In this bold, cartoonish year of 2026, where corporations have all shifted focus from quality and value improvement to new models of coercion and behavioural "nudging" (real term used by these vampires). Where politics has devolved into a twisted freak-show that surpassed our imaginations of what 'ugly' could be. Where a million tragedies and injustices are streamed to the unavoidable circus in your pocket.
Something big is happening. But what? Everybody seems to have their own theory of how our society will reach its crescendo. Or how it will all just keep falling into chaos as our structures and institutions collapse.
Our communities have changed in the process. I've watched as my friends of all subcultures, incomes and beliefs have peeled mostly into two main categories:
I've spent much of my life swinging between the two. As a homeless youth, self-indulgent nihilism was my comfort zone; the perspective that freed me from responsibility. But, thanks to my first acid trip, I crawled myself out of that world and built more than a schedule of immediate distractions from my shitty life. I built relationships, a couple healthier habits, and a home out of an old bus.
But I've found new challenges in this position that I've never had to deal with before.
With each glimpse at a better life, I became more terrified of losing what I'd built. Desperate to control the outcome so as not to stumble back down, I found myself fearful and nervous about anything that put my progress at risk. And, to anyone with a social media account that custom curates and tailor-fits its 'feed' to your specific psychological profile and current mood, you know what happens next.
All you need to do is hold a fear in your subconscious mind, and soon enough, the algorithm will sniff it out, pile it up, and dangle you over the precipice.
In the depths of a Tasmanian winter, in the cold, dark bed in the back of a bus, with a COVID-related auto-immune disease corroding my body and mind, I took a chance with a hail Mary—another tab of L.S.D. (terrible set and setting, I know). And at its weirdest, most horrifying moment, it told me something.
"You never had a fucking thing bro. All the friends you've made, the cool shit you've built. This bus you built and repaired and plumbed and wired and drove down to this frozen place. It's all borrowed. So is your life. But you want to waste your time with it in fear... Sad story bro. Sad."
And this twisted, wide-eyed little gremlin with a notebook and a cigarette next to the fire was right: I've been thinking that it's possible to hold onto some aspect or state of being. We can't. We don't have any control over that. Illusions of the ego.
So why build? Why create anything?
To give something to the world: To give a by-product of our true, authentic self to the universe. An act of selfless love that gives us great joy through expression. The destruction, theft, and entropy of all things does not defeat the purpose of having built them—it adds meaning. Taking caution and worrying is a paralysing behaviour; which is exactly what the demons want.
Zoom out. Back to our bizarre time in history.
Wherever we're headed as a whole doesn't matter.
What matters is what we create for the world in the meantime.
I say we start building, making and playing for ourselves instead of a system that no longer rewards us. And perhaps when our age collapses and rebuilds, there will be those few creations of the rebels who defied the hypnotised masses and their bureaucratic overlords. Stories and paintings and structures and ideas, on display at the museum of the next human age. Inspiring the next wave of unsatisfied free-thinkers.
Relics of authenticity from a time of synchronised psychosis.
And maybe that’s enough.
I received my fortnightly call from a friend in prison yesterday. We talked about the food and the activities he’s been keeping busy with while I—a free man—played down whatever liberties I had on the outside. It’s only proper manners in this situation.
He committed no crime worthy of being trapped in a box for two years.
It still baffles me that anyone supports our "civilized" system of locking people in concrete boxes for doing what isn’t currently trending—or for refusing to do what is. I believe most of us are simply choosing to ignore it.
I said goodbye to my dear friend and continued driving home to the commentary of World War III "popping off." It is a disgustingly primitive display: world "leaders" forcing innocent men—no, the children of this world—to use multi-million dollar killing machines to murder other children. And for what, really? What is the true motive deep down? To validate and protect their egos, making the lives of millions of uninvolved people extremely difficult in an already challenging time.
What a fucking embarrassment.
No more media downloads. Radio off. Time for mindfulness.
