the mental illness.  I probably could have had a larger social network than I did.  Yet I’m happy that I managed to stay on good terms with most people even if I was in emotional turmoil much of the time.  Just goes to show how powerful our minds are in shaping our reality.

Now that I’m my late 30s I prefer to stay at home most of the time.  I would rather host guests now than I would visit them it seems.  Granted, I do like to have at least a couple days notice before I’m hosting anyone.  I’m still self conscious about my place and what people think of me.  Sure, most of the negative vibes I get from others are manufactured by the diseased aspects of my mind.  But I guess I haven’t mastered my mind well enough to easily shake these negative vibes just yet.  I truly believe our minds are powerful enough to make or break our outward reality.

In my friends’ cases, most of my school mates are now in our late 30s or early 40s.  And many of them are having stressful times in recent years.  Some have careers not progressing like they had hoped.  Some have had failed marriages.  Some have had money problems.  Some of them have dealt with the deaths of their parents.  Some have dealt with serious life changing illnesses of their own.  Some of them are dealing with the highs and lows of raising children.  Stress and concern seems to dominate many of my friends’ lives.  Yet no so much for myself.  I guess I had many of my mental illness crisis situations happen to me in my twenties.  It stunk that I never had a career get off the ground because of schizophrenia.  But it did make me resilient and realize there is more to life than working and paying bills.

Sadly, many people don’t realize this until they are retired or get laid off from a job.  As a result of my friends having stress in their lives, many of them are more pessimistic about life in general than I am.  I remember how pessimistic my parents and their friends were when they were in their thirties and early forties when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.  I guess it’s my generation’s turn to be pessimists and overworked parents.  No wonder some jokers suggest that life doesn’t truly start until age forty.  Well, I’m about there 🙂  And as much as my twenties stunk, I managed to enjoy my thirties enough to make up for it.  Maybe it’s because being on disability pension I don’t have to worry about working a regular job as long as I stay out of debt and live within my means.  I can only hope my friends in my age bracket can someday find the joy and peace in their lives that I have experienced for myself in recent years.

I’ve also noticed changes in my parents and people in their age bracket.  Seems to me that many people tend to either become more calm in their senior years or more grouchy.  Fortunately for me, my grandparents were quite calm in their senior years.  In many ways, they were more accepting of my eccentric qualities and questions than even my parents.  But, after my parents became grandparents, they started mellowing too.  I almost don’t recognize the my parents in their senior years when I compare them to what I grew up with as a kid in the 1980s and 1990s.  They are more patient with their grandkids then they ever were my brother and I and our cohorts.  But I guess grandkids are nature’s reward for not killing your children when they were teenagers.  Many of the people I knew in my parents age bracket when I was a kid are now more calm in their sixties and seventies then they were in their thirties or forties.  Of course, there are few who are more sour than ever.  Fortunately they aren’t very common.

And the kids with their iPads and smart phones?  Well, they’ll eventually turn into productive members of civilization themselves.  People complained about my cohorts in the 1990s playing our Nintendo games and listening to our Tupac and Marilyn Manson music.  We turned out alright.  Back in the 1960s, people complained about the kids watching too much television and listening to The Doors and Elvis.  Even my grandparents generation were unloaded on for listening to radio programs, jazz music, and reading comic books.  And now we call them ‘The Greatest Generation.’  All young people do stupid things and the parents fear the end of civilization because of their tastes and tech. The best thing that happens to kids is they get out in the world in their twenties and work a few lousy jobs and date a few losers before they find their calling (or at least career) and their spouse or soul mates.  And then they have kids of their own and fret over them.  Makes me wonder what the teenagers of 2018 will fret about concerning their own kids come 2040 or so.  Maybe brain boosting implants will be their iPads or Ninetendo games or radio.  Stay tuned, my friends.  It is always interesting.

Being Home Alone With Mental Illness Gave Me Time To Ponder Life In General (Or Philosophy From The Sofa)

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Haven’t been writing much lately  but that is mainly because I haven’t had much to report.  I have been quite stable for weeks.  Haven’t had any real bouts of delusion or paranoia.  The excessive anger doesn’t come up very often.  The hallucinations have subsided for the most part.  The ones I do have are more annoying than fear or anger inducing.

I don’t leave my apartment as much as I would like, mainly from the holiday crowds all over the place.  It doesn’t help any that many people I know seem to be in perpetual foul moods all the time.  It seems the older I get, the less tolerance I have for irritable people.  At this point, there is no way I could go back into working in customer service.  I can no longer stomach rude and angry people, even if I get paid for it.  Money is poor compensation for having to deal with uncivilized behavior all the time.

Even though I spend most of my time alone and at home, I still keep occupied.  Been reading a lot of science journals online and watching science programs on youtube and curiosity stream.  It’s too bad that more people aren’t interested in science and tech.  Both fields are fascinating, especially the last few years with as fast as these fields have been advancing.  The sad thing is I wouldn’t know about any of these advances if I didn’t specifically make a point of seeking this information out.  The media, at least easily accessible media, really does a poor job informing people to the current state of science and technology.  As much as people use these things, I would think people would be interested in hearing about these things.  I get that people are naturally drawn to bad news, it’s how we are wired.  I must be weird in that I just got tired of hearing about bad news and tragedy all the time and started seeking out what was going right and well.  I get enough bad news and negativity just from being mentally ill, I just don’t need outside sources adding to this.

