Writer Wander 023 - I Always Arrive at the End of Things

That ship sailed long ago. Now where are you headed?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Rider Wanderer Twenty Three. I always show up at the end of things. This is a sentiment that I felt on many occasions in my life. And whether it's true or just a perceived reality, it is something that has affected me in some measure. And as I've begun to make work on this novel, Echoes of Heroes, and as you've been able to glean through the various details I've given about this story, one of the big themes of this story, and one of the main ideas, is that this is a world after the heroes. After all the great accomplishments have been done, you are in the aftermath. You are very much in the echoes of the actions that the heroes made. You know, that's obviously what what the title, what the title is about, right? But again, I recently I finished writing a chapter this morning where you have Finnegan and his mentor companion Kenum and they're walking down a road, right? You know, the main character just left his own village. I I just had like all of the you know all of the moments in which the you know the character was like saying goodbye to to everyone and you know he did like his final ceremony with everyone before he left the village, and he has left the village. Finnegan is gone from Alban Mount, and now he's on the road, and the road that he's taking is called the Zvenish Way. And part of the things that Ken is explaining on the way through this road is that the Zvenish Way is not a road that was founded by Namakkians who are the local people of Finnsland, which is heavily inspired by late medieval Ireland in particular. The Zvenish Way was founded by people from a land called Zvengaard, who at one point arrived at Namaq and founded the first cities in Namak, including Weining Gard, which is the biggest city, and sort of the administrative hub of Namak, while it is currently being conquered by an external an external neighbor. So basically, the only area of Namahak that you know sort of has like any meaningful business uh going on in it or has any like wider connections to um to the international world to the other countries and the other continents in in this land is really Weinengaard. Uh because it was this city that was founded by Northmen who were sailors, and there's a lot of inspirations with the Viking settlement of Ireland, you know, as you as you may or may not know, Vikings were the ones who founded Dublin. You know, it was not purely the product of the of the native Irish, though obviously eventually it was you know it came to be fused into the local culture. But Svengaard and Namak, they kind of had that relationship between Scandinavia and Ireland, and basically Ken goes on to say that you know these the conquerors currently in Namak are not the first conquerors to have arrived, and these Zvenish people they are no longer present in Namak because you know, centuries ago, and what the high king at the time, the last high king, led an alliance of clans to basically kick them out of Namak, and they were successful in this, but at the cost of the high kingship, because the you know the last high king died in battle with the Svenish, and since the High Kingship dissolved, ever since then, Namak has been divided into various clans, and it has not had the same comparative unity to what it had before, right? And one of the things that you know Fain is thinking about while he's going through all of this is like you know, man, all of this cool stuff happened so long ago, you know, all of the cool stuff happened so long ago, and to me, it's like man, I'm late. I I'm late. I you know, I I was have you guys seen that meme about like uh born born too late to participate in the crusades, born too early to uh to participate in like space colonization, and then like the middle part is something the middle part is where the punchline is where it's like but born born just in time to I don't know not be able to afford a home or born just in time to pay like a million dollars for a single family home or something, you know, it's a funny meme, but you know, there's a truth to it, right? There among some people, certainly within myself, I have and I harbor this notion that I was born at the fading of things, I was born at the end of things, and obviously for a story that has a lot to do with the world after the heroes, with a story that is so distinctly fourth age as echoes of heroes, that theme is also present there. And when I say that I was born at the at the end of things, you know, it could be a very arbitrary thing, right? But I've always had this sensation that whenever I join a social community, it's always like near its decline. You know, I remember when I, you know, I was a Boy Scout for a long time and I made very great memories in the Boy Scouts, but I I remember when I that you know when I first joined the Boy Scouts, I had this sensation that I joined it during a time in which my scout troop was a lot smaller than it had been historically, you know, there were much less people participating in it, right? And I was coming in, you know, this product of the later ages, and I was I was there experiencing what I perceived to be the end. Thankfully, they're still they're still going, but I'm not necessarily talking about a reality. I guess I'm just talking about a sensation here. It may or may not be true that I arrived at the end of the thing that I was uh that I was thinking about. However, um that's how it felt like, right? And that's true in basically nearly everything, nearly everything else, right? And you know, it's it's also the the same thing from where I'm from. Where I'm from, we have a very low birth rate, you know, and you know, that's something that you're seeing across all the developed world, but here we were kind of ahead of the curve for for a while, you know, and as a result, I I live in a place that where you you're almost always seeing old