"What is "real"? How do we define "real"? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, taste and see, then "real" is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
Morpheus - The Matrix
Back in January and in following months, I began to share some views about the chaos that would take place in the world throughout this year. I didn't know nor could imagine what would actually happen, but the Runes were very clear that it would be big and fast. Now we're seeing it occur before our eyes and I'm sure that, beneath the concern, fear and angst, the vast majority of humanity must unconsciously be pondering a fundamental question: is this for real?
Let's recap: we have a war in Ukraine that's already threatening to spill out to other countries; we have massive protests in Iran instilled by the killing of a girl which are upending the country's power structure; we're also seeing increasingly open protests in continental China as a response to highly absurd lockdown measures; mass shootings in the United States continue to escalate as European and Latin American nations start to follow suit; tech industry titans are melting down at various rates; the darkest sides of religious institutions and corporations worldwide is getting increasingly exposed; large public events are taking their own death tolls. On top of everything, a whole bunch of natural disasters and extreme weather conditions which are bound to rise in intensity and frequency are hitting more and more parts of the globe.
All of this is also further complicated by the fact that we can't possibly know what's truly going on. There's no such thing as unbiased, unmanipulated media, it's all narratives tailored for specific audiences with no interest in objectivity.
So, what is real?
It's perhaps the most important question that we could ponder, and I think the entirety of mankind is getting to the point of asking it, even if only as a joke. I've gone over this topic many times already in my blog and I'll keep doing so for as long as I feel it's necessary: the world that we inhabit is "real" to us only because we collectively deem it so, because we believe it. Materiality and sensorial input aren't guarantees of something's realness, meaning that what we touch, see, hear, smell or feel isn't true by default. We tell ourselves that the stories we put our faith in are factual because we have a need to be certain of something amidst the general uncertainty of everything around us. It's our fear of the unknown, of death and change, that props up our world like an empty paper castle that looks solid but can easily be blown away by a gust of wind, burned to the ground by a candle or unmade by a few liters of water.
This illusion is collapsing, though. Governments, institutions, countries, economic systems, social conventions, laws... it's all going down around us. Everything that we're witnessing is an indication of that collapse, and we can resist no more than pebbles could resist a river.
What can we do, then?
We can accept that this is happening, overcome the resistance to see and admit that the pain is inexorable. It's this pain that leads us to deeper understanding of our world's true nature. If we can manage this colossal task collectively, we can then rebuild our reality however we choose, but we must find a way to work together and this illusion of stability that we've been living for decades, centuries and millennia no longer serves us, if it ever did. This "stability" concealed terrible abuses, crimes and immeasurable torment. This "stability" was conjured with blood. It must be allowed to collapse and only when it lies in ruins can we all see each other for who and what we really are and start walking a new path based on purpose. We may then reconnect fully with our planet and everything in it, and conjure a different story, one where we all cooperate to bring our species back from the darkness, where tyrants can be held accountable and authorities actually do what they're meant to do, where wealth is accomplished through honest focus and where beauty is accessible to everyone.
I know that this may sound absurd to many, but is it more absurd than guys like Putin, Xi Jinping or Elon Musk deciding the fate of our race? I think not.