Much of what we take for granted now may vanish over the next decade. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
I reckon it prudent to see the next decade as a journey through a wilderness few of us have experienced.
Marketing has seized “your journey” by the throat. The marketing of everything from storage facilities to downtowns now references “your journey,” with the primary message being your journey will be fruitful, fun, exciting–but also safe and secure. In other words, our journey will follow well-worn, well-marked trails, and the outcome will always be positive. If anything untoward happens, someone will be available to get “the journey” back on track.
In other words, “the journey” is never through a wilderness without trails or markers where help is unavailable, where we’re on our own and the journey’s outcome is uncertain, and fear is the companion who is always by our side.
In the marketed “journey,” all you need is money: to rent a storage space or an apartment, to pay tuition or a plane ticket and sturdy boots. This is the essence of what I call Ultra-Processed Life: adventure that is safe and certain can be purchased off the shelf.
We take all the intricate structures that make this possible for granted, and have little grasp of what life is like without them. As long as we have money, we have power. But in a wilderness, there’s nothing to buy and no one to pay to make it all go away. In a wilderness, we experience the limits of our power. Stripped of all the structures that make life certain and safe, we come face to face with our own powerlessness.
Many of us have already experienced powerlessness in our childhood. We were repeatedly moved around against our wishes by adults, step-parents were imposed on us and then dispensed with, and we were dropped into schools where we were vulnerable to bullying. Certainty and safety were ephemeral, and we lacked the tools and strengths offered by adulthood.
