Reversal

Raising his eyebrows, Christian settles back on the couch and thinks carefully.

"If you don't want to answer, you don't have to."

"No, it's okay..." Looking at Sonia for a few seconds, Christian sighs and speaks "The truth is that in a few years we will see a society of cynics."

Raising her eyebrows, Sonia asks with interest "Why would that be?"

"It starts the age of technology, the age of the internet... global communication is no longer something so complicated and everyone will be able to communicate with each other... that will only be the beginning of it all."

"..."

"People will start arriving to proclaim the evil of the world, eating meat, homophobia, racism, global warming, the church, wars, hunger, rapes, oppression of man... the whole world will be in chaos." Looking at the computer screen, Christian continued "Faced with so much information, so many points of view, so many opinions, so much chaos, we will have an unanswered question. ... What is good? What is bad? Everyone will act senselessly, criticizing others with excessive morality, to the point that there will be people who will even judge and insult people who died hundreds of years ago."

"..."

"Everyone will fight for being right, for who has the most 'open' mind, for who is right and who is an idiot just for not following their thinking... this excessive morality that will be demanded from all sides will become so strict and strange that it will become something completely illogical and impossible for a real human being to comply with."

"..."

"We will have doubts about what is good and what is bad in this world... let's take chocolate as an example, chocolate is good?"

"Yes?" with doubt, Sonia answered.

"The answer is no, because behind it there is a chain of exploitation where they even use children in conditions similar to slavery."

"..."

"Then is donating food to people without resources good?"

"Yes" Sonia nodded with certainty.

"The answer will also be 'no', on the internet you will find some guy explaining that it won't solve the world's problems or hunger... either because of socialism or capitalism, or some new theory that came out two years ago or something like that... and that's why giving food to people without resources doesn't help, but it will make everything worse... and we can continue with many examples, giving charity, supporting a homeless person, among many other things."

"..."

"There will always be groups of people, big or small, theories, essays or articles that will tell you that that is not really good... in other words thanks to this morality that is born from the excess of surveillance of everything and everyone, as well as the obsessive overthinking of postmodernity where one has to check gestures, winks, thoughts, feelings, everything of everything... because it happens that good hardly exists, while evil is everywhere."

"..."

"Food, clothes, ideas, words, hairstyles, behaviors, identities... everything is subject to criticism... if you choose the wrong hairstyle, you may be committing cultural appropriation, and even if nobody had explained or commented on the long theoretical explanation behind it, then already, just by choosing a bad hairstyle, you are bad and there is no chance of redemption."

"..."

"The same will happen with eating non-locally produced food or transgenic food. This will happen because you committed that horrible act of not reading enough blogs and opinions on the internet. Now you are a globalist, a person against nature, someone bad..."

"That sounds difficult," Sonia commented with interest.

"Yes, what will happen is that the new generations will be demanded that, beforehand for anything, small or big, they must read long theories, treatises and essays as a first requirement to choose their hobbies or to socialize... they will be sent the message that, to be morally correct people, they have to be suspicious of everything and always consider that there is a bad side of everything, that for that reason, nothing is really good. ... and the difficult thing is that this not only stays with the small, it also goes forward with the big things like the environment, the economy, society, culture... it will be said that, even if they manage to do something really good for the world, that is of no use if they didn't do it in a colonial, capitalist, libertarian, socialist, social democratic, environmentalist, traditionalist or deconstructive point of view."

"..."

"But it is not the fault of the youth either... you cannot expect that generations who will be asked that the minimum contribution they can make is a perfect world, will not be flooded with a terrible impotence, frustration and nihilism... it will be logical for the new generations that even to save the world you have to do it to the letter of complex theories, moral treatises or even books of philosophies of any people who have no studies or experiences. ... at that moment you will understand that cynicism is not an ugly and tortuous path, but perhaps the only way left... after all the internet and the media, those who try to convince people to change, I don't know... capitalism or stop global warming, will not stop repeating one thing, is that there is no hope, that we only have the apocalypse left... so the bad has practically already won, why strive for the good? Literally there will be no good, everything will be bad."

"..."

"With all this, here it seems that it is not the young people who are cynical, but their world for demanding something like this from them... yes, you have to save the world from the climate crisis, but at the same time don't forget to attack or support diverse characters appearing in movies that you may not see... yes, you have to help the economy, but don't forget to buy local and organic food... ironically all this extremism will not make us empathetic, instead it will make us cold, calculating, and polarized... for example a side where the main cause will be the preservation of life, and for that, you have to get a vaccine to avoid disease, but many people do not trust it and choose not to get vaccinated... many people who support the vaccine will share with humor and mockery how leaders of those who do not want to be vaccinated are dying from the disease they did not get vaccinated against... if the idea is to defend the integrity of the lives of others, why laugh?"

"..."

"Unfortunately, this will not be the only example. Similar things like people defending life, people defending dignity, freedom or whatever... attacking and laughing when the person who is suffering something is a person they consider to be from another side."

