I'm not a particularly sentimental person. While I admittedly need to back off my obsession with the future (which includes my end), I'm quite content to live today, in this moment, with little desire to go back to a previous time. Age and experience brings wisdom, and new things to learn every single day. That is a gift. With that in mind, there are certain conditions that I wouldn't mind being more prevalent today.
The irony is not lost on me that to be disappointed by the effects of technology on society is odd given that technology is the underpinning of my reasonably comfortable life and long-term (read: not liquid) wealth. But over the last year, I just want less tech. I get increasingly bored with phone screens, find that the legit uses for AI rare and I'm kinda sad for folks that don't look up at the world now and then. You know, "touch grass," as the kids say. I've been very intentional in the last year of the impulse to pull out my phone for even the most minor moment of boredom. Even for someone who deals with the worst brain spirals, I revel in the moment to just stare into space and be bored. If anything, it reduces the spirals.
Short attention spans also seem to have reduced our ability to take in long-form entertainment. No one listens to albums anymore. I mean, sit down, turn it on, and just soak it up for a bit, no visuals to accompany it. Go see a play or a musical. Don't flinch at a movie that's two hours long. Play video games that really require some time invested.
Be weird. The performative nonsense that the Internet has created seems to have made it even more important to conform, and it's fucking boring. If there's one thing that was satisfying about the 90's, and to a lesser degree the early aughts, it was that questioning authority and institutions was cool, and in the interest of making things better. Even if it was divisive then, the dividing line wasn't created by one side endorsing cruelty toward anyone different as the default cause.
I feel like this might be a returning, emerging vibe. My generation doesn't look anything like Boomers, or appear "old" in the same way. Millennials are moving beyond, "Is this it?" and driving change. And for whatever reason, Gen-Z is looking at us and emulating our scene, pre-Internet. Not sure why they want to go back to vinyl and film cameras, but who am I to judge?
Let's go back to real things, human connection and the wisdom to know what things to be serious about.
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