The World Is Fine. Probably

Welcome back, or well, welcome for the first time. I'm Akun, and this is a podcast about nothing useful. Seriously, if you came here for life hacks, investment tips, or one of those morning routines where somebody wakes up at five, drinks green water, journals for forty minutes, and somehow. Becomes a completely different human being before breakfast. You've got the wrong address. If you have plans to stare at the ceiling today, honestly, close this right now. Staring at the ceiling is like way more important than anything I'm about to say. Still here? Cool. Let's waste some time together. So, the world right now. I don't really know how to describe it except Um, fine, probably. The world is fine. Everything is fine. The institutions are fine. The media is fine. Politics is fine. The internet is definitely fine. Everybody seems very calm, very reasonable, and completely capable of having a normal conversation without screaming at a stranger they've never met. So, yeah. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep. The ceiling is probably more interesting anyway. Except, I don't know. Maybe I'm being difficult. But sometimes I look around and think, are we all looking at the same thing? Because one person says, everything is fine. Another person says, everything is collapsing. Somebody else. makes a 30-second video explaining that the first 2 people are both secretly part of a global conspiracy. Then somebody responds to that video with a podcast. Then somebody responds to the podcast with a documentary. And suddenly it is 2:47 in the morning and I'm watching a man in a basement explain the entire history of civilization using a whiteboard and 3 red arrows. And somehow, I still don't know what happened. Everyone has an answer. That's the strange part. The media has an answer. Politicians have an answer. Celebrities have an answer. Influencers have an answer. People on the internet who have read approximately half a headline have an answer. And they are very confident about it. I find that Interesting. Not necessarily wrong, just interesting. Because in my experience, the people who are most certain are often the people who stopped asking questions a long time ago. Now, I'm not saying certainty is always bad. Obviously, if your house is on fire, you probably don't need to spend 3 hours asking yourself whether fire is real. That seems pretty straightforward. You should probably leave the house. But when it comes to the world, people seem to have this strange desire to believe they can see the whole picture— every country, every institution, every politician, every media organization, every billionaire, every celebrity, every hidden motivation, Every secret meeting, every person who posted something weird in 2017, all of it at once, and somehow they know exactly what it means. I don't know. Maybe take a breath. Maybe sit down. Maybe stop posting for five minutes because the world is complicated, annoyingly complicated. Sometimes you can look at the same event. And find 2 completely different explanations that both sound reasonable for about 10 minutes. Then you look a little closer and realize one of them is based on actual information, the other one is based on a screenshot, and both people are now calling each other fascists. This is the part where I would normally say, well, let's calmly examine the evidence. But honestly? I don't have the energy to pretend humans are naturally calm. We are not. We are emotional little animals with smartphones and unlimited access to other people's opinions. This was always going to get weird. And maybe that's the problem. We are so desperate for the world to make sense that we keep forcing it into simple shapes, Good guy, bad guy, right side, wrong side, hero, villain, genius, idiot, freedom, oppression, truth, lies. Pick one. Put it in your profile. Change your picture. Fight with somebody. Feel morally superior for 6 minutes. Then wake up the next morning and do it again. I understand the appeal. I really do. The world is exhausting. Nobody wants to personally investigate every institution on Earth before having an opinion about breakfast. So you find a person who sounds confident, and then you borrow their certainty. That's much easier. They already did the thinking. Or at least they sound like they did. You don't need to understand the whole problem. You just need to know who is good and who is bad. Very efficient. Very convenient. Almost like having a personal emotional subscription service. You pay with your attention, and they send you a new enemy every morning. And I'm not pretending I'm above this, please. I have opinions. I have plenty of opinions. Some of them are even good. Some of them are probably terrible. There is a very real possibility that I have confidently said something stupid at some point and simply haven't been informed yet. This is one of the reasons I try not to build my entire personality around being right. It sounds exhausting. Imagine waking up every morning and realizing your entire identity. depends on never changing your mind. