Dark For­est, Dark Vision..

This is what crossed my mind with the end of sum­mer and the return of the school sea­son.
I want to say:
Twelve years with­in a pri­ma­ry, non-nego­­tiable place, school… a nec­es­sary place that I sup­port, yet I have my reser­va­tions. There, one learns a lot: equa­tions, world geog­ra­phy, his­to­ry of wars, sen­tence struc­tures, the peri­od­ic table… and more. Yet, one does not learn a sin­gle hour about one­self, even though that is entire­ly pos­si­ble.

The real shift hap­pens when, after these years, one faces the social matrix… but here the diver­gence begins. These are recur­ring phe­nom­e­na across gen­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in devel­op­ing regions: anx­i­ety about pover­ty… fear of the future… ten­sion from cur­rent con­di­tions… psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure… demands to con­form to the exist­ing matrix regard­less of one’s dreams and ambi­tions.

Mean­while, a per­son does not know the cause of these emo­tion­al reac­tions, anx­i­ety, fears, and every­thing churn­ing inside them, attribut­ing them to oth­er rea­sons, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly. For instance, if asked, they offer a pass­ing sen­tence about going through a tough phase or some­thing fleet­ing… con­ceal­ing the rea­son why they feel the ground shift­ing beneath their feet while stand­ing still.
Yes, the world moves. It was, is, and will con­tin­ue to move as long as civ­i­liza­tions inter­sect, and as long as inter­ests align or clash among groups in this world, ampli­fied by cat­alyt­ic fac­tors like open­ness and relent­less, rapid glob­al­iza­tion.

A deci­sion made in a dis­tant place to replace an ener­gy source, or a small but­ter­fly effect that halts an entire sec­tor, or eco­nom­ic reces­sion waves caused by geopo­lit­i­cal or strate­gic con­di­tions, or being born in a geo­graph­ic region against which the world holds ancient his­tor­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal grudges… all of this par­tial­ly or total­ly, espe­cial­ly if sus­tained, guar­an­tees putting an entire gen­er­a­tion in a state of shock. The cri­sis does not nec­es­sar­i­ly reach them as an eco­nom­ic head­line, but as an unnamed weight; feel­ing trapped in a place where every­thing press­es down on them with­out know­ing where it comes from. And because they do not know, they do not inter­pret it as the effect of a shift vast­ly larg­er than them­selves, but as a flaw with­in them. So they act in the only way they know: sink­ing deep­er into what they are used to, cling­ing to what they know… not out of trust, but because it is the only place where they do not need to under­stand any­thing new.
Some, con­vinced that the flaw is with­in them, con­se­quent­ly immerse them­selves in read­ing self-help books, which have achieved mas­sive sales not worth dwelling on here, belong­ing to the shock gen­er­a­tions… as I call them… the gen­er­a­tions that emerged post-mod­er­ni­­ty and hyper-glob­al­iza­­­tion… post-Boomer and Gen X gen­er­a­tions whose minds were filled when they were chil­dren or teenagers with dreams that were vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble in real­i­ty, unlike how they mate­ri­al­ized for the Boomers and Gen X.
They rein­forced the idea that the world is easy, jobs are avail­able just as they were in their time, salaries are high, life is sweet, and any­one who fails to achieve this is sim­ply lazy or a los­er.

Here, an objec­tion may arise that seems appeal­ing on the sur­face: “Well, what about those from the Mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion or Gen Z who achieved mas­sive suc­cess? That com­plete­ly col­laps­es your argu­ment!” But this objec­tion relies on what I call “the log­ic of the spe­cif­ic obscure expe­ri­ence” (clas­si­fied philo­soph­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly as sur­vivor­ship or scarci­ty bias); where spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual cas­es are tak­en and turned into a sweep­ing gen­er­al­iza­tion.
I will not dwell too much on debunk­ing “the log­ic of the spe­cif­ic obscure expe­ri­ence.” Rather, I say: invok­ing slim odds of suc­cess while ignor­ing mil­lions of suf­fer­ing mem­bers of the “shock gen­er­a­tion” is inher­ent­ly flawed log­ic; it builds a whole judg­ment on a tiny frac­tion and gen­er­al­izes it.
It is exact­ly like a burn­ing fac­to­ry where some­one comes along and says: “The fire only affect­ed the weak parts, proven by the fact that 1% of the fac­to­ry sur­vived!” Unaware that there were oth­er rea­sons and pos­si­bil­i­ties ignored or unknown… such as the fac­to­ry own­er installing auto­mat­ic sprin­klers in that spe­cif­ic sec­tion plan­ning to com­plete the rest lat­er before the fire caught them off guard, or fire­fight­ers arriv­ing and giv­ing that sec­tion spe­cial sup­port to sup­press the flames, or the wind sud­den­ly chang­ing direc­tion and slow­ing the fire’s spread. These are all excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances and pre­cau­tions that do not log­i­cal­ly man­date that the rest of the fac­to­ry should have done the same to sur­vive.
And because this log­ic is infect­ed by a pedan­tic denial of these con­di­tions… turn­ing into an intel­lec­tu­al claim detached from real­i­ty… it is a failed log­ic; it applies exclu­sive­ly to a tiny frac­tion with entire­ly dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances and expe­ri­ences.
But
The sit­u­a­tion in real­i­ty is big­ger than a col­laps­ing or burn­ing fac­to­ry… nor is it mere­ly shocks or philo­soph­i­cal ram­bling from old­er gen­er­a­tions offer­ing the­o­ries rid­dled with log­i­cal frac­tures… I see the sit­u­a­tion as a dark for­est.

But
With­out fur­ther ram­bling
Here lies the exact func­tion of phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy, and soci­ol­o­gy. Phi­los­o­phy is a tool for humans to ques­tion, rather than swal­low­ing every­thing said to them as is. Psy­chol­o­gy gives a name to what one feels, so they stop believ­ing the pain is a per­son­al flaw. Soci­ol­o­gy shows them that they are not alone in their suf­fer­ing, and that what they are going through is a pat­tern repeat­ing across a whole soci­ety, not an iso­lat­ed inci­dent con­cern­ing them alone.
None of these fields will nec­es­sar­i­ly halt these con­di­tions, but there is a mas­sive dif­fer­ence between cross­ing a dark for­est with your eyes open and cross­ing it with your eyes closed. It is the exact same for­est.
The prob­lem is not that the world is some­times dark. The prob­lem is that it pro­duces gen­er­a­tions with­out eyes, then leaves them believ­ing the dark­ness is inside them.
That is what I want­ed to say in brief.