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THE NEXT LEVEL—OR JUST ANOTHER MISTAKE?

What Future Can We Expect? Is It Too Late to Turn the Tide?

Imagine, for a moment, that the world is on a rollercoaster—one that’s speeding faster than we can hold on to. Every twist and turn leaves us breathless, questioning whether we’ve lost control. In just a century, we’ve done what took the rest of humanity 5,000 years.

We’ve gone from handwritten letters to FaceTime, from horses to rockets, from reading the news on paper to getting it on our phones in real-time. We live in an age where AI can write books, diagnose diseases, and make life-or-death decisions. And yet, we have to ask:

Is this truly progress?

A robot diagnosing you with a terminal illness? It might do it efficiently, but will it do it with empathy? Will it understand the look in your child’s eyes when you have to explain the diagnosis?

We can map the human genome, create vaccines in months, and design weapons that can level cities—but we can’t figure out how to stop hating each other long enough to put these advancements to good use.

Because here’s the thing: progress and wisdom are not the same.

The Seduction of Powerlessness

Now, some will tell you, “But what can we do?”

They’ll say the world is too complicated, the problems are too big, that no single person can make a difference.

And that, my friends, is a lie.

A lie told by those who benefit from your inaction.

A lie designed to keep you passive, keep you quiet, keep you from demanding something better.

JFK once said that believing we are powerless is a defeatist belief. And he was right. Because every major change in history, every moment that turned the tide, every fight for justice began with someone who refused to believe they were powerless.

But today, too many of us have been lulled into a dangerous complacency.

We don’t have state-controlled media—but we do have corporate-controlled media, algorithms that feed us what keeps us clicking, not what keeps us thinking.

We don’t have book burnings in the public square—but we do have digital erasures, voices drowned out, uncomfortable truths buried under an avalanche of distraction.

We don’t have tanks in the streets—at least, not in most places—but we have something even more insidious: a quiet, creeping apathy that convinces people that the fight isn’t worth it.

And when that happens, the worst people win.

The Hypocrisy of History

And while we’re on the subject of history—let’s talk about hypocrisy.

Western leaders rushed to condemn the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and the assassinations of dissidents in Britain. Rightly so. But what do they have to say about JFK? About MLK? About RFK? About the countless witnesses in the Kennedy assassination who mysteriously “disappeared”?

What do they have to say about 9/11 questions that never got answered? About CIA programs that eliminated people who were considered a “threat”?

And what about the latest absurdity—leaders in the West pushing the Ukraine war so aggressively that some governments started warning their citizens to “prepare for war.”

Let me ask you this: If you’re warning your people about a possible nuclear war, wouldn’t it be responsible to at least offer some guidance on how to protect them?

Because that’s the job of a government, isn’t it? To protect its people?

Instead, we have leaders who are more interested in escalating conflicts than preventing them. More interested in performative outrage than actual accountability.

And yet, they lecture the world about democracy, about morality, about justice.

My friends, hypocrisy is the most renewable energy source in politics.

The Hat Over the Wall

JFK once told a story. He said that as a boy in Ireland, he and his friends would sometimes come across a high wall that seemed impossible to climb.

And when that happened, they would take their hats and throw them over the wall.

Because once the hat was on the other side, they had no choice but to climb after it.

Well, my friends, our hat is over the wall.

Climate change is not in the distant future—it is here.

Wars are not something that happen far away—they affect all of us.

Democracy is not guaranteed—it is something we must fight for, every day.

The Most Important Question

So what can we do? What can you do?

You can begin exactly where you are.

You don’t need a title. You don’t need permission. You don’t need to wait for someone else to lead.

The greatest movements in history—civil rights, women’s suffrage, the fall of apartheid—did not begin with presidents. They began with ordinary people who decided they would no longer accept the unacceptable.

So if you want a better world:

• Speak up. Call out hypocrisy when you see it.

• Get informed. Learn from real sources, not just convenient ones.

• Vote like it matters. Because it does.

• Support those who fight for justice. Not just with words, but with action.

• Don’t turn away. Because the minute we look away, the minute we stop paying attention, that’s when the worst people win.

No one can do everything. But everyone can do something.

You may be one voice. But one voice, when joined by others, becomes a roar.

You may be one person. But one person, when moving with conviction, can change everything.

And if you ever feel like it’s too much—like the obstacles are too high, the fight too difficult—remember this:

Our hat is already over the wall.

The future is not something that happens to us.

It is something we create.

And history is watching.

So let’s get to work.

Paul Alexander Wolf