Prosperity.
Prosperity is an interesting thing, and regardless of whether you are looking at it from the woo-woo New Age angle or a more conventional material angle, it seems like it has become one of the popular buzzwords of our times.
Here in our little local Cryptosphere some talk about us entering an "age of prosperity," and blockchain technology and cryptocurrency having a major part in creating this age of prosperity.
In the external world, people talk about an age of prosperity resulting from automation and AI which will make the products we use incredibly cheap to manufacture and thereby create prosperity for everyone.
But What IS "Prosperity," Really?
Where does it come from? And what exactly is it that makes one person prosperous and another person not prosperous? Whose perception do we go by?
As often as not, it seems like prosperity is something that follows certain people and not so much other people. I watch the world around me and I see two people take almost identical actions in service of reaching prosperity and one ends up homeless and the other ends up on a beach in Tahiti, sipping little drinks with umbrellas in them.
Why is that? Not only that, but this kind of outcome is often not a single arbitrary event that just happens by chance, but a case of one person repeatedly managing to generate prosperity, and the other person repeatedly managing to end up in poverty.
Wild sweet peas
When I look at that, it seems like clearly something else is at play.
Arbitrary or Systematic?
And then there is the whole definition of what it means to be prosperous.
I look at my own life and I can recognize that I have always been "prosperous" and extremely blessed in the sense that when I found myself in situations of extreme need a solution always presented itself.
If we were to use a metaphor of sorts, it would be represented by my always being able to find a parachute whenever I fall off a cliff. And that's definitely awesome because other people would keep falling and encounter terrible things when they hit the rocks at the bottom of the Canyon.
On the other hand, within that particular paradigm the metaphorical parachutes have only showed up when I'm actually falling off a cliff. I've never been able to generate prosperity (i.e. have a parachute in reserve and already prepared) when I'm simply sitting at the edge of the Canyon not in an emergency situation.
The counterpoint to that would be those who sit on the edge of the canyon and never fall, and while they're sitting there the pony express riders makes a sharp turn and a bag of money falls off right at their feet. And that repeatedly happens to them.
Of course these are purely fictitious fabrications but it is not a stretch to apply them to what we observe in life around us.
Road through the forest
Maybe the point here is that prosperity is not a "given," it is an "opportunity." And we have to be able to "recognize" that opportunity when it presents itself... even if it is heavily shrouded and in no way obvious.
Relativity...
One of the things I so often hear — in response to those who are feeling less than prosperous — is that "you can always find someone who's worse off than you!"
Whereas that may be true, it's hardly much of an argument in favor of prosperity to declare anything better than "dead broke and sleeping in a ditch" to be "prosperity."
Which brings up the whole issue of prosperity as a measure of simply "having ENOUGH." Not having — and wanting — MORE than enough, but just enough.
Yet another word we need to define! What is "enough?" And is it even possible to arrive at some sort of global definition of the concept of "enough?" After all, if you ask around a bit, you'll soon discover that one person's "enough" is the next person's "poverty!"
Few people actually know what "enough" looks like, and they will keep casting about for "more," no matter how much they already have...
Age of Prosperity?
So what is this Age of Prosperity, really? Does it mean we're all going to have easy and worry-free lives? Will we be on vacation all the time? Will work become obsolete?
Hard to say, isn't it?
And whose yardstick will we be using?
Is the whole "You will own NOTHING and be HAPPY!" of the 2030 visualization become a real thing? It's certainly part of the reality scale, since one of the most viable ways to abandon the *"scarcity" paradigm is to render "ownership" of anything more or less meaningless.
It's fun to speculate on, but we humans have SUCH a hard time reaching consensus on anything that it will probably be a very long time before universal Prosperity actually becomes a thing.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!
How about YOU? What do you thin "prosperity" is? Do you believe we may be entering an age of prosperity? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220522 23:59 PDT
0580/1826