The Butt Ugly Weblog

Precognitions

(Sorry, a bit of a drunken rant follows.)

I remember back in 2017-2018 telling a friend that "we should now enjoy these days, because it will only get worse from now on." I was specifically referring to the global climate catastrophe and the loss of wildlife, but considering how things went down from there, I'll accept my ahort-term victory prize as well: The global pandemic, the death throes of a superpower attacking Ukraine resulting in a global food crisis, rise of fascism, and my marriage going down the drain (which seems pretty small all things considered).

The thing is, none of those really my underlying predictions. Things will continue to go, in general, for the worse for the foreseeable future. Of course we will also find short-term victories: I am very glad to see the electrification of transport which is going pretty well (even if it will mean a huge reshuffling of jobs and automakers); the decarbonization of power generation (not going so well, but at least there is a possible path to victory); new technologies for agriculture (but maybe too little too late?); The global crusade against fake news (though it raises many, many questions); etc. I believe we will see in the next couple of decades a big reshuffling of power and money from old hands to new hands and vice versa, as we're trying to cope with the rapidly changing environment.

So, I think the important topic for everyone for the next 20 years should be resilience and adaptability. I don't believe in survivalism, because that's a last ditch effort to stay alive at any cost. Instead, I believe the winning societies will be the ones that embrace compassion, resilience, adaptability and reason. The Nordic countries are well suited for the future, because we already embody a large number of those qualities. I also believe that companies that are positively contributing towards a better society and embrace the same values do stand a better chance for long-term success, no matter the business model itself.

As I am aging, this realization is becoming increasingly important to me - it's not enough for a job to be interesting; I believe it has to contribute positively to the society. I've had a few offers from ad companies, and on some level they are interesting to me: big data, high optimization, lots of potential. But I have always turned these offers down because I just can't see how ad tech positively affects the society. Now I work for a co-op (or a conglomeration of co-ops to be precise) to bring food to people. This matters to me, on a level that an ad service could never do.

I don't really know what I'm aiming at here. I just have a bad feeling about the future, and I just hope I can make a small positive impact somewhere, somehow. For your kids and mine.