To the hum of my engine and a worn-out wheel bearing, memories of my time in a psychiatric ward crept in. I remembered how they drugged me with chemicals that mimic a short-term lobotomy. The complete absence of emotional curiosity, empathy, or non-judgmental communication. Just pills and a quiz, followed by a diagnosis, and then release from the box once I was sufficiently medicated and pacified.
Then my mother came to mind. The woman who almost broke me and my sisters—broken first by the same system and abused by a man indoctrinated by it.
Ugh. I’m spiraling now. Radio on.
A band came on that I hadn't heard in about a year: Rage Against the Machine. I chuckled at first, pondering if I’m in some kind of Truman Show where the directors are bored and trying to radicalize me to get the ratings up.
But what happened was much better.
It awakened a portion of my identity that had been suppressed for ten years—a part I once thought was childish and that, through psychedelics and "wellness" practices, I had all but extinguished.
That song ("Guerrilla Radio"), blasting at full volume through my van's stereo, validated a part of myself that somehow managed to pull my entire being into a state of harmony. There was never anything wrong with me. Nothing to fix. I had only become as weak as I allowed the system to make me. In those years of trying to learn how to tolerate a broken system, I had begun to break myself just to adapt to it.
But fuck that. Punk is back—at least within me.
So, how could I manage my own little piece of resistance today? I decided to try a trick I used in Tokyo last year.
I wrote Riley a letter. A heartfelt letter intended to convince a man locked in a box by a bureaucratic system of false morals that he is a good person; a golden soul. That letter was written on page 333 of my journal, which I had laced with 250 micrograms of LSD. I wrote a fake return address and sender name, and I posted it.
Three days later, I answered the phone. I sat through the automated warning prompts that prison calls always put you through before you’re connected. Then Riley’s voice came through:
"Hey bro. I got your letter. It was beautiful."
Another point against the system. Mission accomplished.
Last night at a dub music event, I weaved through the usual suspects of the alternative dance scene, partying with their various drip. Dreadlocks and rainbow fishnets, modified sequin dresses and dilated pupils. I was following a tall fellow that my friend had scouted out in his search for some ketamine for me. My autoimmune disease forbids alcohol and I forbid being sober at parties, so here we are.
I felt confident I was following the correct guy into the correct corner of the smokers' area. His bumbag was not of Adidas branding but of leather; a sophisticated satchel.
Two minutes after a reasonably sized line, snorted from my phone screen, my partner was tired and ready to leave. Perfect timing.
Looking out the window of our budget hatchback at the choppy, distorted city landscape as Eve took us home, I entered one of those states where you think about a subject that you've spent the past couple of weeks ruminating on, but from an angle that almost seems like it belongs to someone else.
We sit in a climate-controlled booth of our choosing and, after selecting from a list of every sonnet, orchestra, poet, or musical band from the past 100 years, living or dead, to play for us on our journey, we effortlessly manoeuvre these nimble little sheltered rooms amongst hundreds of others. Harnessing the leverage of 5,000 tiny explosions every minute, muffled and harmonically balanced for our comfort, we glide along designated pathways to our desired location.
And if we have to form a queue with others from our community (a busy time, or perhaps someone lost control of their booth and is seriously injured downstream)—oh boy. You can see the disappointment through each and every windshield.
Where did these complex and luxurious tools come from? Well, we pulled and melted, weaved and threaded, processed and synthesised, balanced and measured and machined—we extracted and produced them out of the fucking dirt; and to the dirt they shall return.
I imagined all of this, and then thought: "And we're panicking about having to take a break from this. Trying to predict how miserable we'll be so we don't have to be surprised if it happens, hurling our nervous system around to the whims of sensationalist media. On assumptions. Why can't we be grateful for this absurd freedom while we have it?"
And then, the ketamine peaked, and replied.
"We will be eternally appreciative for each and every miraculous and complex feature of our modern world... at the very moment we realise we've lost them forever."
It feels like we've reached a time in history that would warrant extreme forms of rebellion. From activism that borderlines terrorism, organisations of passionate mutual aid, and even down to the clothes and piercings and ways that people express themselves. There's never been a better time in my life for the punks and anarchists to come out to play.
