It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time that tried men's souls.

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time that tried men's souls. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of profound intelligence and strength, and ignorance and weakness. It was a time of profound bravery and courage, and profound cowardice and shame. It was a time of almost infinite, unfathomable knowledge, available at everyone's fingertips. Yet it was a time of profound censorship and ignorance. Nearly unlimited information, soured by lies, trivial matters, and gossip. All the libraries in the world, all the information humanity had acquired, thrust upon us, and yet, rejected by many, who simply dug deeper in to their refuge, seeking solace in their own ignorance. The truth, where it was permitted, was drowned in a deluge of misinformation, lies and emptiness, devoid of any meaning. The vapid, substanceless nature of it's rot, infesting every social media company and forum with it's viciously cruel yet painfully saccharine coating. A time of great moral crusades to do evil, to cancel others, to hurt and censor, in the name of social justice, which it was anything but. To expose children to horrifying acts. To expose us all to the horrors of the world, to gore and violence and crime, despite the now unlimited access to it's beauty. To dig up the dark underbelly and ignore all that was good in the world, to take refuge in cynicism and ignorance. The deep dark bliss of hating all and never having to commit to anything, pretending one was above it all, both somehow in control of everything and yet totally helpless. To be the eternal victim, of unlimited strength to bully others. A time when abusers pretended to be victims, monsters pretended to be saints, and a time when we were never more connected around the world, and yet never more lonely. We were all anonymous, and yet had no privacy, our information public to all. Our privacy a precious asset, that we freely gave away. 

Despite being the best time in human history, with nearly unlimited food, water, and resources available by comparison to humanity's early days out in the great plains or hiding in caves, it was a time of great repression and suppression, of people, of society and the truth. A time of the greatest pleasures, and the worst of pains. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. How odd the paradox we lived in. The year was, 2023. How profoundly things had changed in the last century, and perhaps even more profound, how profound it was that they had stayed the same. It seemed almost inevitable that war would happen, in such peaceful times. Like crabs in a bucket, misery wanted company. This was the curse of our generation. The profound depression that was our lives, in the best time it had ever been to be alive. That what we had created had planted the seeds to destroy itself, or created the conditions by where those who never truly had to suffer did not know what real suffering was, and thus by mistake had recreated it. The more we had, the less we seemed we could enjoy it. We would have to learn, from those unhappy times, those desperate times, when very civilizations stood to be destroyed by war or a bad winter, ironically, how to be happy. It was a tremendous irony that our own lack of contentness with how good we had it, was destroying us.