people around. You it is very difficult, you kind of has to have to strain yourself to find a a young person to look at, even in our capital city, right? Which is you know, that's the place where most of the young people are because that's where most of the opportunities are. But even there, you you will have a hard time finding people that look like you, finding people that are your age. And I remember that at one point I sat down at a restaurant with a friend of mine who's only a few years older than me, and he made a very insightful observation, right? And he said something interesting. He said that you know the dynamic when you were like Gen X or or a baby boomer, it must have been completely different. Uh he's a I think he he's like a millennial, he's like a young millennial, but the dynamic must have been completely different because of the fact that around the time of boomers, around the time of of Gen Xers, you know, it was very likely that the entire staff of that restaurant, I think it was an Applebee's, the entire staff of that Applebee's, or most of it, would have been composed of people that were roughly your own age, right? So this sense of uh demographic age cohort isolation that currently exists here and that is really spreading across all of the world when you think about it. Um, obviously there are places with higher birth rates than others, but this trend of decreasing birth rates is a worldwide phenomenon, um, including, you know, people people think of Africa. Oh man, Africa's overpopulated. Well, you know, actually over time, as Africa has it continued along the path of you know economic development and whatnot, the birth rates have decreased there as well. So this is just a symptom of any you know of any of any economy that is moving in this more developed direction. So it's something that we will all have to face as a as a society. But you know, the kind of isolation that comes with that, especially when you are the younger person, in that in that cohort, it is just it it's very it's very strange. It's very it's very it's very different, right? And one of the things that I find quite fascinating is that let me see. I was about to lose my train of thought there because I received a notification. One of the things that I find super interesting, right? Super like super super interesting about that is this idea of how even more difficult it will be for the generation that comes after mine to grow up in a place like this because they will be even lesser than me, right? So we're talking essentially about a generation whose almost whose entire cohort is gone. A generation basically without friends. Nearly every friend that I have who who still lives here, most of them live in communities in which they are the only like young person, and you know, they're they're surrounded by miles upon miles of uh of older people, and you know, a brief tangent on that. I don't want to either minimize the pain and isolation that older people are feeling as well, because they are also going through an isolation, but their isolation is different because in terms of friends, old people, um, I think that old people wouldn't have too many problems here because there's there's a lot of old people, they just have the typical old people problems of like obviously my mobility is impaired, you know. When people need to bathe, uh give me baths, then I can't really move around that much, so I can't really meet that those many friends. But the main isolation for old people here is that um since there are less young people, there are less families that are growing, and you have this increasing epidemic of just older people trapped in retirement homes in which nobody visits them, no one no one swings by to say hello to these old people, and it is um it is quite sad. It is quite sad, and it is its own kind of suffering, right? But obviously, I'm not as equipped to talk about that as I am to talk about you know the plight of of young people, which we're also going through that strange isolation where you know not only are you physically alone, right? Not only do you have a hard time finding people your own age, but you also have a mental loneliness where there since there are less people who are like you, there are less people who think like you, there are less people with the same with the same concerns as you, and it often feels that you know older people that talk to you and give you advice, and you know, they're operating under a paradigm that simply doesn't exist anymore, and a lot of people get angry at them for that. Well, why are they operating based on that paradigm? Well, it in part it's it's understandable, you know, it's a the the paradigm that they're giving you, the tips that they're giving you, broadly speaking, not perfectly, but broadly speaking, were applicable for the generations before them, and they were probably the things that their own parents told them, and they worked. They worked, right? So it's not it's not just for you know, it's just it's not just a question of arrogance why they're telling us these things. So that that's a mistake that we often make, you know. You can't just blame, you know, old people for reciting the advice that they basically sought work for almost all of their lifetime and expect them to suddenly just reorient their worldview because um you know the the world has changed very very relatively rapidly, right? You know, it does you know that that's unfair, that's unfair to them to some degree, though you could definitely argue that you know they could uh they could tone it down a bit. I I won't argue against that. But again, it's very difficult, and this sensation of arriving at the end of things, you know. I walk around a lot and it where I'm from, they've closed down a lot of schools. So you walk by a school like that, or one of those torn-down schools, and one of the things you ask yourself is man, you know, I wonder how many people main memories in that school. The school that my mother went