The Current State of the World is Our Biggest Blessing as Humans

By Sadie Jane Mayhew

The current state of the world may one day be remembered not as the beginning of humanity’s collapse, but as the moment we finally became too uncomfortable to keep pretending this was in any shape or form normal.

Everywhere you look, the illusion of our current way of living is cracking. I’m talking about how we eat, sleep, work, date, love, or contribute to society in many ways. Americans, especially, are burned out by jobs that consume their lives and barely pay enough to survive. Artificial intelligence threatens to replace the very people who built the systems feeding it. Healthcare is literally a luxury subscription that’s designed to keep us ill enough to keep coming back. Food is processed beyond recognition, not providing any nutrients, and only made to keep us sustained enough to survive or addicted enough to pay for something we don't need.

Rent rises faster beyond our monthly means and forces us to cohabit in small spaces and sometimes buildings that have not been up to code in decades. Education is limited and underfunded, which is why we’re seeing so many kids unable to read or are not prepared for college/workforce. Social media has transformed the human psyche into a marketplace of comparison, performance, and exhaustion, without knowing the real long-term effects of what it’s doing to us, because we as humans have never experienced being locked in technologically 24/7. Entire generations scroll through war footage, genocide, ecological collapse, and influencer ads in the same five-minute sitting.

Sourced Through Pinterest

It is difficult to feel sane in a world that increasingly rewards disconnection. And yet, perhaps this collective breaking point is not evidence of failure. Perhaps it is evidence of awakening. A new era of human history, not the end like so many foresee (either jokingly or literally).

The kids are alright.

UFC students booed their commencement speaker at graduation who praised AI. Dystopian art content creators have garnered thousands to millions of followers, proving that art is the best way to work through our feelings, thoughts, and the absurdity of the horror. We are connecting on it in masses; it’s not as niche as it once was, so recently. 

A trapped animal in captivity eventually begins to exhibit zoochosis: pacing, self-destruction, repetitive behaviors, and emotional collapse. Humans are not so different. We were not designed to live under fluorescent lights, staring at screens for twelve hours a day, isolated from community, nature, creativity, ritual, and meaning. We were not built to consume more than we create. Or to monetize every hobby, every friendship, every waking second of existence. We will be pushed to the brim; it’s already happening. It’s inevitable. Late-stage capitalism did not invent human suffering, but it has surely industrialized it and is a cause of the symptom of suffering. 

And the younger generation recognizes this better than anyone else because we’re still pretty fresh entering the adult world that is collapsing and not providing enough for us as it once did for our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. 

Coming back to ourselves 

You might say, " Oh, we talk about it so much, but nothing is changing. Don't fret! We can only be pushed so far. And one thing about humans that we know is that we are collectively longing for connection and community. We’ve built millions of different kinds for hundreds of thousands of years now, and if billions can collectively agree on something, then we can definitely change and be resilient in all of this. Everything good starts off bad. Every good thing starts off scary. But we’re not doing it alone. 

Across the world, there is a growing inability to tolerate the conditions we once accepted because we have been conditioned for so long to think it’s normal or be just slightly comfortable enough to get by. Especially with young people who are questioning careers that demand everything and return little. Collectively, we are rethinking consumption and our needs. More people are leaving cities, growing food, learning trades, making art again, and craving presence instead of productivity. The systems designed to numb us have instead exposed their own emptiness.

Our instincts and DNA remember millions of years of evolution versus a couple of hundred years of bodily destruction from rapid technology advances run by a small number of evil people. 

The flowers always bend towards the sun no matter how much you try to hide the light. 

Sourced Through Pinterest

History shows that humans rarely evolve through comfort. We evolve through rupture! Through famine, war, collapse, revolution, plague. Not because suffering is noble, but because survival forces clarity for what we want and need. And right now, millions of people are simultaneously arriving at the same realization: this way of living is making us sick, and we will die if we don’t change now. 

At the core– we’re animals; we’re organic matter designed to persist and survive. And we’ll do anything to endure and go on. And beyond that, we’re intelligent creatures, meaning we also problem solve, adapt, and live for ‘living’ and not just surviving. We’re really unique beings. We are very capable of destroying our species, but have somehow deflected that many times. So what do you say? Shall we do it again?

We need each other to survive. It’s a small group of people who are fending for themselves, but collectively, despite our vast differences that make us so unique, we're all the same species connected by millions of wonderful things. We all want similar things at our core: We want to be happy, healthy, safe, creative, and at peace. And we can give that to ourselves and each other again. There’s room, there’s time, there’s enough possibility for it.

The future doesn’t have to look like endless economic expansion or technological domination. It can look smaller, slower, more authentically human again. Humanity is remembering itself after decades spent behaving like machinery. 

This is not optimism in the naive sense. The world is frightening for so many of us. People are suffering deeply, and I’m not making light of that.

But maybe in this era—ugly and overwhelming as it feels—is simply the painful beginning of remembering how we were always meant to live and can live.