A New Story For the 2020s: Stop Changing The World and Start Healing It (Pt. 1) Will Cady Follow Jan 6 · 10 min read

The horizon has been approaching for a long time. Now it’s here. We are entering a period of total systematic global collapse — and with it, our rebirth.

I write this on my way to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Big Tech’s annual festival of visions, where the 2020s are coming in with that familiar, bright-eyed gee wiz excitement for humanity’s advancement. The connected future of 5G, the democratic potential of the blockchain, personal drones, personal virtual realities, self-driving cars as moving home theaters, home genetic kits, wearable screens. Oh man, the future!

What we are on the precipice of achieving technologically is inspiring. Truly.

There’s another narrative this year though — present perhaps more in hearts than in minds. A feeling that marching forward, eyes fixed to that old techno-futurist glimmer alone, is walking blind. A feeling that this decade is also bringing with it a stark, clear vision of exactly what humanity’s decline looks like — and we don’t have to look up from our 4k phone screens to see it.

Only two days into this decade, a chorus of push notifications broadcasted a flashpoint between the US & Iran that was brazen enough in a charged enough geopolitical climate to easily tip us into WWIII. Just a few thumb swipes away had us all gazing mouths agape into images of a self-perpetuating apocalyptic vortex of hellfire taking over Australia. 500 million animals lost.

Many of those swiping thumbs belong to the hands of us tech workers as we traveled to CES from hubs like San Francisco, which itself mere weeks ago endured darkened skies and unbreathable air from wildfires. Many had to flee their homes as the fires set off forced blackouts on an unmanageably risky power grid. My own home city of Los Angeles was burning at the same time.

This is where we are. This is the setting from which we arrive at Tech’s 2020 kick off. Innovation is no longer just about our Potential. It’s also become about our Survival. The transformation potential at the meeting point of these two currents is enormous and unlike anything we’ve seen before.

We see a horizon where we once saw only an expanse and it seems our lives on this planet on the other side of this decade will look nothing like they do at the start. The uncertainty of our future is now as maddening as it was once inspiring.

There is one thing I know to be certain, though. With this much suffering, the only way we make it through to the other side of the horizon is by learning to value healing as much as we value change.