The problem with humanity is that even though many people believe they are selfless, no one truly is. Yet, by nature, we must be, because our collective actions determine the quality of life for the next generation. We are trapped in a biological contract we never signed—forced to plant seeds for trees whose shade we will never sit in, and forced to endure the storms brewed by those who came before us.
However, your own life is finite. It doesn’t matter if you accumulate massive wealth; you aren’t truly changing the world for yourself. Everything you own or experience was pre-determined by your predecessors. For example, if a billionaire lived before the invention of the mobile phone, no amount of money could buy him one. He was forced to consume only what was available, and that availability was a gift from the past. Even the most powerful emperor of the 14th century lived a life of physical discomfort compared to a modern-day laborer, simply because the “technology of comfort” had not yet been harvested from the seeds of time. Wealth, then, is not an absolute power; it is merely a premium ticket to a pre-recorded show. You can buy the best seat in the theater, but you cannot change the movie being played.
The Fruit of the Unreachable Tree
Consequently, when you are part of a long-term process, you rarely taste its fruits—especially if that process outlasts your lifespan. We are currently obsessed with the “MrBeastification” of charity and the gamification of survival, where the ultra-wealthy orchestrate grand spectacles of redistribution. Critics argue that this is a dystopian fulfillment of Marx’s warnings, where the billionaire becomes a “fun” surrogate for a failing state.
But my antithesis to the argument “MrBeast Is What Marx Warned Us About“ is this: Do not worry; you will not live to enjoy or suffer the long-term effects.
You are currently suffering the effects of the past, not the future. The economic anxieties, the environmental shifts, and the cultural fractures you feel today are the echoes of decisions made fifty years ago. By the time the current “Running Man” reality TV version of the world evolves into its final, perhaps more terrifying form, you will be gone. Human life is fundamentally short. Within roughly 60 years, for you, everything ends.
The Daily Armageddon
We talk about Armageddon, Judgment Day, or the “End of Days” as if they are singular events waiting for us at the end of a long, historical road. This is a grand delusion of scale. In reality, the apocalypse happens every single day. Every time a heart stops, a universe is extinguished. When a person dies, their version of the galaxy, their memories of the sun, and their fears of the future all vanish instantly. To the individual, there is no difference between a personal death and a supernova that wipes out the solar system.
Humans need to break free from the delusion of making things bigger than they are. We stress over “The Fate of Civilization” or “The Future of the Economy” as if we are immortal spectators who will be here to see the final credits roll. We are not. It doesn’t matter how fascinated you are by the size of the Sun or the expansion of the universe; for you, the galaxy effectively ends in 60 years.
The Liberation of the Present
If we accept this Personal Eschatology, the weight of the “Future” begins to lift. Why should we tremble at the Marxist warnings of a corporate-dominated future or the hyper-capitalist dreams of Mars colonization? You will never step foot on Mars, and you will never see the collapse of the systems being built today. You are a temporary guest in a house built by your ancestors, living on a timeline that is strictly limited.
This is not a call for nihilism, but a call for Radical Presentism. We must stop inflating our importance in the grand arc of history. The billionaire and the beggar are both moving toward the same wall of 60 years. Neither can take their wealth into the future, and neither can escape the technological limitations of the present.
When you realize that your “End of Days” is a biological certainty rather than a historical prophecy, the obsession with grand systems fades. The Sun will continue to burn for billions of years, but your Sun—the one that lights your path and warms your skin—is on a countdown. Laugh at the psychic evaluations of the powerful, ignore the grand warnings of the theorists, and recognize that the only world you truly need to worry about is the one that exists between your birth and your breath. Everything else is just a ghost story told by the past to frighten the future.
