By ShonSpeaks
In the year 2022, life for many families was extremely tough financially, emotionally, and mentally. The life protocol we had designed and accepted for ourselves to that point was causing severe mental health deterioration. Many people were not able to maintain this traditional model of doing life which included going to work for 8 to 12 hours to a job many hated, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get back and forth to work that sometimes took upwards of three hours out of the day, getting heavily indebted in student loans just to get a higher education for slightly better pay, and eating unhealthy foods due to limited time after work to cook something more healthier.
The divorce rate was high and was steadily increasing. Bankruptcy was on the rise. Many of these families were in heavy debt and barely were making enough money to pay regular bills. The rise in inflation was causing many of them not be able to afford food, shelter and other basic necessities of life. The rising cost of home ownership due to inflation and supply issues meant that many families could not afford to own their own homes.
Social media like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube became gateways of escape. More and more people were using the social media devices to escape for a little while from the traditional work trap that had them on a rat wheel spinning, and over time, engaging in social media content caused a crisis of consciousness about time, life and possibilities. Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on the proper course of action for the country, so they just got on camera or their news media of common views and trashed talk the other side for being the other side. Traditional politics went on as usual and every two years the American people believed that after the next election life would get better. Republicans made promises of how America will be great again, how the real American values will be restored, how abortion will be abolished, how taxes will be cut and how great paying jobs will become plentiful again. Democrats made promises to fix social injustices, bring jobs back through $10 trillion dollar infrastructure bills, assist with the student loan crisis, and reduce the debt burdens of American citizens through stimulus checks. But then when Republicans got back in office, war broke out again somewhere, promises got forgotten, and the country’s debt grew because the war had to be funded with dollars that were not collected so the Federal Reserve printed more money causing the value of the dollar to decline. The people were once again persuaded to swing their votes more to the left and vote Democrat. And then when Democrats got back in office, promises got forgotten, more programs to fix social injustices, help the elderly, protect the American people, and maintain national security got implemented and the country’s debt grew even more while the value of the dollar declined. Different party in power; same result for the people. You work harder for the dollar, but the dollar has less buying power than the effort you exert to earn it, but yet your politicians (all of them) get richer and richer. But despite year after year, decade after decade, election after election, many people don’t notice the “same-larity” of the two governmental parties and continue to play the game of voting where the only winners (in my opinion) are the officials elected to office.
But now here we are, 20 years later in the year 2042. Things had been happening in this world that party affiliations couldn’t fix but we as Americans kept playing the same party line game. Various respiratory viruses became commonplace. They plagued the world so frequently that many countries including the USA now have deadly virus seasons throughout the year. During these times, it’s deadly for people to be outside for long lengths of times or be around others in small spaces. During these seasons, viruses like COVID, SARS, or some variation runs so rampant throughout the country that most people have to stay in their homes, work remotely if they can, and limit how often they are around people they don’t live with. But now, a new virus has just emerged called Sudden. Sudden attacks your brain and nervous system so unexpectedly causing you to have unbearable headaches, vomiting, and dizzy spells that stop you in your track, so driving while human becomes dangerous. But it’s not just viruses or Sudden that are plaguing the Earth now, it’s as if the Earth itself has seasonally turned against us. Pollen counts in certain areas of the country have become so high that people are having severe asthma attacks who never had asthma in their lives before. The weather cycles in many areas of America have changed. Places that used to be cold during the winter are now hot, unbearably hot; and some areas of America that were heavily populated twenty years ago are now ghost towns because of the air quality, rampant diseases and viruses. These viruses have ransacked the country so that wearing masks and face coverings have become a norm of daily living if you choose to be around others. Certain cities like Houston, Dallas and Chicago and others that have a more balanced weather cycle are so severely overly populated that homes are only for the rich or the lucky. Homelessness for even working individuals and families have become commonplace. Some new businesses have started 3D modeling smaller homes for faster construction and cheaper price tags to help with the homelessness crisis. God isn’t mentioned as much, at least not like god was forty or so years before. Jesus has been replaced with Spiritual. The cross has been removed from many churches and even those that still have it, don’t have a man with thorns hanging on it anymore. The number of church buildings and organizations have declined. Churches no longer can own property and receive a tax exemption. Churches have to now pay taxes and property taxes just like any other business.
Church has mostly become a social gathering place to hear a man or woman or a power couple motivate you or inspire you with their luxurious life of blessings so that you could dream one day of being blessed just like them. Certain verses of the Bible are still repeated and used to inspire but the book itself now has a creative commons license and isn’t being sold like it used to. In fact, no one entity or person is allowed to profit from the book or its many versions. The book (and all of the versions) has been placed on Github and people all around the world are able to contribute to the rewrites and versions.