In other news, Christmas is only two weeks away.  I readily admit to being tough to shop for as I am a practicing minimalist.  I really don’t require that much to keep me occupied and entertained.  I’m sure my family doesn’t find it very thrilling that I ask for things like clothes and home decorations.  I like electronics, but there are only so many I need as my computers do most of what I need.  I don’t need music CDs as I get most of my music through youtube and spotify anymore.  I don’t need movie DVDs as I can get everything through amazon and netflix.  I have got to say, having a high speed wireless internet connection has really decluttered much of my life.  Besides spending money on food, I just don’t spend as much money on miscellaneous things anymore.  Maybe the Star Trek economy where money doesn’t really matter that much isn’t three hundred years away.  We could be witnessing the early stages of it already.

I may not make much money but I still live what I consider a fulfilled life.  I know that many people of my generation and younger lament that many of us don’t have as much money or material possessions as our parents’ generations, but with much of living being digitalized, do we really need the whole four bedroom house with the picket fence and two automobiles in the garage?  What my computer and smart phone can do would have been worth millions back in the 1970s.  I probably wouldn’t even own a car except for occasional road trips.  As it is, I may not have a lot (not by American standards anyway), but I don’t feel lacking or poor.  It was just a matter of realizing what’s really important and adjusting accordingly.  It’s a pity that it took for myself becoming mentally ill and losing a career to realize all of this.

Thoughts on Changes Since Childhood

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I’m currently at my parents’ house for a couple days for the Thanksgiving holiday.  My brother, his wife, and their four kids are here too.  We have seven of us sleeping in the basement but at least I get my old bedroom.  That way I can retreat and regroup if need be.  But my brothers’ kids are well behaved and old enough they shouldn’t give me many problems.

This is the first time in months I have been back to my old childhood home.  A lot has changed in this town since I moved out in 2005.  For one, all of my old high school friends have moved away.  The cousins that stayed have families of their own.  Most of my old teachers have retired or moved to bigger schools.  All my grandparents and a couple of my uncles have died.  My old grade school was torn down.  The retail store I worked in during the summers went out of business.  In many ways this isn’t the same town I grew up in during the 80s and 90s.  I haven’t been getting back to my parents’ place much the last several years as none of my old friends live around here anymore.  In many ways, this is no longer my town.  It doesn’t feel like home and it hasn’t for several years.

I bring up growing up and the changes my parents’ place have gone under because, with my mental illness, those years I grew up here seem like someone else’s life.  I started having problems with depression and anxiety when I was seventeen.  I was doing quite well in school and involved in many different activities.  It seemed like I was on the fast track to a career and life of my dreams, at least that was until the depression and anxiety started.  Twenty years later, my seventeen year old self wouldn’t even recognize the thirty seven year old man I am now.  I imagine my seventeen year old self would have seen who I am today as a failure.  Back then I knew nothing of mental illness and disability.  Like many teenagers, I also didn’t have as much empathy as many adults who have had their ups and downs, wins and losses.

If nothing else, fighting this mental illness for twenty years has taught me how to have more empathy for people different than myself.  It has taught me patience and how to accept things I can’t change.  It has taught me that, contrary to popular belief, life isn’t about keeping up with other people.  Life is mainly about competing with your self and being the best you that you are capable of being.  He who dies with the most toys is just as dead as anyone else in the cemetery.

I haven’t been giving much time to reflecting on the past for the last few years.  I have mainly been focused on the present and future possibilities.  I normally have little use for nostalgic thoughts.  But I’m sure having them now that I’m at my childhood home for the first time in months.  I guess the nostalgia has shown me how much I lost because of this mental illness.  Yet, in spite of the life that never was, I think I still have a great deal to stay alive for.  I’m interested to see what the next twenty years in this life of mental illness will show me.  I can only guess what changes will have come by the time 2037 rolls in.

Odd Occurrences and Conflicts

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Had an odd incident over the weekend.  One of our tenants accidentally dropped his house keys down the crack in the elevator floor.  The keys fell into the elevator shaft.  And he cursed me out when I asked him what happened.  This was an elderly tenant who doesn’t believe in things like mental illness or even disability insurance.  I was taken aback at first by the viciousness of this tenant.  But I stayed clam and didn’t respond to his verbal attack.  I’m glad that I didn’t yell back at him.  But I do wonder why he was mad at me for his gaffe.

Over the years, whether at work, school, or in public, the vast majority of the verbal abuse and threats I have received have been from people over fifty years old.  I never could understand why elder people hate younger people.  Yeah I’m getting older myself and having unexplainable aches and pains.  But I refuse, flat out refuse, to take out my problems on young people or anybody else for that matter.  I don’t understand people in general, but I especially don’t understand elderly people or people in places of authority.  From what I have seen, it seems the older a person gets, the less empathy they have and the more impatient they become.

When I was working retail and fast food, the vast majority of the verbal abuse I got for not working fast enough came from elderly people.  Sure I met some really cool elderly people who treated me well.  But I just don’t understand why some people become mean and uncaring when they become older.  I mean, older people are more apt to be serious about religion than younger people.  Common sense would say those people would be more forgiving, loving, and charitable.  Not always the case.  I for one will not pull the same abuse on young people like what was pulled on me.  I refuse to complain about how they dress.  I refuse to complain about their music or movies or media.  I’ve had my elders complain about me and my peers since I was in grade school.  As if nine year olds are responsible for my country having such low test scores compared to most other developed countries.  I just want to show more compassion and understanding to all people, younger and older alike, than what has been shown to me over the years.  Humans must be the only species on the planet that actively seek to sabotage their offspring.

I just get tired of all the arguing and fighting all the time.  I just want to live in peace with everyone as much as possible.  I’m tired of always feeling like I have to look over my shoulder and be on guard at all times.  Civilized people aren’t supposed look for arguments or fights.  But that isn’t what I’ve seen for a long time.