A View From Displacement

0xA
Sat, 25 Apr 2026 15:20:48 GMT

Beyond the immediate existential threats and challenge to global socio-economic order (along with the clear control drift 'upward' by virtue of human labor displacement due to capitalism), the current AI landscape has left me with a different kind of psychological pang.

A decay of what I think generally was optimism about the future of humans, the human condition and myself within that evolving system of connected meaning.

I find myself asking often, what is the point? Where is my endgame here?

Can we go so far as to say with confidence "children are the future" any longer?

Can we look among our young, best, and brightest with inspired optimism and be confident that they too will one day change the world?

Can I be inspired to learn a technical or procedural nuance in my daily craft knowing full well it is on the short order of their capability horizon?

I hazard that this kind of feeling does not fare well at maintaining social order once it pervades the general populous. How easy it is to feel that the future was stolen from us.

But alas, I remind myself, the game under capitalism was never fair. It always looks meritocratic from the winning side of things. For if it wasn't, I would have had to come to terms with how I was never truly justified well before I was ready.

Before, I felt a winner. On the brighter side, in greener pastures. Now I find myself on the other side of that which I once championed. Among the displaced.

You would think on this side of things, with a more jaded pallet and a knowing that you are certainly not the main character of this, or any story - that there would be reasons that one could shame themselves for finding themselves here. I have lived the story that everyone is given a fair shot and the smart and hard workers always find themselves a way to win.

But as I teeter down the other side of the wave I find I only had good reasons. And I am left with difficulty and struggle and confusion and it would be empty if not for me finding but one thing more: Solidarity.

Not in my group, but in all. The displaced, the downtrotten, those who dreamed and watched it collapse and lived day by day without their meaning. Keeping calm and carrying on.

How warm it is to know that in this I have also found myself. In all human kind. In the dignified displaced. Huddled bodies around warm fires. In the single parent that works to make ends meet. In the adulthood of missed opportunities and dreams we abandoned as we ought.

I now understand much of the philosophies of before my time that spoke to the absurdity of the condition of life.

Wanting to raise your fist but knowing that it is an act in vane and having no-one to raise it too but life itself. And though I may not have planned this meaning, it is what life planned for me. And what do I know over life, itself.

So, I will wear it. I will be a warm body to link arms with over our fire. I will be a shoulder and home for fellow mankind who I now see. A face to find for those that need be recognized.

The game was never fair and we didn't play it as such. And so I will fight this end but have duty in maintaining an honour to remembrance to that. So I can only meet it.

And maybe you have not found yourself yet here. But we wait. The dignified and displaced. With hands raised in revolt to life itself.

Saying "may you, like Sisyphus, be happy".

Discuss