We live in an era of wild possibility
In 1980s, the term co-dependency was popularised by Melody Beattie and other authors. Prior to this, addiction treatment only focused on the suffering family members, i.e the addict. Research signalled that it’s important to include partners and family members in the treatment itself, i.e the co-dependents, for they felt powerless to resist relationship with the addicted or controlling individual, a situation warranting psychological intervention.
I read about codependency in 2021 through Melody Beattie’s book. In 2021 it was possible sitting anywhere in the world to go to a therapist and begin the conversation saying “I feel like I am codependent on my partner” and get the treatment. Imagine a time when that was not the case, where lack of information about your issue would keep you in denial, whilst you suffered all your life.
It is impossible to truly grasp how drastically the world has changed in the past few decades. A combination of globalisation and internet has made the world truly a global village. Imagine the number of people who didn’t get to do what they wanted due to lack of awareness and knowledge. People who couldn’t find an audience for their skills for their reach was limited to the local area. People who never got exposed to the lives of other great people and thus could never hone their potential.
We have solved the world for Knowledge and Discoverability. A century ago, or in many cases, few decades ago, none of the below was possible.
- You can go online, with any topic in mind, and gain PhD level knowledge through self-learning.
- You can read biographies, listen to podcasts, and even interact with successful people (or experts) on internet. You can broaden your view of what is possible in the world. It’s not uncommon to hear friends sitting in cities of India quoting wisdom from Naval in conversations.
- You could search for your symptoms and find out the rare condition you have and also find out a doctor who can help you with that.
- You can find extremely-like minded people for whatever esoteric hobby or interest you have.
- You can be born in any geography and be exposed to ideas from different parts of the world. A kid sitting in remote area is exposed to Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Jiddu Krishnamurti.
- You can start a blog / social media channel and amass followings that will make even authors or artists enviable. You can break into industries that were earlier believed to only allow people with connections
- You can move across the world as an immigrant for work, and end up creating billion dollar companies
- Young people, from humble backgrounds, can jump into entrepreneurship, build a digital product, and move to the upper echelon of capitalism all within a decade. The kind of social mobility unimaginable a century ago.
More specific examples
- You can start creating podcasts, and end up creating the biggest venture fund out of Europe
- You can create a short movie, put it on youtube and get noticed by Warner Bros into dropping out and getting a film contract
- You can implement ML papers sitting in Korea and get job offers from all leading AI labs of the World