A Great Time to Be Alive

In 2019, the world has reached an inflection point with respect to many of its dimensions.

While another person comments "mmm bacon" on some Facebook post about Beyond Meat, it is slowly becoming common knowledge that a plant-based diet is the future: for its health, environmental, and welfare benefits.

While many modern countries have started airing out their dirty, racist and anti-LGBTQ+ laundry in the midst of corresponding rhetoric from the world's highest offices, many are pushing for real change that drives our society towards equality.

While the White House erects the gag rule on establishments that provide their patients with necessary treatments, activists have set up emergency funds while pushing their Senators to uphold Title X.

While child (sexual) abuse seems to be popping up increasingly frequently (latest: PA State Senator Rep. Michael Folmer, an historically strong opponent to SOL reform for child sexual abuse), it is a necessary uncovering as we expand the statutes of limitation and lookback windows for victims who have reached adulthood.

While religion and faith continue to grasp a significant portion of us, we have shifted the emphasis away from the source of our ethics, instead focusing on how we can guarantee certain basic, universal rights such as health care, our constitutional freedoms, and beyond. Moreover, religious exemptions are losing their ability to deprive children of proper healthcare, and it will soon no longer be "defamation" to accuse a religious leader of the rape that he or she committed.

While mental illness and various physical handicaps, mental disorders, and learning disabilities are certainly heavy topics, our society has grown much more understanding and accommodating to each. I have been learning sign language lately, and it's incredible how easy it is to access a full ASL curriculum for free.

While you may be scared that globalization is destroying the old world, there are indescribable benefits to sharing your experience with people of very different backgrounds, as I have already gotten to experience in just the first few weeks of my graduate school experience.

While our primary education system just always seems to be heading in the wrong direction, I know it is on the verge of a revolution based on the facts, proven pathways to success, and sensible methods of standardization without dependency on recall.

While the world continues to experience its sixth mass extinction, ... well, I can't provide too much solace for that. We are still not doing enough. But I know humanity is going to continue to rally.

Do I claim that any of these issues have reached their conclusion? Absolutely not. For instance, none of the last three rounds of Presidential primary debates have even touched on a single LGBTQ+ related issue (of which there are many, likely interwoven with other social issues), nor are we anywhere near reaching gender or racial equality in many facets of our society, nor will the access to a legal abortion be free from the threats of radically conservative states unless we can secure Roe v. Wade, etc. But it is the progress that I anticipate to be looming on the horizon for these issues that excites me to be living in this radical and torrential time. I see our Zeitgeist as satisfying a complicated dynamical system in time, where the direction of our Zeitgeist is directly related to the current state of our Zeitgest and all of the Zeitgeists prior.

While our collective beliefs and practices are in fact anthropological anomalies, there is no room for being content. We live in one of the most tumultuous time periods precisely because we have the power to act upon our discontent by raising our hands, disputing the current state of society, assembling ourselves to address a single issue, and enacting significant change in a short time span. Take advantage of your historically-improbable opportunity to advocate and affect.