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I would rather have a snack. But here's the thing. Saying I don't know has become strangely difficult. It feels weak. It feels like losing. Somebody else says, well, I know exactly what's happening, and suddenly you feel like you are behind. So, you choose a side. You find a team. You find a person who talks with confidence. And then you let their certainty do the heavy lifting. It is understandable. But a simple answer is not automatically a true answer. And a complicated problem does not become simple just because we are tired of thinking about it. Sometimes I wonder, If we have become too good at pretending everything is normal. Not because everything is normal. Because normal is comfortable. You can wake up, make coffee, answer some emails, scroll through a few disasters, watch somebody become famous for saying something stupid, and then go to bed. The world is on fire somewhere, but your delivery arrived on time. So technically? Fine. Probably. And then the next day, another thing happens. Then another. And eventually, things that would have seemed completely insane 10 years ago become part of the background noise. That's the dangerous part. Not necessarily the big dramatic moment. The slow adjustment. The gradual movement of the line. One thing we ignore, one thing we explain away, one thing we decide is not worth talking about. Then another, and another, and eventually somebody looks around and says, wait, how did we get here? And the answer is usually very boring. It happened slowly, a little bit at a time. Nobody woke up one morning. And decided, today, let's completely destroy everything. That would at least be easier to notice. No. Usually things just become normal. A crack you can see is a problem. At least you know where it is. You can point at it. You can argue about it. You can fix it. Maybe badly, but at least you know it exists. A crack covered with wallpaper is a different story. The room looks fine. The wall looks fine. Everybody says, why are you staring at the wall? The wall is fine. And then one day, the ceiling is on the floor. And somebody says, well, this is unexpected. No, it really isn't. We just didn't want to look at the crack. And this is where I think we need to be honest. The world has problems. Obviously. Some things are broken. Some institutions are broken. Some people are corrupt. Some systems protect themselves before they protect the people they were supposed to serve. Some stories are manipulated. Some people with enormous influence Use that influence badly. Sometimes people who should know better decide that looking away is more comfortable. None of this is a particularly exciting revelation. Human beings have been doing this forever. We are not suddenly discovering that power can corrupt people. Congratulations! We have found history. But pretending problems don't exist doesn't make them disappear. It just gives them time. And problems are very good at using time. They grow, they hide, they become normal, and then people become strangely offended when you point at them. Why are you being so negative? I'm not being negative. I'm looking at the wall. The wall is doing something weird. Maybe don't yell at me for noticing. Now, I am not telling you what to think. Please don't make me responsible for that. I am not a cult leader. I don't have matching robes. I don't even have a proper office. I'm just looking at things. Sometimes I think I see something interesting. Sometimes I'm completely wrong. This is the part where you're supposed to use your own brain. Very old technology. Still works. Sometimes it freezes. Sometimes it makes strange noises, but generally it is still a pretty good machine. And maybe that's what I want this place to be. Not a place where I give you answers. Not a place where I tell you which team to join. Not a place where I explain the world to you like I have been personally appointed as the manager of reality. I have enough problems. I don't need the job. Maybe this is just a place where we look again. At things we thought we already understood. At things we stopped noticing. At things that seem too obvious to question. Because sometimes the obvious thing is the thing nobody wants to look at. Sometimes everybody is so busy arguing about the color of the wallpaper, That nobody wants to talk about the hole in the wall. And sometimes the person pointing at the hole is annoying. I understand. I am probably annoying. I might even be doing it right now. But being annoying and being wrong are not the same thing. Unfortunately. I wish they were. It would make life much easier. I think we should leave a little space between what we believe and what we actually know. Because those are not always the same thing. That space can be uncomfortable. It means you might have to change your mind. It means somebody you dislike might occasionally say something intelligent. I know, horrible. Absolutely horrible. And somebody you love might occasionally say something completely insane. Also happens. People are complicated, very inconvenient. You cannot simply sort the