Imagine being on a high speed train driving through the lovely countryside. The train is highly sophisticated with all the bells and whistles of modern technology and the operators are looking at their complex dashboards and talking with each other about the readings. The passengers are looking out the windows at the beautiful views and also watching movies on HD TV’s while being served delicious meals and drinking wine. What no one is talking about is the fact that the train is on a collision course with a huge boulder that has fallen over the train tracks in the distance. Somehow, the passengers are unconsciously picking up on this impending doom and are starting to find problems in their relationships, worrying about their finances and are starting to fall ill due to this hard to place existential stress and anxiety they are feeling.
The Modern Epidemics We Face
I invite you to stick your head out of the window and look at what is really happening in the world. While technology has solved so many of our problems and raised the standard of living significantly, we are now experiencing a host of second order problems. From 50%+ divorce rate, depression, mass shooting epidemic, drug use, obesity, and lack of trust in the government to actually solve any of these problems, it feels like the wheels are falling off the bus.
The Childcare and Eldercare Crisis
I had 2 friends call me upset with how terrible of a job our friend group did with supporting them with their newborn. I felt guilt and shame for not being there – I was too caught up in my own pursuits of making more money and frankly never had it modeled for me growing up here in the US so I didn’t even know how to be helpful and literally had to Google it.
What does that say about our society? To me, it points to the fragmentation of the middle class family. It is customary for the children to go away to college, find a job in a different part of the country, and then connect with their family at holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. As babies are born and parents grow old, the children are put into childcare as early as 3 months old and the parents are put into depressing assisted living facilities, both of which cost a fortune.
It doesn’t make sense to me – why would we pay strangers to take care of our children and our parents when we could all just take care of each other?
Impending Chaos and Carnage
In his book The Changing World Order, Ray Dalio does a deep dive on how empires grow and collapse. He predicts that there is a 35% chance of a global war in the next 10 years as well as a similar likelihood of civil war in the U.S. His markers indicate that the U.S. empire has entered decline and at some point the U.S. dollar will no longer be the global reserve currency. That context coupled with the impact of the Covid pandemic and the impact it has had on global supply chains as well as the current conflict in Ukraine and the impact on energy prices has me feeling the fragility and interdependence of our global economy.
The Opportunity in the Crisis
So how do we get off this train? How do we make sure our families will be safe and survive the impending carnage and chaos?
It would make me feel alot safer knowing that I am able to have access to my own water, grow my own food and produce my own energy on my own property. Just like how we did life on the farm that I grew up on in Portugal.
It’s time to build a lifeboat to get us to the next paradigm as this one falls apart.
