EMPOWERMENT

Honestly, How Do You Want Next Year to Unfold?

It is up to you, not in the hands of others

“The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there’s only one other choice.” — Doug Larson, journalist

I read over ten articles today across news and social media confirming that 2024 is going to be the worst year in history.

According to the pundits, we are either going to freeze or burn to death, perish in a civil war, run out of water, fall into anarchy, or live under fascism.

All of the articles are possible outcomes. I just don’t believe they are probable.

What most of the articles have in common is a sense of fatalism. They have handed over all power to external actors and influences.

We are doomed because we are, well, doomed.

I’ve lived the end-of-world narrative for over fifty years. While I was in school in the 1970s–80s, we were shown movies about the impending nuclear war and communist threat. I think this is hard for people who didn’t live through this time to truly understand the gravity and effect it had on people.

As seven-year-olds, we would do drills in class to hide under our desks and move away from exploding windows. The movies showed survival tactics after the decimation.

I was trying to contemplate why a bunch of stupid adults wanted to blow up the world. I just wanted to play with my GI-Joe dolls and slide down hills in cardboard boxes.

In the early 80s, The Day After movie was shown to audiences around the world. I was graduating from high school and heading off to college. We were at the height of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union.

Take a moment to watch a news report interviewing people after the viewing of the movie.

If you ever wanted to feel incapacitated and powerless then this was the time. The world had been living through this for over forty years since the end of WW II when the world split along ideological lines.

So doom and gloom is nothing new. Overpopulation and the hole in the ozone had everyone terrified. There was no going back from the ozone issue. However, at the end of last year, scientists said the ozone had recovered substantially and was on track to heal entirely. Of course, the next day had a report saying this wasn’t true.

At the core of these scenarios, there is a truth. But much more often than not, these outcomes do not come to pass. It doesn’t mean that one or some won’t occur. It just means some people love the drama and catastrophizing.

And what we are doing in these situations is handing over our entire agency to a bunch of politicians and “experts”.

So we sit in 2024 with a deluge of apocalyptic scenarios.

They may happen, they may not. But we have a choice. We can either smile or frown. We can either do or not do.

What is different today is the flow of information with the advent of technology. It has heightened the tension between individuals because now we are all in each other’s homes. We have been socialized to look at the world in a binary fashion, to take sides. Things are either right or wrong.

But the trap we have fallen into is that we fail to make the distinction between being right and doing right. Too many people hold the I-told-you-so card in their back pocket in case the outcome is not to their liking.

This is the same as the financial pundits telling us that they predicted the prior year’s stock market trends or that we were all going to burn to death because of a hole in the ozone.

The fact is that no one really knows what is going to happen. And we are just being victims when we say that we don’t have power and influence.

Trudeau, Trump, Netanyahu, Biden, and the rest are there because we put them there. Putting aside certain exceptions in dictatorial countries, leaders are put in place because of the people.

We may not like the choice. We can say that they tricked us with their propaganda and advertising. We can even say the elections were rigged as happens almost every election cycle in every country. There are always disputes.

But we hold the power. We vote and we can act.

When we forget this and only turn on each other, we relinquish our voice and power. And the media loves us for it. Every angry Tweet and post puts money into Musk and Zuckerberg’s accounts.

We don’t embrace the irony of this issue. The angrier we are the more money they make. Not a little but billions and billions. Then we get angry at them because the very rich get richer.

Regardless of what anyone says, the people hold the power. We vote and we buy. Those two actions alone dictate how the world operates.

If you can’t stand the alcohol, fast food, and pharma companies, then don’t buy their products and don’t put yourself in a position where you need them.

If you don’t like a candidate then don’t spend two years being angry at the prospect of them possibly winning. Discuss constructively and positively with others as to how you feel and then vote.

While we bicker on social media and around our dining room tables, money pours into billionaires’ wallets, wars unfold, the homeless are on the streets, children are starving, women are being abused, and our oceans are dying.

Instead of living in fear and then turning on our friends and family, why not take control? Why waste all this energy on hate rather than action?

Sometimes it is stubbornness. We want our gloomy predictions to be right so we can tell our friends we were right if the outcome isn’t to our liking. But why not help the situation and make it right? Look in the mirror and ask yourself what do you really want this year for yourself and the world?

If you genuinely want peace then be peaceful.

Don’t throw malice around on social media. Don’t attack your family. Don’t gossip and add to the malaise. Turn off any biased news site such as Fox, CNN, The Guardian, and MSNBC and read Reuters or Axios. Be passionate.

If angry, understand where it is coming from. Most anger doesn’t come from a place of love.

We are at the start of a new year. There are 8 billion of us who hold the cards.

Consider every action as a part of the whole. This is how we fix and heal the world. Not with bombs, advertising, and propaganda but with love and kindness.

Peace.

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