Knowledge is sometimes a curse. I often find myself at the supermarket contemplating the “old world” that no longer exists , but we still live in, and the “new world” that is being born , of which we have yet to witness the full scope.
Nowhere is this stark difference in realities more evident than a supermarket or grocery store
Just today I saw:
-An elderly women (in her 70s easily) working as a cashier. Likely a prosperous career path when she was a teenager, I wonder if she works today out of boredom in retirement and a desire to leave the house, or out of necessity for survival, unable to live solely off her savings any longer, and without enough viable skills to compete in today’s job market
-A woman with young children clipping coupons for basic necessities. She battles fiat debasement every single day without knowing it, and may be just barely scraping by as it is, possibly unaware of just how much worse it could get
-An elderly man, also in his 70s , feeding a stack of tickets into a lottery machine. Perhaps living off a fixed income, this man is literally feeding his lifeblood into a gambling addiction. Maybe he’s a multi millionaire and can afford to do so, but is it more likely he’s also barely scraping by, and is feeding his limited and dwindling savings back to the beast that has already taken so much from him?
When I see these people, day after day, week after week, in my local store alone, I am reminded of the hundreds of millions of people just like them in my country, not to mention the billions like them around the world.
I don’t look upon these people with pity, or with disdain , thinking they are “uneducated” or “misinformed”. Quite the opposite . My heart goes out to them. I fear in my souls for them.
As the world sheds its skin of the old systems and institutions these people grew up in, and as technology beyond comprehension unveils itself daily , how will these people be affected? Their jobs, their loved ones, their safety, their mental sanity, their sense of meaning; all of these things will be on the table of uncertainty in the coming decades.
As bitcoiners , we find truth and purpose in our convictions through study and critical thinking . Even if we are dead wrong about the thesis of Bitcoin, the conditions from which it was born still exist; They are history, They already happened. So even if bitcoin as we know it fails, the endgame of the conditions of its creation will still happen, one way or another.
Not to mention AI, robotics , super computing , drone technology , and the digital panopticon of government surveillance; all breaking down our doors and barging their way into our society as we speak.
So when I’m at the store checking out with Apple Pay, using a credit card that rewards me with bitcoin and automatically withdraws to my ColdCard at a certain threshold, I no longer take pride in knowing that I am ahead of the curve.
A small part of me feels shame in knowing so many people are at risk of being left so far behind.