No matter how much you love gaming (I sure did), you'll probably regret the time you've spent on it one day.
Sure, you can cope by telling yourself you are "learning stuff", "increasing your problem-solving skills", "improving your reflexes", etc., but deep down, you know that's BS, as I did in my gaming days.
Once that screen goes dark, you have NOTHING to show for all the hours of your life you've poured into it. They're gone forever.
Sure, you got some cheap dopamine out of it. For a minute, you felt that sweet sense of progress and accomplishment. But that was merely fake progress and the illusion of accomplishment. Back in reality, you did nothing but sit in a chair while moving pixels on a screen.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of hours poured into mastering a skill that is completely inapplicable to anything in the real world. Had you devoted that time to a worthy skill instead, you would've been a master craftsman, artist, athlete, musician, you name it, by now.
It's not too late, though. You still have a choice. You can keep whittling your life away while moving strong, intelligent, capable, and impressive characters on a screen, or... you can become one of them.
Choose wisely, for time is the stuff life is made of, and you have less of it than you think.
As a former passionate gamer, let me tell you: There's far more joy, accomplishment, and fulfillment to be found in the real world.
Paper money was never supposed to be the money.
It was a receipt.
You deposited gold at a bank.
The bank gave you a note that said:
"The bearer of this note may redeem it for X amount of gold."
That's all a dollar was. A claim ticket.
The paper had no value.
The gold in the vault did.
The paper just made it easier to carry.
This system worked for centuries.
Every major currency was backed this way.
The British pound.
The French franc.
The U.S. dollar.
Then, slowly, governments realized something:
If people trust the paper,
they never come for the gold.
So they printed more notes than they had gold.
Then more.
Then more.
When too many people asked questions,
they closed the gold window.
That was supposed to be temporary.
55 years later, the dollar is still backed by nothing
but trust. And that trust has cost you 97% of your purchasing power.
The receipt became the money.
Global money became trust-based.
And money became nothing but a promise
that nobody has to keep.
@JeremyJacobs@SamaHoole Expensive? They are dirt chip in here in Africa. And you know what, people from areas that eat sweet potatoes regularly are generally taller and stronger.
Why invade a country when you can just buy its institutions, turn its women against its men, make transvestites of its children, sell the wealth generated by its labor to foreign investors, then introduce a foreign army as refugees and diversity to finish it off?