Better?

One of the great tragedies of the human race is the inevitable failure of the naïve optimists wishing for better. So many making promises to fix our great problems just to follow in the footsteps of those they originally critiqued. Ventures for humanity disintegrate into personal struggles against complacency and corruption. In the end, the problems remain the same, regardless of the changing circumstances and environments.

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It's easy to say the world sucks. It's easy to say that organization A or government B are doing a terrible job. It's hard to change anything with regards to those things. It's even harder for those changes to make anything better. Dreaming of utopia doesn't bring it into existence.

A lot of us spend time thinking that we are the good guys (myself included) helping to contribute real meaningful change to the world in whatever small function we may perform. We all want to make the world a better place. Everyone wants to be the hero. Nobody does things because they think they are wrong at the time they do them.

So why do we so often fall short? Why do we continue to commit the same mistakes?

Maybe it's a lack of perspective. We see our visions with clear eyes and with a determined focus. We think we can will our vision into reality. But as we grow older, priorities change. Easier paths to easier lives tempt us. We become tired of pushing against walls that don't move. We realize our limits and give in. We stop short and let go of the vision to focus on our own weakness. Our vision gets blurry.

It's sad to see people tout themselves as members of a new revolution just to see them so quickly break down and become the people they so openly critiqued. In some cases, they still do critique these villains even though they perform the same actions cloaked in new mediums and new circumstances.

Over the past year, I've seen plenty of people in the blockchain space argue for better when they didn't have the mental endurance to do so. People claim to have integrity but fail to recognize how difficult it is when life keeps reminding you how easy it is to break those promises and engage in selfish behavior. These people justify their behavior by appealing to the crowd. Everyone else is doing it.

But who cares about everyone else when we are talking about being better? Of course it's going to be hard. Or else it would already be done. Everyone fails, and nearly everyone quits. People can be hypocrites. But soon enough it will be these folks that the next generation critiques for the problems they failed to solve and for the new problems they created.

When will I give in and be tomorrow's antagonist? I don't know. But I'm not going to act like it's never going to happen.

Because it could.