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Surprisingly, I don't have much of a hangover after last night's festivities and having my daughter wake us up at 615 this morning. I did get to go back to sleep for a while afterward though. 

![IMG_20191122_215059_1.jpg](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmUC3cZLYYzqiNGcJ2XmGiiE3EnnkJn8x21qQHPdc9d6Qn)

When I was at high school and very ill, I used to find the relative problems faced by my friends interesting. While they worried about whether a boy or girl liked them and if their parents would extend their curfew, I considered much graver matters concerning my health. It didn't upset me, I understood that we are all in different life positions. 

With the introduction of the internet and the ability to share mass content from millions of sources, we now have a much wider lens on how different positions we may have. While last night I was drinking with colleagues and listening to music, in other parts of the world there are people fighting for their freedom, their food, their lives. 

The world we have created is a mess and filled with contradictions and juxtapositions that might have been hidden from most earlier. Should I feel ashamed to enjoy parts of my life while others suffer in theirs?

I don't think so. Like it or not, we all play a part in our conditions and with the increasing volatility in nearly all parts of society, we can see how fragile the system we have supported is. With the global view we have made, we have also tied our fates to the fates of others, something that we can see when considering the world economy as there are very few nations that are not intertwined and therefore affected by or influential on the entire market.

The instability we see in countries today is a symptom of systems that are broken and no matter how many times they are patched, they are fundamentally flawed by design. The troubles that are arising into the spotlights now are going to increase and spread and unless we find a replacement system that works, implement and support it, the suffering is going to increase further also. 

Unfortunately, humans are the dumbest  smart animals that exist, as we are individually slow to adapt and we fight to hold onto what we know even if it is not worth the effort, even if it is harmful. Our quest for power is both an innovative force and a tool to inflict pain as there may be no bounds on our hunger, no limitation on greed.

Just think about what is happening in a place like Hong Kong at the moment and the people involved on all sides. Once upon a time they were all children with hopes and dreams of becoming something that meant something to them. How many imagined themselves protesting in the streets and how many of the police desired to beat protestors in the same streets? 

This behavior is systematic and passed down the line of what we know, what we experience and what we believe. If the goal of the system is to improve quality of life, the system is truly broken. Can we do better?

Yes. And we are. We have the best average living conditions at any point in the history of humankind, but there is still a massive amount of problems we face, and enormous disparities in possibility for individuals. However, maybe we are on the road to something better once we as those individuals start to take the responsibility for our experience into our own hands and stop relying on others to provide the world for us. 

The challenge is that those we have chosen to empower are not likely going to want to give up the power they now hold. No one likes change, it is even worse if that change is a perceived cost. Resistance and violence becomes the road forward, even though almost no one wishes for violence just for the sake of it. Yet, we can all seemingly justify it when we feel that the only other option is a personal loss.

If there was such a thing as a utopian world, we are far from it, but I don't think we can ever come close to one of we rely on others for our sense of security and freedom. Two things that people want without recognising the conflict between the positions. We have created an infinite loop that can be used to move us to give up all that we hold dear.

It keeps us entertained. 

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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