Do you not dream of labor? Quit that job. Rather not spend a third of your life paying triple the asking price for that house. Trade in those decades of mortgage debt for life in your RV instead.
Researching micro wedding ideas and $200 rings on Pinterest? Do it! Forsake the $30,000 church nuptials tradition, and if you like, exchange progressive vows in a quiet ceremony led by a lesbian spiritualist instead.
The Age of Aquarius has arrived. (Thanks for paving the way, Hippies!) And if you’re somehow still not aware that a whole lot of fed-up people are in the process of burning this motherfucker down to form a saner world, read on. Hopefully this short list of modern movements, concepts, and phenomena will pique your interest in some of the changes that are underway:
- I Do Not Dream of Labor
- The rise of the Digital Nomad
- Experiences over things
- Black Lives Matter
- Me Too
- The legalization of marijuana
- The continued movement for gender equality
- Droves of Millennials leaving the church and organized religion altogether
- The rise of cryptocurrency
- A steady decline in marriage rates
- Burn the Cape (a subcultural wave of thought shared by a bunch of Black women who are deconstructing their superwoman complex in favor of rest, relationships that are not hallmarked by suffering, and travel… a concept that truly hits home for me)
- Blaxit
- Ethical Nonmonogamy
- Incel/MGTOW/Red Pill vs Pink Pill/Hypergamy/Level Up (the war for family, wealth, and intimate partner ideals)
"It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
In every area of life that matters, people are casting off what they perceive as dogma, oppression, useless social mores, or self-destructive thought patterns. And it’s making the world a very different place. Tectonic plates of thought shift with time. When they start to form whole new landscapes, you might as well evaluate your foundation and decide how you want to build your new home.
I wanna include you in my brand new world. Care to join? Hit that blue follow button at the bottom of this page for more, and be a sweetheart and share. You know ya want to.
Fuck this job! I do not dream of labor
Maybe the phrase is a bit hyperbolic. “I do not dream of labor” doesn’t mean people don’t want to work. They just don’t want work to be their lives. And they dream of doing work they can be proud of, work that holds meaning to them and brings good into the world.
They don’t want to spend the bulk of their waking hours doing soul-crushing work for slave wages only to be evicted in the midst of a pandemic, for example. And now people have options.
The Great Resignation is being led by thirty and forty-somethings in middle management, the same types who survived the Great Recession by pimping the gig economy. These people are witnessing a wave of social media celebrities go from nothing to gaining complete financial independence through sponsorships and Super Chats, just by sitting in their bedrooms and talking for hours on end.
We still believe in the pride of work, in making a contribution, in a sense of purpose. We just know there are other ways to do this. There are, in fact, many other ways to do this.
Capitalism or Nah?
Some are waking up to the idea that money itself is not evil, and they’re learning to leverage it for a better life. “Getting to the bag” is not a mantra that assumes money can bring happiness, but a proclamation that recognizes its power to afford meaningful options.
Others are realizing that the love of money is what creates so much worldwide imbalance. For them, hustle mania just isn’t worth it, and the grind makes it hard to live the very life we’re all trying so hard to enjoy. They’re choosing to live minimally and maximizing their joy instead.
All of this is happening while the very fundamental nature of money is changing. Cryptocurrency has emerged, and we’ve seen the most volatile period of its launch come and go. Now Fortune 500 companies and financial institutions the world over are clamoring to develop avenues through which consumers can buy and sell digital currencies on their platforms.
Wealth is being redefined as people harness the opportunity to become their own banks, and financial freedom is taking on a lot of new meanings.
Experiences Over Things
It started with a bunch of disillusioned debt slaves. They couldn’t buy houses with student loan debt in the quintuple digits. They couldn’t find jobs. They couldn’t afford to get married and have kids. They could hardly even afford to date.
So, some joined the Tiny House Revolution or started living the RV life, understanding that life could still be damn good, if they could see some cool parts of the world and build meaningful relationships with interesting people.
Some went on the road and across the seas and tapped into a thriving digital ecosystem of location-independent people teaching English, writing, creating art, day trading, or freelancing from their laptops. This is the next wave of the digital nomad phenomenon, and it has opened a whole new world of possibilities for counterbalancing work and life.
