Looking around Canada in 2024, it would appear that things continue to get more and more dystopian. I try not to use this word lightly, as it would imply that things have an air of sinisterity about them, and yes, I just made up that word. Thanks for the red squiggly line, but I’m a writer, so fuck off.

Having recently been doing a bit of travelling around the province of Beautiful British Columbia, my blinders are fully removed to what is, has, and will be the complete astroturfing of what constitutes “Canadian culture”, as we become more and more of a nation that exists under elite rule, with a class of never-ending consumers beneath them.

It is hard to argue against wanting to become the elite; life is hardly a challenge if you in possession of valuable assets and a large income- Canada is designed to maximize your ability to gather stuff and surround yourself with materialist people who are focused inside-the-box.

Maybe I’m crazy, or maybe I’ve been thinking outside-the-box for so long that I have this belief that nothing is meant to be fixed. Everything is in a state of managed decline and lowered expectations for all of us south of the elite. Every moment I spend outside-the-box is a moment lost that could’ve been spent inside-the-box and earning money for inside-the-box materialist pursuits. Never in my wildest dreams growing up would owning a home, or lack of owning one, become the single most defining thing about my life. Prior to COVID, I would have never guessed that society would become so malevolent to those who don’t quite fit in.

The pragmatic VS the genuinely fucked up

In the POST-COVID world, we can see that there is a very, very narrow line between the skeptical pragmatic and the destitute schizophrenic who is going to die on the streets of your local big Canadian city. A little pattern recognition requires caution, a medium-amount of pattern recognition is dangerous, and a free-flowing amount of pattern recognition is outright terrorism in modern western society. Noticing things is one of the worst things you can do to yourself, the people you love, and those around you while inside-the-box. Those same skills should be encouraged to be inverted; see the ways the system works from inside-the-box, and profit off those systems instead of questioning them.

Let’s say you do begin to genuinely see patterns and recognize when you’re being lied to, what then? Best case scenario is that you are blacklisted in whatever industry or career you have- good luck. Worst case scenario is that you end up homeless, addicted to substances to take the edge off your destroyed life, and then you’re in an early grave, all because you thought differently in a time when conformity is one of the greatest skills to develop in the New Canada of 2024.

Meditation is useless

The other day I noticed some Toronto Maple Leaf player got an $84 million dollar contract to slap a rubber puck into a net. I started asking myself, wouldn’t most people see that person as being extremely valuable, but for what? For low brow, physical entertainment? How does this person earn millions of dollars doing this?

Meanwhile, we have real problems in society, many of them. Birth rates plummeting, housing crisis, hospital crisis, drug crisis, and a near total lack of leadership and innovative minds to fix it. Naturally, being the insane masochist I am, I spent a lot of time I shouldn’t been writing or finding a part-time job meditating on these ideas and what it would take to fix anything. Well, you’d essentially need a National Solutions League, or the NSL, which would keep a scoreboard for positive contributions to society, like how many people you’ve married, how many children you’ve had, how many people you’ve helped off the street, how much housing you’ve built without making any profit, how many unique innovations you’ve provided to Canada. Then the country could come up with ways to fund it similar to the budgets of the NHL, but instead of people rising up and making $84+ million on some contract to play a sport, they’d bid on and win bigger and bigger contracts to solve issues.

For example, if we really had visionaries to lead society in a better direction, it would not be difficult to supply pod-type housing that would give people a very basic, heated and cooled living space. The reason why the NSL could not exist is because of the need to profit and keep society in a financial prison. The goal is, was, and never will be to lower costs for goods, make living easier, or to innovate to “make things better”, but the goal instead has been to consolidate capital with the aid of government. The government doesn’t want capital spread out among the people, it wants more of a oligarch system where the people work for the government and corporations. It’s working, too.

Problems are not meant to be solved, but maintained, to the benefit of everyone who thinks inside-the-box. Imagine if you just focused in the last 10 years in buying up as much property and AirBNBs you could’ve, instead of writing or working on anything else. You’d have ridden a wave of immigration and money printing to riches! The wealthiest people I’ve met have like 50+ properties on AirBNB and are now fabulously rich.

What the future holds

Probably nothing good for people who focus on life outside-the-box.

Inside-the-box is where all of the cool kids play.

Outside-the-box will only get harder.

-J