to, it was kind of ahead of the curve on that because it's been closed for a longer while and now it's in ruins and it's basically infested by by junkies who inhabit those ruins. But you know, you know, sometimes I wonder, like, you know, my mother probably, you know, she no longer lives here, uh, she's elsewhere. But my mother probably, like, you know, on occasion, swung by that school and thought to herself, uh, you know, of all all the friends, all the memories that she made there, and now there's just nothing. There's nothing there, it's just like a den of of like junkies and stuff. And it it it's a very strange feeling when you see a place where so many things happen that you know no one knows about anymore. No one knows about anymore. You know, even even a place that maybe in the moment you didn't like that much, like your old school, honestly, probably even your old workplace. I you know, it's gonna be strange. It's gonna be very weird if I get to the point where I'm starting to feel nostalgic by swinging by the first office where I worked at. I I really hate I didn't I was not um I was not too keen on that uh on that job, but you know what? Maybe one day, and I'm already starting to feel it because I I I I I work in a place where I worked a while in a place that was right next to that place, and I would frequently swing by it, and you know, I I I almost kind of like missed the feeling of like being there. I I would never want to have it again, but I I did uh I did miss it in that regard. And you know, nostalgia develops in in very strange places, right? But again, that's another thing, the workforce, the age of fading, right? I think a lot of us had this experience, and more so the people who are listening that are from from where I'm from that they'll also understand this is that you know when you enter the workforce, um, you will be mainly surrounded by people who are at minimum 10 years older than you, right? Um, it is a very common experience. I am the I think I'm the I am almost the youngest person in my office floor. That was the case in this job that I currently have that I'm really enjoying, in my prior job, and definitely in the job before uh that one as well, right? So, you know, that isolation also spreads into the the working culture, and it's very difficult. Uh, where recently I've been blessed to have a lot of um superiors that are basically in the millennial generation, which is like one generation ahead of me, and you know, usually um, you know, millennials get a lot of flack, justifiably so. But if there's one thing that millennials are absolutely better at than the other generations, it's at being superiors and bosses. Um, they definitely understand the importance of work-life balance more so than any other generation that is currently in charge of any workplace. So I absolutely dig that, and I will I will always love my millennial bosses uh for that. But but again, it is this sense of isolation where you know, again, if you were at a workplace, it probably would have been a lot easier for you to socialize with people because you'd be surrounded by more people that were around your around your around your cohort. Like, you know, I don't know. You watch I haven't watched American Psycho yet, but I I think about that scene where they're like all sitting around like the uh the table and they're all like exchanging business cards, right? And because you know, a lot of them there was there used to be like this term for like um I bait this term basically applies to me, like you know, what a yuppie is, which is like you're you're a young guy, you're you're you make a lot of money, and you're college educated, and you have a job, right? And you know, yuppies used to like enter the workforce simultaneously, and they used to be like um you know it used you used to find yuppies your own age more more frequently, but at least where I've been so far, like uh, you know, I I've been around like my last job, I I was around more of a yuppie environment than um my my current one, even though I earn more now. But it wasn't the same level of you know, cohort. You don't have that same level of like this whole group of people that are in your same cohort that enter the workforce roughly at the same time. That that doesn't happen as much anymore. It doesn't happen as much anymore. So I I basically in my in my current job and to a lesser extent than my previous job, it was like you know, you had a few yuppies, and then you had like a work, you had like pockets of yuppies, and then you had like you know a workforce that was mostly Gen X or or certainly baby boomers, right? So basically the only real place where you like see big cohorts of of yuppies are if you if you're lucky enough to work in like a big name business, um, you know, very prominent one, like some Fortune 500 company or maybe like some consulting company if you enter in that in that route. Um which obviously I'm very satisfied where where I currently am. Um but you know, one of the things that I I do, you know, if I had a wish list for like my dream job, this current job fulfills almost all of those things. But one of the things that is missing is like uh, you know, a job where there's like a bunch of people that are roughly around your age bracket. That's not that's not really the case where I currently am. But again, it's not it's not really a deal breaker when it comes to that. There are there are much worse things that you could face with in the that you could face off with in the labor environment. So I'm not gonna be complaining about that. I I just remember like a long time ago, I interviewed at this place, and you know, there were there were so many young people, like it was insane. Like I I felt like it almost felt fake. Like I've never seen like so many like young people in one place that you know in a professional setting in this place. So that that's very strange to me. So everywhere it just feels like you sh uh like I show up as a young person and