Do you remember when 2021 seemed like the distant future, impossible to fathom as anything than other a dystopian post-apocalyptic world filled with robber barons and highwaymen?
And yet, here we are. Then again, 2020 was something of an apocalypse and the world is lilting ever more toward dystopia.
In the enduring words of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode “Where do we go from here”?
It seems to me that our choices are to continue to devolve until our society is fractured, we need heavy weaponry just to get enough food to eat and we go to war over petty differences or we find some duct tape and start patching this shit back together.
Of course, patches don’t hold forever, which might actually be part of how we got where we are. If we want to do more than hold on to the status quo, we’re going to need to build something new. What does that look like?
Well, I know what I would like to see. I want a society that takes care of its most vulnerable, where each person enters life on a level playing field, where no one dies because they can’t afford to see a doctor, where basic human rights are respected and honored, where everyone pays their fair share and the government curtails things that threaten our existence (pollution, greed, unfair business practices).
How do we get there? If I knew that, I’d run for office. Well, no, I wouldn’t because I’m an agoraphobic introvert. But, you know what I mean. I do know that we never will get there if we can’t come to a place where our political dialog is not bogged down by the fundamental issues we have right now, where one half of the country wants to destroy anyone who is different than them (whether that difference is gender, sexual orientation, race, financial status or anything else), and the other half wants to destroy the first half.
Until we realize that no one is more equal than another, until we tax corporations and billionaires, until we fund schools, until we realize that healthcare is not a privilege of the rich…until we start to actually care about the other people in this country, patches are all we’re going to get.
We’re living in the future, I just wish it was more Star Trek and less Mad Max. Happy 2021, Readers. Be kind recklessly. Give love unconditionally. Be the change.
Cover Photo by Artem Labunsky on Unsplash
