Lesson #2859 - Spontaneous Combustion

Holy crap, these last two weeks.

I think it is incredibly important to remember how overwhelming and toxifying that nostalgia can be. I made a comic a while back calling nostalgia a 'gateway emotion', and it's true - often driving us to make decisions that guide our future through the lens of the past. The problem is that the people with more accumulated nostalgia are also the people whose lens has a hell of a much darker tint to it, so it's harder to get a clear glimpse of the future and all the effects their decisions will have. And while that's a problem, it doesn't affect them as much, given that their participation in the future they create will not even significantly compare to the participation by those who aren't making decisions based on nostalgia.

When you tie all of this in to politics and referendums and elections, reality gets even messier. And more often than not, it feels like the world is on fire.

So if nothing else, this probably should be a wake-up call that when you don't vote, others certainly are, and your non-vote basically affirms their decision. And that's particularly important if you want to rein in our future to the best long-term outcome for everyone.