"That's why for the future young people, the apocalypse will be the most pleasant option... they will no longer have to be saving for retirement, working on weekends, nor be attentive to social networks or all that long list of requirements and obligations that the new life will need... because that world is much less complicated than having to fulfill the many requirements that will be asked in the new world."

"..."

"Everyone will believe in nothing but self-preservation... how to empathize with people on the other side of the world? How to feel empathy for billions of people we will never meet? Is it that to be a good person in that pure and elevated way as we will be demanded we will have to lock ourselves in that artificial morality so cold, where we care about animals and those people, not because we really feel that concern, but because they will tell us that we have to feel it, because if we don't, we are either unconsciously people or bad people... that is, we have to pretend that we care about those causes, we have to pretend that we have that morality, not because has developed organically in us, but because of the cold calculation that we have to do it to look good to society... ironically this attempt to make everyone have perfect morals, to be perfect and not make mistakes, to have caring for millions of people and care about all the causes in the world... is the true and most cruel cynicism of that era..."

"..."

"*Sigh* Anyway, the truth is that we are imperfect, we won't be morally superior to previous generations, and we won't be the big deal as people want to believe... in fact all that posturing and all that sense of superiority that will be had, is nothing more than the result of our attempt to live in denial of that deep frustration we feel... and I am not saying all this to belittle us or lower our self-esteem, I am saying it because the remedy for cynicism is that we can trust again in something, anything, even if we know it is imperfect and that it may never work... and all that will happen when we stop demanding ourselves to be the saviors of the world, demanding ourselves to be perfect and to have that artificial morality... as simple as not expecting that imperfect beings in a harsh and visceral world, can put in place perfect solutions that end up creating an ideal world."

"..."

"We shouldn't expect heroes to emerge or for us all to be those heroes, to have unattainable morals for everything and to have the solution to the world's problems... we have to expect ordinary people, full of flaws, who sometimes get it wrong, to do what they can for a world that even, is a little better than it was yesterday." Taking a deep breath, Christian smiled softly towards Sonia and said "That's my answer, my analysis of tomorrow. ... a time where young people will want the apocalypse more, all thanks to the demands of adults and worse, of themselves... a world where the apocalypse is hope and not an atrocious end."

"..." Looking at the child in a daze, Sonia swore she saw an adult in front of her instead of a 12-year-old, feeling that his words, although somewhat crazy for talking about something that is not quite happening yet, but had quite a lot of reason to it. "That was... an interesting answer."

"Although it's way before, it will all make sense between approximately five to eight years." Sighing, Christian remembers how toxic everything was in his old world, where even he received insults for not wanting to record with certain people and being accused of multiple things like, racism, homophobia, and intolerance, among other things. "*Sigh* Let's move on with the other questions?"

"Yes..." Sonia nodded, changing the video.

"Hi, Christian do you like any video games? And if you like you, what kind of games do you prefer?"

This was another woman of about 16 years old.

"I don't really play much, but I do tend to play with Hailie from time to time, but the girl gets frustrated since she can never beat me... I usually enjoy them a lot, but I don't like to play alone." Smiling, Christian replied "As for what kind of game... I would say some that are online open world... I also prefer to play games where getting stuff is difficult and if you die from pvp or some other reason, your stuff can be stolen by someone else... I find it exciting."

Switching to another video, more questions came out.

"How did you learn to sing? Who taught you to play ukulele? Do you know how to play any other instruments?"

"I learned everything by myself and you need to work the vocal cords, there are several exercises you can use to work them if you don't have a good voice from the beginning... as for the ukulele I learned to play it by myself, and yes, I know how to play other instruments... guitar, piano, drums, electric guitar, bass, among other things... music is my entertainment when I'm bored."

"How does it feel to be shot at?"

"The truth is that at the beginning you don't feel much, just the warmth of your blood when it soaks you, but when you realize what happened... it's like a strong and constant burning, I didn't even realize it and I was already losing consciousness, so I can't explain much more"

"Any advice on how to make money?"

"Invest in the shares of Tesla, Netflix... you should double or triple what you invest in maximum 7 years... there is also Bitcoin, little is said about it, but today it is already worth 114 dollars each and it goes up every day more, I assure you that by 2015 it will be worth more than 1000 dollars."

"How does it feel to be a millionaire?"

"Now I am a billionaire, and the truth is that I don't feel any different, I just have more freedom when it comes to spend money... for example I bought a building because I had a childhood dream of modifying it to my liking, right now it is under construction in New York".

After dozens of various questions about his life and what he thinks about certain things, the videos ended and Sonia smiled "That would be all the questions from the audience, can I continue asking you questions? The questions are tricky, if you don't want to answer we'll just skip it."

"Sure."

"Christian, I saved these questions for last as they were the hardest to answer."

"Just talk." Looking sideways at the woman, Christian answered calmly.

"We know your father left after a big fight between you, where you even ended up in the hospital for months... what would you do if he decided to come back?"

"That's a complicated question." Looking up at the ceiling, Christian spoke "The truth is, I hate him for many reasons... most of the time I spent with him, it was abuse after abuse... but it wasn't always like that."

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Edited By: Joy_a