Concepts like going to work Monday to Friday and looking forward to the weekend are becoming foreign concepts because most people are beginning to choose not to work because the government has been slowly implementing universal based income to those who qualify. And the rules for qualification are becoming more and more lax by the year. And for many people this new base income is sufficient to survive because basic necessities like food, water, electricity, internet, and gas are now becoming free or inexpensive. Financial survival is all many people ever knew in America so this new minimum-base income for living without working a job you hate is a type of freedom for many. Cars are no longer driven by people but cars drive us. The highways were reconstructed to accommodate autonomous vehicles more than vehicles driven by humans. We simply get in the car, punch a few buttons and the cars take us where we need to go and bring us back home. If our vehicles need charging, they charge on the highway as we go. There is no such thing anymore as a car gas bill or gas stations. Many cars are not even needed on the road because multiple families share cars on a weekly basis. This sharing of the vehicles keep the cost of transportation down per family. Also, drones are as convenient and inexpensive for deliveries as UberEats or DoorDash used to be and you don’t have to feel pressured to tip or pay an extra service charge. In fact, those companies, many of them, don’t even exist anymore. About eighteen years ago in 2024, the American government rushed to create a central digital bank currency to compete with the digital yuan and Bitcoin that had grown in popularity and value over the dollar. The US central digital bank currency was a complete failure. The dollar plummeted in value and more and more countries stopped using the dollar and began using either the digital yuan and/or Bitcoin as their reserve currency. Because of American pride, America for a long time, refused to revamp its systems and policies. America was beholden to a piece of paper written in the 1700s by men who didn’t live in today. The document was always supposed to be a living document, but the people elected into office over the years used it as a tool to divide the people and turned it into a relic to be worshipped or demonized you if you didn’t. America refused to make necessary amendments, deletions and additions to the document to make it applicable to changing times. By the time the American gerontocracy was finally voted out, the world around America had changed.
El Salvador had become a very powerful and wealthy country around 2032. Europe became part of the African continent so we went from 7 continents to 6 reflected on most maps. Certain countries in Africa became the new lands of the free countries to live and prosper no matter your skin tone. Many Americans of European descent left America and moved to some of these African countries.
American people that used to be called black or African American stopped using those terms because they had discovered they were not from Africa but had always lived in the land called America prior to the European’s colonization.
America also couldn’t afford to shut down the country and continue to lose tax revenues despite the viruses, plagues, and climate crisis, so America implemented the Get Workers to Work Initiative. An idea of possibility formulated by a woman at OTPI. “Open to Possibility Institute,” OTPI for short, is a highly influential business of thinkers or “Possibilitists” as they like to call themselves who help businesses, governments and individuals willing to disrupt their thinking to create strategies for the future, produce products for the future, and provide services for the future using a technique called “possibility alternatives of vivid imagination for the future.” Because Americans were being stricken by the virus Sudden more often than before, more Americans were choosing to accept the universal-based income as their only wage. But the government through a new program began insisting people go back to work. Under this new “Get Workers to Work Initiative,” the government advertised that a new “working shot” just created in 6 months by Big Pharma could help you against catching Sudden or other viruses. If you agreed to take the working shot, your family qualified for additional governmental assistance like complimentary governmental rides to work, all free healthcare, and other perks. In theory, the working shot was supposed to be permanent. But in practice, you had to take different booster versions of the working shot throughout the year for it to be more effective than not taking it. And even after taking it, you still wasn’t fully protected against Sudden. Taking the shot initially was supposed to be voluntary, but so many people were refusing to take the working shot that the government started making the working shot mandatory to live in the American territory.
I could go on and on about how 2042 possibly could be for all of us. Maybe some of my scenarios can’t happen or won’t happen until 2062, but they are possible. And if they are possible, they could potentially be a future scenario that could become our present reality. I am in no way saying that 2042 will be this way or that I want it to be this way. I can’t predict the future with absolute certainty, but I can contribute to it. The future will be a manifestation of ideas birth today, some you know about and some you don’t. The question we can all begin to ask ourselves is this: what part, if any, will my imagination contribute to the future I or my children will have to live in.
Today’s journey to the future is merely an offering of possibilities based on current signals of change that are happening now. Do you see the signals?
The future as someone once said contains no facts; therefore, the future can be the possibilities you imagine. And your imagination isn’t wrong or right.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
La Shon Y. Fleming Bruce a/k/a SHONSPEAKS is a blogger, certified brain health specialist, speaker, and lead creator of freeyourthinkingmind.com. I am also a lawyer and managing member of The Fleming-Bruce Law Firm, P.L.L.C. If you want to check out more of my writings that may not be released on this site, go over to my website at freeyourthinkingmind.com
CHECK OUT MY LATEST NFT FOR YOUR METAVERSE WALL FOR THE FUTURE BY CLICKING BELOW
GRAB YOUR COPY OF ELISABETH HOEKSTRA’S NEW BOOK
コメント