The feeling that you’re living in a dystopia and nobody seems to mind.

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I am not a hopeful person by nature. Nor am I a pessimist (despite popular opinions to the contrary). Rather, I see myself as human neutron. A particle of neither positive nor negative charge… just sitting around in a nucleus… being heavy. Or, if you’d prefer a geopolitical analogy, I’m Switzerland. Unaffiliated. Unbothered. Cooly nibbling my chocolate and winding my watch while everyone debates whether we should feel good about ourselves.

It’s not that I don’t see hope’s value. Far from it. Hope has a place, for sure. But when it’s put to words… something about it gets my hackles up. I feel about hope the same way that I feel about Neutral Milk Hotel: I respect it in theory, but I’d rather not have to listen to it.

But, all that crankiness aside – I think we might need to start actually caring about things again. Maybe just a little. Because literally everything is breaking down – the government, civil order, the environment, fucking movie theaters are dying – and we stand by and watch like it’s normal.

How did a life of endless rupture, dysfunction, violence, and cynicism become as ordinary as a fucking Wednesday? Did I sleep through some meeting? Are we too entertained? Too tired? Hopeless? Look, I find activists just as obnoxious, simplistic, and annoying as the next guy… but maybe we need to throw in with them a little bit? Help those Gen Z kids (I know, they’re exhausting, but still) forestall complete environmental and civil catastrophe? Because this… all of this… this can’t hold forever.

Eventually, whatever uneasy, liminal peace we’re in… it’s gonna crack. I just hope it happens while I’m still young enough to either fight against it, or run away from it. I’ve run the numbers, and I hate to say: It’s not looking good for me. I’m 40 years old right now. If things continue as they’ve been… when it all goes to shit – when the cannibal hordes are burning down the cities and the tidal waves blot out the sky, I’ll be the sweet old man in a wheelchair who the young people have to leave behind.

I’m tired, man.