- 08 Dec, 2025 *
Today, it dawned on me that humans were never meant to have this many unique experiences. Or rather, our ancestors would never have experienced as much as we have.
Especially after the 1990s, everything snowballed and sped up and catapulted us through multiple eras that our predecessors had never had to witness.
Yes, they had experiences that most of the world population now doesn’t experience, like plagues, world wars, etc, but they have never witnessed human destruction/innovation/exploration at a global scale as much as we have (in real time sometimes!).
For most people back then, their worldview was limited to their vicinity; very few travelled beyond their hometown/villages, whatmore other countries. Most adventures were learnt through stories from brave e…
- 08 Dec, 2025 *
Today, it dawned on me that humans were never meant to have this many unique experiences. Or rather, our ancestors would never have experienced as much as we have.
Especially after the 1990s, everything snowballed and sped up and catapulted us through multiple eras that our predecessors had never had to witness.
Yes, they had experiences that most of the world population now doesn’t experience, like plagues, world wars, etc, but they have never witnessed human destruction/innovation/exploration at a global scale as much as we have (in real time sometimes!).
For most people back then, their worldview was limited to their vicinity; very few travelled beyond their hometown/villages, whatmore other countries. Most adventures were learnt through stories from brave explorers (or storytellers), not firsthand. Everything moved much slower – things took time.
Now, people expect everything ASAP, by hook or by crook. It’s like people in the past are allowed to just go through life at normal speed, but people now are expected to survive in fast-forward mode or else get left behind.
That people could travel to or study/work in other countries and even interact with foreigners the way we do now is impossible to fathom back in the day, unless you lived in urban areas AND had money.
In 2025, you don’t have to be rich to travel across CONTINENTS in LESS THAN A DAY by air. As long as there’s a connection, it takes SECONDS to send walls of text like this to anyone ANYWHERE in the world. I can message my childhood friend from 20 years ago on Whatsapp (where I’m in multiple international groupchats) while having a Discord call with my friends from other countries. In the same computer, I will later livestream a game with some friends, and then do remote work alongside colleagues from different countries.
Imagine explaining all this to people hundreds of years ago. They’d either think it’s madness, sorcery, or both.
Life has changed so much and so fast since Y2K, which I believe is largely thanks to the internet for being so ubiquitous that it’s inevitable that tech and education are now more democratised than ever in the history of humankind.
Anyway, all this thoughtvomit started because I was just thinking/worrying about how AI is gonna make the internet implode. Kinda funny this ends with me marvelling at how far we’ve come as humans + me anxious about if I (or we)’ll be able to survive at the speed we’re going.