By Martin Geddes  September 24, 2022

It has to get really bad soon in order to get really good later

If you have an addiction, then the way to deal with it is to fully explore the negative consequences, and not be in denial of them at the moment of (poor) choice. We live in a society addicted to technological convenience, careless consumption, and idolatry (not least of the self). Underpinning all this are compromised and captured systems of finance, religion, education, media, law, etc. — which will all have to collapse and be reformed in time.

Today’s short video introduces the idea of the “paradox of change”, which is that to get to a better world, we have to fully immerse ourselves in the awfulness of the present one. No more putting off the consequences of the poor choices of the past! That means we need a financial, economic, political, cultural, and social implosion the likes of which has not happened in living memory. And that’s great! Because it is the fastest and least painful way through this mess.

Maybe I am projecting my own stuff, my my guess is that we are all quietly struggling with our own demons right now, as the looming change is hard to confront. It is easy to focus on how the geopolitical world is damaged, but less comfortable to face up to how we degrade ourselves. An apocalypse is merely the revealing of what is, and the stripping away of pretence and illusion. We may not like that it has to get superficially worse in order to become fundamentally better, but that is how the world works — paradoxically.