Everything is about to change

Beneath the pavement, there is turmoil.

Photo by Kammeran Gonzalez-Keola

I feel like recently I haven’t been writing as much as I should have been here on Beneath the Pavement. There’s several reasons for that.

One, I needed a bit of a break from reality.

And with reality I mean our shared capitalist dystopia in which genocides, wars, and intentional famines are not horrifying atrocities but mere background noise. There’s things one shouldn’t get used to.

By reality, I also mean the nihilistic sensation of utter futility and meaninglessness — the realization that daily news and social media and politics and economics are just useless past-times we engage in to keep the eternal boredom at bay. Constantly, they struggle to convince us how important and significant it all is when in reality it’s just shit. Self-aggrandization and fragile egos and coping mechanisms and the dark joys of unrelenting power-hunger, nothing else. Add to that the dread of collapse, climate change, and economic decline and you can see how constant exposure to these topics isn’t particularly conducive to mental health and happiness.

And, like everyone else, I do want mental health and happiness.

Two, I felt like I didn’t have much to say.

I have a constantly growing list of essay ideas and thoughts (there’s around two hundred entries now), but none of the topics particularly captured my imagination and passion in these last few weeks. My last couple of essays felt a bit like a chore if I’m being honest. There’s people here supporting me monetarily — and I’m very grateful for that! — but the pressure of having to produce took a toll on me. Beneath the Pavement has always been a passion project and a reflection of my inner turmoil and anger at a world that feels and is so very wrong. Over time, I began to realize just how many people share this sentiment and how little they are represented both online and in the real world. Hence the relative success of this publication.

BUT it is work. So much work. A constant, nagging guilt of how I should be writing or researching or editing or whatever.

Three, ADHD.

Yeah, it’s real. And it’s influenced my life more than anything else. Chemical imbalances in the brain, an unsuitable socio-economic system — whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The reality is that I struggle, and always will. When I’m obsessed with something, I am truly obsessed. Productive and passionate. But when I lose interest, I truly lose interest. It’s all or nothing. So it has been with every job, every hobby, every project.

Luckily, I haven’t lost interest in writing, don’t worry. I think I just need to breathe a bit and stop pressuring myself so much. I have a job, I’m struggling to keep my head afloat (like many, many others), I have people around me, and it can all be a bit much at times.

Also, another topic increasingly captured my attention in these last couple of weeks.

Four, Artificial Intelligence.

or, everything is about to change

I have a couple of thoughts and essays on the backburner, most relating to the overwhelming disinterest we, the Left, are exhibiting toward AI. I feel like this is a terrible mistake. I think this technology will change quite literally everything, the very foundations of society, whether we want it to or not, and that a failure to engage with its consequences on inequality, class struggle, poverty, and so on right now will have dire consequences for us all.

AI is deeply, deeply fascinating. Beyond the obvious and so very easy Cyberpunk-corporate-hellscape-predictions lies absolute uncertainty. You all know I crave radical change (and so do most of you, I imagine) and this will definitely be radical change, for better or worse. Better to be prepared than to leave the field to tech-liberals and conservo-fascists.

I often wrote about how we’ve lost our ability to imagine anything beyond the status quo, and it increasingly appears to me that even the supposedly radical Left is guilty of that. I am failing to recognize any sort of long-term thinking in any political spectrum. The argument can be made that there are real and tangible and utterly horrible issues right now and that those are rightly the focus of attention. Perhaps. I still think we are about to see extraordinary things, beyond even the scope of climate disaster and late-stage capitalism, and absolutely no one is prepared. Funny and semi-helpful chatbots and fake images are but the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

I will think more about this. And then I will write about it.

Anyway.

I just wanted to let y’all know what is going on right now and why I haven’t written as much as usual. I won’t make any promises, but I hope I’ll soon return with renewed passion and vigor. Perhaps Beneath the Pavement will go in a slightly different direction in the future. We’ll see. I feel like I’ve said a lot of what I wanted to say about capitalism, imperialism, society, mental health, and so on, and perhaps it’s time to widen the scope a bit.

(I could go the way of writing about current events, but there’s so many leftist writers already doing that — far better writers and journalists than I am. So I probably won’t be doing that.)

Also, I hope all of you who are paid subscribers don’t feel like your support is for nothing. Trust me, it is very, very much appreciated and pays part of my monthly rent. There are almost eighty essays available in the Beneath the Pavement archive now, almost all of them evergreen content, plus some short stories and the free eBooks of my novels. I think that does justify $5 a month.

Thank you all so much for the support over all this time, and in the future, no matter if paid or free supporter or just occasional reader.

Well, (hopefully) until next week,

Antonio

You can also support my pursuit of freedom and self-determination on Patreon (starting at $2 a month), or leave a tip on PayPal. Thank you so much.