Before we even got this far, when Neuralink and data centres were becoming a thing, I thought we would have an emergence of cyberpunk hackers and misfits running the streets with a modern version of the Merry Pranksters. Driving around the country in a psychedelic bus, spreading counter-culture as sheets of blotter acid, contagious self-expression, and music.
Where have all the movers and shakers gone?
Cities are filled with people who seem to be entirely focused on their image and health routines and maintaining a balanced, gamified lifestyle. They're all looking inwards for ways to maintain stability in these times of complete chaos, rather than trying to implement any real change.
Don't get me wrong, we've had plenty of little uprisings, protests, and even a CEO assassination, but with the knowledge of injustices that our whole world is now exposed to, it still seems a little disproportionate.
Are we too busy? Perhaps we've given up trying to make a change? Maybe we're getting our fix of the emotions required to make these moves through other means—through algorithmically curated chunks of videos and discussions, diluted amongst a million other 'really important' pieces of media. When I still used Instagram and TikTok, I saw plenty of this.
Apparently, our economic positions are currently worse than that which set off the French Revolution. So, why aren't we revolting?
Maybe we're pacified by the screens and shows and technology that has enabled us to lay on the couch for the hours between our work and sleep. Pacified by the pseudo-excitement we get to indulge in, dopamine-maxxing with a second screen and awaiting our Uber Eats.
If our children watch us do this, how will they live when we're gone? What genetically altered discount sludge will keep them serving our mega-corporations in 30 years? Are we destined to become highly surveilled, domesticated house-pets?
I pray that in my own lifetime, my peers discover what it feels like to become feral. To break the shackles of today and face our remaining pockets of nature with uncertainty.
Or maybe I'm being hyperbolic. Maybe we just need to wake up to the systems that enslave us, and move forward into our technological advancements with more caution and diligence toward the methods that have evolved to control us.
So, what really changes in your day-to-day life? Should you start prepping? Stockpiling booze and porn magazines to drink and masturbate the anxiety away, maybe some tuna cans to sustain your sloppy jerking? Well, you could, and I know many people who've been acting like this well before they realised our situation; but they don't seem too spiritually fulfilled to me.
Maybe we do as our childhood friends on Toy Story 3 did when they were slowly descending toward the incinerator at the dump. Hold each other closely and stop resisting our demise, maybe share a few memories on our way to the flames.
The problem is, with a society as large and as complex as ours, decline actually takes a while and has a lot of wacky twists and turns on the way. Most preppers become more anxious as they build their caches and stashes. Paying constant attention to our end will only paralyse you. You'll mourn what you haven't even lost yet.
Have you ever been nostalgic of a time you weren't even alive for? Watching footage of the 50s and 60s and thinking, "Man, what a time to be alive. I would've loved that." Despite the problems that these decades faced, they just looked better by comparison to now. And we will one day look back on today with the same romantic sigh.
"We were still able to drive our own cars and walk around outside at night... What a time."
What if we used our imagination to look at today's world from the perspective of a dystopian future that hasn't arrived yet? Reminding ourselves every day that these blue skies, green plants, and somewhat cohesive society won't be around forever, and enjoying the beauty of real-time-nostalgia—a fully immersive simulation of the pre-fallout days.
"Well that's just absurd! You can't pretend you're already in the future to change the way you feel right now."
Okay... Wait... Isn't that exactly what you're doing when you're stressing about the future? You're making up imaginary scenarios that haven't happened yet, and using them to bring your nervous system to a state of chaos. Perhaps you should meditate on where you learnt this self-destructive habit.
In the meantime, remember that you get to choose your own beliefs, and that it's revolutionary to choose beliefs that empower you. The cynic is only the cynic out of fear; he wants to protect himself from the disappointment of poor outcomes, so he projects poor outcomes onto everything, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The future nostalgic—on the other hand—is actually safer, happier, and more powerful in all cases.
"Don't worry. You don't know enough to worry. That's God's truth. Who do you think you are that you should worry, for crying out loud? It's a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is in fact a form of hubris."
— Terence McKenna