Your ego is your friend. Now stop this nonsense.
Who today isn’t a self-proclaimed coach or guru telling us to meditate, go vegan, and kill off our egos? I’ll admit, the fact that anybody with a social media account can throw up a couple of memes and ten recycled quotes and call themselves an expert on life gets annoying. But I can appreciate that many of us finally understand that self-awareness, therapy, and personal development are worthwhile endeavors.
It’s just that when the love and light crowd spews this nonsense about dismantling the ego, I get…well actually, I get pissed. (And now I rant.)
Can we rethink this trend, please? Self-care, self-love, and self-preservation are all necessary functions of the ego. One cannot self-actualize without awareness of self, can they? Your ego is simply your brain’s ability to distinguish you as an individual, one with unique dreams, needs, desires, goals, and purpose in this world.
So, while you’re chanting the Gayatri Mantra tomorrow morning with latte in hand, or flowing through your next sequence of asanas, please consider rethinking this mass attack on the human ego. I would urge you to balance your ego instead, so that your pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness doesn’t impede upon anyone else’s.
We See Color
We know we’re black, those of us who are. We can’t afford to ignore that.
We don’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend color and race don’t matter or that the problem of racism doesn’t exist—at least some of us don’t. The woke among us see color. All colors. And lately, we’ve have been seeing red. The Black Lives Matter movement and the uprisings of 2020 have not at all died in our minds, even as the Pandemic holds center stage, and the news cycles moves on.
So, Blaxit is well underway. I don’t believe it is any coincidence that Ghana’s Year of Return happened just before all COVID-19 hell broke loose. Consider it divine intervention, a call from the ancestors, or the Fabulous Unknown Universe writing a big message in the clouds for Diasporans to finally realize that there are different ways to live.
Sure “isms” are everywhere—classism, sexism, poverty, elitism, and nepotism are the human condition. Utopia exists nowhere. Racism is everywhere—but it is not fatal everywhere.
Many black Americans are realizing that our ancestors did not suffer so that we could be shackled to American land with no other choice, in a perpetual state of begging and reacting to traumatic events. We have options. And there is an entire world out there that thousands of us have finally begun to explore, some with one-way tickets in hand.
The Sacred Cunt Returns: Sexual Autonomy, Consent, and the Great Whore/Divine Feminine
While the Me Too movement has blown the cover off the general sense of entitlement that too many men have had toward women’s bodies, there’s been something else cooking in the backyard. It smells of sage and rose petals with hints of cinnamon. Florida Water, perhaps?
Is that Beyonce or the Whore of Babylon from the book of Revelation bursting onto the scene in a flood?
Well hell, if so, that doesn’t sound like an apocalypse to me. Sounds like the end of the world as we know it, like the pendulum of time is swinging back in the right direction.
Of course, these pendulum swings never seem to rest in the middle ground of peace. So, let’s be careful, ladies. It’s been said that to fully honor the feminine, one must also understand, value and honor its masculine counterpart. Balance. Otherwise, I think we end up right back where we started.
*If you have a problem with the use of terms like “cunt”, in a context where the intent is not to insult, check your projections…and Wikipedia.
What is Love?
What is love? Is it possessing another’s heart and soul, exclusivity, and a lifelong promise to stay together? Is it freedom, acceptance, and the willingness to let go when the natural course of life dictates change? Is it a man as head of the household, conquering the world and paying the bills while the Mrs. takes care of home? Or it is every person doing what they do best in complimentary partnership?
Monogamy. Is it obsolete? Is it better to leave one’s options open? Or does the Paradox of Choice—rendered by social media culture, diminished attention spans, and the breakdown of family and dating cultures—leave us in a constant state of limbo, unwilling to dig our heels in and make progress in any romantic endeavor?
I think the answers can lie in the extremes, in the middle ground, and all along the spectrum of preferences, but there is a trend toward detachment. And I’m convinced that is a sign of devolvement as more and more people choose to wallow in the shallow end of love.
