Ask HN: What have the past 12 months taught you?
I learnt that my family de-classed the last couple of years and that now everyone is scarred by unemployment. I am scarred too, and it&#x27;s just sad to watch as time goes bye. Optimism helps to stay afloat, psychologically, but this kind of optimism can only take me that far. All the ways I could have ever been are far beyond reach like stars, and if I stare enough I only get watery eyes. Precious future memories. Very precious.<p>I learnt that my location in the world as an individual determines my life chances. Some places just have too much bad stuff: too much religion, too much sexism, too much unemployment, too much propaganda, too much ignorance, too much loneliness. There&#x27;s laughter about all this in society, but I used to laugh about intelligent things and it feels sad to know I haven&#x27;t had that laughter in a long time. All laughter is cynical, impractical, and at times even manipulated by the gov. Laughter is not laughter. But it makes me smile to at least remember how it used to feel. Very precious.<p>I learnt that South-North divide is all about borders. Logic dictates (at least according to neoclassical economics) that if people freely flow around the world then the unequal global parts, like connected vessels, will adjust. North countries building more borders is one major way the world keeps going poorer, not to say that inequalities within North countries are decreasing; inequalities everywhere are rising.<p>I learnt that academia is just another throat-cutting business. If your projects do not sync with the trend, nobody will fund them. I also learnt that most universities in Europe are opaque: you&#x27;re most likely to never know why you are rejected. In Oslo, though, there&#x27;s a law that obliges the university to share with you the feedback of the selection committee. You learn and get better from transparency. From opaqueness you learn not to learn, and may even get a bit paranoid or demotivated if you&#x27;re &quot;not that strong&quot; (probably meaning you haven&#x27;t read enough good novels, and if you have maybe you haven’t taken them deeply; in the latter case, maybe find something you like and care about? There are novels about everything).<p>I learnt that being on my own is always better as I get half-Oblomovian and half-creative. But most of the time poverty makes me share things—space and time— with people of all sorts and I find myself driven in all directions and businesses. All lives will know this in time, when AI (if you believe so) will take over most jobs. A room of one&#x27;s own and some money, the right to housing plus a universal basic income, is what should... yeah.<p>I learnt that Moroccan politics is inexistent and I avoid it like the plague (how can journalists interview the king if as a matter of protocol they have to kiss his hands or shoulders before asking a question? Who can question these people? The king is so many people, of course.) but if Trump is to be re-elected it&#x27;ll scar me forever. I&#x27;m not an American citizen, but we all know the US elections spill over borders like nothing. I’m literally asking my American friends to vote for a democrat like Warren or Bernie or Cortez or whomever they like. Nothing less than fascism is on the rise and we all have to mobilise for these eletions, even if we’re not US citizens.<p>I learnt that my relationship with my gf can survive everything. She&#x27;s doing better financially and sometimes for a split second I think that she should be with someone her equal financially. But these ideas never get hold of me. I was in a better position so love never came, or came dramatically (useless). Now that I am unemployed for a year, “love” (for lack of a better word, but undramatic and with good communication and good sex and good humanity) is around—and it helps. I won&#x27;t let it go just because she spends more. She will have my money if I get a proper job. Or we can live on so little. Consuming much, after all, is a sing of carelessness towards the climate crisis. If she ever decides to leave, that will be totally fine. In the end we all end up with the people we end up with. But for now she’s in and that’s sweet, and even when problematic it’s problematically sweet.<p>I learnt not to buy any new clothes&#x2F;equipment&#x2F;perfumes (I learnt that my sweat is better than Coco Chanel, the perfume) etc. I strictly buy second-hand stuff, trunks included. Probably not many people think about this, but poor people should be proud. We don&#x27;t get to kill as much life as the better off—the West evidently— has been doing for the last couple centuries. But today&#x27;s world is stuck in consumerism and is old-fashioned; status, be it symbolic or social, is exclusively distributed according to material criteria, instagramability and the likes. In fact, fashionable people are more like the jailbreak&#x2F;rooting&#x2F;open-sourcing developers, the voluntary human extinction movement, or followers of the philosophy &quot;make kin, not babies,&quot; or so I think. I am fashionably stingy, although poverty is a disgrace.<p>I learnt that some friendships reach their expiry time; instead of artificially prolonging them in order to keep the stock of social capital intact, it&#x27;s best to burn the bridge. Maintaining social capital long after the emotions are gone is a business approach to friendship. I&#x27;m not gonna sell the rest of my soul to capitalism. But speaking up is unnecessary. Our friends understand us. And, maybe there’ll be new encounters and new bridges to build, or not. Language is overrated and underrated at the same time. As I grow, I try to understand it and use it just as necessary.<p>I learnt that friends are the only practical capital I have left. Family and nation rest in peace in this regard.<p>I learnt that swimming is the balm of my life. I like to swim in a swimming pool-like beach, and without people I know around. Incognito is such an experience. It’s a new feeling or experience. I feel even my best of friends can encroach if they go with me. I don’t even use my smartphone there. I literally connect with the things—I sync and only the fish know it.