entire human race into 2 folders and go home. Maybe that's where freedom begins. Not in having the perfect answer, not in finding the perfect leader, the perfect ideology, the perfect explanation, or the perfect person online who finally understands everything. Maybe freedom begins with the ability to look at something and say, wait, maybe, maybe not, let me look again. That is not weakness. It is actually quite difficult. Anyone can be certain. Certainty is cheap. You can get it for free on the internet. Questioning yourself is much more expensive. And yes, sometimes you need to act before you have perfect information. Obviously, you cannot stand in front of a burning house forever saying, I'm still gathering data. Sometimes the fire is real. Sometimes something needs to be done. But acting does not require pretending you understand everything. You can do something and still admit that you might be wrong about part of the situation. You can care deeply, And still leave room for doubt. You can have strong opinions without turning them into a religion. That might be the thing I find most interesting. We are constantly told that if we do not have a complete answer, we have no answer. If we are not completely certain, we are weak. If we question our own side, we are traitors. If we acknowledge a problem in our own team, we are helping the enemy. That's a very strange way to think. If your side is perfect, congratulations! You have joined a group of angels. Please let me know where the membership office is. I would love to visit. But maybe the world is not a puzzle where every piece has one perfect place. Sometimes the piece is damaged. Sometimes you have the wrong piece. Sometimes the picture on the box is wrong. Sometimes you are looking at the wrong puzzle entirely. And sometimes, yes, you are simply missing a piece. That doesn't mean the entire picture is meaningless. It just means you don't have the entire picture yet. Which is annoying. But also— Normal. I have a puzzle on my desk. One piece is missing. Not because I lost it. I know exactly where it is. I leave it incomplete on purpose. Because a finished puzzle is just a picture. A beautiful picture, sure. But the missing piece is a question. The moment I put it in, the question disappears. And maybe I'm not ready to stop asking yet. Maybe that sounds unnecessarily dramatic. It's a puzzle, Akun. Calm down. I know. It is literally a puzzle. But I think we do this with everything. We see a person, and we want to know exactly what they are. We see a country, and we want to know exactly what it is. We see a political problem, and we want to know who the good guy is. We see a relationship and we want to know who is right. We see ourselves in the mirror and we want to know who we are. We want labels. We want answers. We want the final piece. Because once we have the final piece, we can stop thinking. And honestly, that sounds pretty comfortable. So maybe the world is fine. Probably. Maybe the institutions are fine. Maybe the media is fine. Maybe the politicians are fine. Maybe all the people yelling online have carefully researched their opinions and are communicating them with complete emotional stability. Maybe the ceiling is not falling down. Maybe that is just modern architecture. I don't know. I genuinely don't know. But I do know that I would rather look at the crack than pretend I can't see it. And I don't think looking at the crack means you have to hate the entire building. That's another strange thing. You can love a place and still admit that something inside it is broken. You can care about a country and still criticize its government. You can believe in freedom And still notice when people use freedom to manipulate other people. You can love art and still think some art is absolute garbage. Please, we can survive this. We don't have to pretend everything is perfect in order to care about it. Maybe that is what I am interested in. Not destroying everything. Not worshipping everything. Not pretending the past was perfect. Not pretending the future will be perfect. Just looking. Looking again. Asking annoying questions. Leaving a little space. Trying not to become so certain that I stop noticing what is actually in front of me. Because the world is not finished. You are not finished. I am definitely not finished. I have no idea what I'm doing half the time. I have music to make. Things to build. Probably some emails to ignore. There are still questions I haven't asked. There are still things I haven't seen. There are still pieces missing. And maybe that's not a flaw in the design. Maybe— that's the design. So, is the world fine? Probably. Maybe not. I don't know. Look again. Check the wall. Ask your own questions. Use your own brain. And if somebody tells you they understand the entire world perfectly, maybe take a breath. Maybe sit down. Maybe stop posting for 5 minutes. They might be right. They might be wrong. And honestly, that is the annoying part. You have to look. That's it. That's the episode. I'm Akun. There is nothing here but freedom. See you next time. Whenever that is. Bye.