One thing I’m sure of is that love, for me, is friendship, and even that concept has fundamentally changed. Now we’ve learned to communicate through truncated words and phrases on screens, and we can eliminate the nuances of tone, facial expressions, and the need to accommodate another’s presence.
Have we really learned to enjoy our own company?
I’ve noticed that on social media, suddenly everybody’s an introvert. Everybody’s doing a seasonal purge of their friends lists and proclaiming how happy they are in solitude but making sure all 1,800 of their remaining “friends” and followers know about it.
Are there really that many introverts in the world, or has a pandemic of antisocial, narcissistic behavior emerged in lieu of people skills? Is this the new human, someone who erects a fishbowl around their life—sans actual thriving relationships in the real world—and invites all of humanity to watch them wander around alone?
Curious to see where this trend will lead…
Why Marriage Doesn’t Work for Our Generation
Well, let’s be honest, it didn’t work for many generations before us either—at least not the way people of our time think it should. For those who understand its origins, marriage still serves a very important purpose.
However, take an institution that was designed to facilitate socio-economic alliances and try to turn it into something that generates selflessness, empathy, and endless romance, and you’re bound to fail. Plus, it seems that relationships still require good old-fashioned effort—a concept to which many have always been averse.
Western marriage, as we know it, doesn’t work. A 50-60% failure rate in any other area of life would certainly be considered unacceptable. Fortunately, we are humans with the power to create our own paths and manifest our own destinies.
Many are discovering new frameworks for lifelong partnership and the care of children that do not require reliance on traditional expectations, morals, or social constructs. They’re finding other ways to build wealth together that don’t just involve exchanging vows.
And for those who still choose to go the traditional route, they’re strengthening their relationships with the help of therapists and revived notions of equitable treatment that honor everyone involved.
Where is God?
Where is God? I’m not asking that age-old question, “where is God in the midst of all this human suffering?” I’m referring to the question of where one finds divinity—the power to create life, inner abundance, and the things that truly matter. Does Organized Religion have the monopoly on God’s presence?
As the face of our nation changes, some are doubling down on traditional beliefs and asserting that moral fortitude and devotion to a higher power (specifically, the one they believe in) will right our earthly ship.
Others have concluded that religion is a major source of human suffering. They’re convinced that in all the time that humans have clung to faith in something outside themselves, they’ve stunted their own growth, shirked their own responsibilities, and perpetrated all the ills that faith was supposed to save us from.
The latter crowd make up the sage-burning, tarot-card reading, Christian de-convert types who have replaced Sunday morning worship service with outdoor meditations and offerings at the river. Contrary to traditional opinion, they didn’t leave the church because someone hurt their feelings, or because something tragic happened to make them angry with God. They don’t have a problem with God, those who choose to believe in the concept. And God never left them.
They simply evolved, as humans are designed to. This next stop on the path of spiritual trends won’t reveal all the answers, just like any other experience in the journey, but for many, it is a critical next step.
Survival of the Flexible
Thought waves come and go. One idea prevails long enough for its inevitable flaws to be revealed. Then, like passengers on a ship tossed by the sea, everybody is flung to the opposite side of ideals in the next round of trends.
Right now, we’re seeing the backlash, boylash, and whitelash that are all part of the struggle for power. In every movement, someone’s bound to become a little too dogmatic, take shit too far, and give critics ammo to label well-meaning ideals as fraudulent.
We’ll make saints out of bums like us and crucify those who hold the mirror to our flawed reflections, as we always have. Will anything get better? In some ways, I think they will, but progress isn’t linear.
As we attempt to evolve, I think it’s worth remembering that Darwin never said that it is strong who survive. According to his theory of evolution, it is the “fittest” who do, those who can adapt to changing climates and circumstances and continue duplicating their genetic codes across the globe, come hell or high water.
(We can debate whether Darwin’s theory of evolution was a heavy-handed projection of imperialistic thought or a true assessment of natural principles some other time. Nonetheless,)
Fitness requires flexibility. Since change is one of the principal constants in this life, I think it’s in our best interest to question everything and curiously study these waves of thought as they come and go. We’ll have to bushwhack through some discomfort and confront our fears, but it’s probably better to do that by choice rather than at the crack of Time’s vicious whip.
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