Here be dragons
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This was inspired by something I saw on Shalim Khan's blog. Take a second to read it (it's short).
I'd guess pretty much everyone has felt that way in their life at one point or another, myself included. It sucks. You get out of college with all its simulation of progression, and get thrust into unstructured Real Lifeâ„¢. Then, you get the first job and have the realization that that's it: you work for forty years, then retire, and then die.
Except, that's a lie. As anyone who was alive in the 90s knows, you are not your job. You're a living, breathing, human being who is too valuable to waste on just work and Netflix.
There was a line in Khan's post that caught my eye:
What happened to the dragons and the monsters?
In my opinion: they're everywhere. They just look a little different than they do in the stories. Below is a list of a few that I was able to find. Note: I'm American, so this list has an American bias. The ones that are explicitly American problems I marked with a little flag of shame (🇺🇸):
Famine in Somalia has left more than 11 million people hungry.
Drought in Ethiopia leaves 10 million in need.
30% of all food globally is wasted per year.
The poorest 50% of the global population share just 8% of total income.
As many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing.
The number of trees worldwide has decreased by 46 percent since the start of civilization.
🇺🇸 About 460,000 (!!!) children go missing in America every year.
🇺🇸 Americans hit $1.079 trillion in credit card debt...
🇺🇸 ...and student loan debt is over $1.77 trillion
You are consuming a credit card's worth of microplastics every week.
Nearly 1 in 4 adults feel lonely.
AI is creating a whole new category of problems.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so large that it has now developed its own ecosystem.
🇺🇸 American trust in the government hits a 70 year low and the 2024 election is going to be a disaster.
In addition to all that, there's always violence in the world. Right now, one can point out the Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as areas that are in need of peace.
I want to make something clear: I'm not trying to preach to anybody. If I was, I'd be a hypocrite. I've done very little in my own life to move the needle on solving any of these problems. And in general, don't feel bad about not taking advice from an anonymous internet blogger whose last post was I can't believe it's not buttress.
However, I would like to try and dispel the idea that any of these problems are too big for any one person to do something about. I think many people get the idea talked into them that the world is beyond helping, and the best thing you can do is get yours before the whole thing burns down. That's not true. I think if people everywhere committed themselves to picking something from that list above and do a little to help with it every day/week/once in a while, it would shock everyone how much we could accomplish.
Basically: the dragons are there. They're everywhere.
Now, we just need the heroes - and we'll probably need a lot of them.