it's fading, it's decaying. Like a lot of the experience that experiences that I should be having, I'm not really having because there aren't enough people around my my age cohort to make those things happen. This is also the case, most certainly the case in religious communities as well. You know, uh I'm Catholic, and obviously religious communities historically they've always statistically slanted older, naturally speaking, but that dichotomy is more marked now. Now, obviously, in the United States, you have seen a huge wave of of conversions, uh particularly to Catholicism. And I have you know, I have a feeling that there's a black swan event happening where uh the tide could be swinging in the other direction. But for a very long time, again, when I I was not always Catholic, by the way, I I when I converted myself or reverted, better said, I I I arrived, and this is also the case in all the church communities I've been in, you know, I basically arrived in you know a community in which again very frequently you go to mass, you're you're typically like the only person or one of one of like less than three people in your own age cohort. And that that's not a normal human experience. That that's really not normal, you're right. I'm usually of the opinion that well, we often think that it's like oh it's the end of the world, or or things are things are different than the To be most of the time, they're really not, most of the time, you squint hard enough, you can find pretty pretty accurate historical parallels to the things that are going on now. But I definitely think that one of the unprecedented challenges is the current age pyramid in a lot of our developed societies. You know, to these to the extent that we're seeing it right now, that's not I don't think that's a thing that you really saw that you really saw before. That's not really a thing that you that that you saw before. And if something like that happened, it was usually because of war or disease. It was not due to mainly the product of human decision. I I know that people blame the economy, right? However, I I don't think the economy is a useful excuse enough because even in countries that have um even even in countries that you know that have resources for people, specifically in Europe, to reproduce and have families and you know have relatively better social structures to support that, people are still electing to not to not go that route. So there's a there's a deeper issue at play, a more profound issue that it goes it goes down to a social and spiritual aspect that you just can't solve economically at the end of the day. That that's just a fundamental truth, right? So it seems that for the near future, you know, I and many of the people in my cohort, unless you're one of those people that moved the moved away into like a big city where there's a lot of young people seeking for work, which in and of itself, you know, that is a fantasy I've tried around with. I I've never taken it seriously, because I I do have a a strong conviction of being called to to stay where I currently am. But uh, you know, sometimes the idea of leaving ambulance is passing the idea the idea of leaving can be rather tempting. The idea of leaving can be rather tempting to find this place where I can find my group, find my find my people, right? But in part, there are opportunities to be found in the fading age, right? There's a lot of things, there's a lot of ways that I benefited from being where I am. I think in part as a as a skilled professional, I've had an easier time finding jobs here because of the fact that there's less young people, so there's less there's less competition in that regard, right? Let me let the ambulance pass. And I also think that um fundamentally nature abhors a vacuum. And I think that when you are in situations like this where there's a vacuum where where things um seem like they should be there, but they're not there, people naturally that opens up a possibility to create communities, right? And that that's something that you know I would be interested in doing. I I'm just uh I I've done it in some other regards. I won't get into too much detail about that, but I myself am still am still thinking of more ways in which I can participate in this sort of community building. And I think it would be cool if Rider Wander becomes some kind of uh some kind of community, right? I I think that would definitely be something that I'm I'm interested in. But uh, you know, obviously I'm thinking ahead of myself. So when you have that vacuum, when you have a vacuum, when the Roman Empire fell, right, which in a sense is kind of anachronistic because that's not how people perceived it at the time, but you know, for sake of argument, when Rome fell, eventually barbarians came in and they established their own rulership and they took over the Roman institutions that were abandoned. And this happens in all cycles of decay. And I I I do I am in some regard a profoundly humanistic person, not in the secular sense, but in the in the sense that uh I do have strong strong faith in the capacity of human beings, especially when cooperating with divine grace, you know, the capacity that human beings have to you know make make something out of the vacuum, to cobble something together. And I have seen things. I I do I do feel that there's a vibe shift, right? But obviously, you know, these aren't things that you can prove of hard numbers, it's more like a smell you have in the air, and to a certain degree, it it it might it might not even be real, it's just something that you you want to be real and you're perceiving the air, but I think to a certain degree, you know, kind of like the last episode about perception being power, you know, you kind of have to fake it till you make it, and then when you end up making it, you're no longer faking it. So that that's that's the fact, ladies and gentlemen. But uh this was Riner on Wander driving and living in the age of fading, signing out.