I read a post by Dee Rambeau from Of a Sober Mind about life in January 1, 2050. His post was prompted by another Substacker, Suzanne Taylor. She had an essay contest to "Write as if it’s 2050 and Earth is a cooperative place. How did that come to pass? The only requirement is to start with what you did. Be as concise as you can so as not to lose readers, while giving details that demonstrate the workability of your ideas." The essay was due on Valentine’s Day, but I would not have submitted it anyway. Interesting for me is that date puts me the same age as my father is now, 73. It has been a fun exercise.
Happy New Year! The first happy year in a long while and with hopefully many more to come. It all started back in 2025 in the middle of my life. A devastating cyber attack crippled our technological infrastructure, causing a global blackout that disabled all electric devices and systems. We were thrust back into the dark ages overnight, with no electricity, no computers, no means of digital communication. It was a dangerous, chaotic, and terrifying time.
For five long years, we had to learn to live without modern technology. Cities became ghost towns as people fled to rural areas in search of food, water, and shelter. Those were the darkest days, as supply chains broke down and resources became scarce. Starvation, disease, and conflict threatened to destroy the human race. It was ugly and many of us did some things that we wouldn’t be proud of.
But in that crisis, the seeds of our rebirth were planted. We were forced to reconnect with the essential elements of life – tilling the soil, growing food, building shelter, and supporting one another. We formed tight-knit communities, working together to cultivate crops, raise livestock, and share the fruits of our labor. The principles of cooperation, mutual aid, and respect for nature became ingrained in our daily lives. We drew strength from our spiritual beliefs, which emphasized humility, compassion, and service to others.
In those first harrowing years without technology, one of our greatest challenges was access to healthcare. With hospitals rendered inoperable and supply chains for medicine disrupted, we were forced to return to more rudimentary forms of medical treatment. Fortunately, we were able to stockpile a few medications that lasted until we could reestablish supply chains.
Technology was restored after those 5 years, but it was a different world now, and we still had a great deal of work to do. Slowly but surely, we rebuilt our world from the ground up, one community at a time. As a natural process of this world we reconnected our health with the virtues of proper nutrition, sanitation, and an active lifestyle attuned to nature's rhythms. We rejected the trappings of social media and mindless consumerism that had previously divided us. Instead, we embraced a new ethos of simplicity, sustainability, and human connection. It took twenty more years of hard work and what we have today is the recipe of a beautiful life.
Today, our society is a patchwork of self-sufficient communities, each contributing to the greater whole while maintaining its unique identity and traditions. With technology thriving on a new path, it is used not as a means of escape, but as a tool to enhance our understanding of the natural world and foster collaboration across communities.
Those years weathered us, but they also reawakened the fundamental strengths which allowed humanity to endure - our compassion, resilience, and profound reverence for this earth that sustains us. We shed the callousness and excess of the old world and rediscovered the beauty in simple acts of kindness, self-sufficiency, and cooperation.