This is a response to a peer

Choose one of the stories and post your own critical review of it. This should be 300-450 words and make an argument about the story. This should not be aggressive or confrontational, but should reveal the complications of their vision of the future, especially as it relates to the human condition. Your post will be graded on care and depth of engagement with the source material.

The Event

It’s been five years since the world was turned upside down. In the year 2047, a new global Depression took hold that was the worst ever seen. This has been such a drastic change to everything that it has been called The Event. Physical money and coins are worthless, the banks are empty, and the technology for crypto has crashed. Services and physical goods have become the new way to trade what you have for what you need. The world as we once knew it has disappeared, replaced by a new one that is unrecognizable to most. The top 1% can no longer just pay to have everything done for them while watching the lower classes struggle to make ends meet. The lower classes are quickly rising to level the field and make it so that there is no longer a superior 1%. How has The Event affected millions of people’s lives and their communities? Now in 2052, we can peer into what the future might hold.

Meshell

I was raised on our struggling family farm but since The Event, we are no longer struggling. The world is now a more level playing field where we can take our items directly to the market. We don’t have to mess with the middle man that would make our products overpriced while paying us the bare minimum. The farmer’s markets used to be bare with very little but now they are overflowing with everyone bringing in what they can to trade for what they need. It has been a huge change to not have to go to the bank for a loan to fund my next crop but instead be able to trade goods for services, at the market, or make out IOU’s for when the crops are ready to harvest. I used to have to budget most of the years to be able to make a living but now I can use the skills I was raised on all year around. In the spring I can write an IOU for the pest exterminator for spraying the seeds and crops throughout the year. Then throughout the summer, I harvest my bushels of hay in exchange for meat from the rancher down the road. Finally come fall I can harvest the corn, onions, potatoes, and beets; to take to the farmers’ markets and to repay IOU’s. During the winter I have also been able to help neighboring communities to be more sustainable so that we can all work together to be successful.

Simon

Before the big crash of 2047, I had nothing. I was unemployed, broke, and desperate. I had gone to a trade school to learn how to exterminate pests, but the folks in my wealthy, overpriced community didn’t feel safe having me in their homes. I did as much side work as I could, but times were tough. Now, I can’t seem to get a break. For my services, I receive the extra delicious food and clean water that the wealthy had saved in case of emergency. I also frequently receive a generous amount of clothes, shoes, and first aid supplies. Many years ago, I never would have believed that my service could be so valuable. There’s a local farmer, Meshell, that trades his precious crops in exchange for my pest extermination services. Both Meshell and I didn’t have much before The Event, but now, we’re more successful than ever.

Kelly

I’m 10 years old. Everything has been so weird lately. I noticed mom and dad stay home a lot more than usual and I don’t go to school anymore. It’s unfair. I just want to play with my friends and learn new things. Mom and dad also make me do a lot of cleaning and stuff around the house. Some of the stuff we have to do is hard like raising chickens in our backyard making our milk out of gross stuff like oats. I ask mom, “why can’t we just buy regular milk from the store like we used to?” she says, “because sweetie we don’t own any cows or goats. The nearest farm is miles away. We don’t have enough gas to drive over there”. This makes me sad. We always drove around in our car, but now we have to walk everywhere to trade different stuff with the neighbors. Mom, Dad, and I also grow our own fruits and vegetables, when they’re all grown and stuff we exchange them with other people for things like meat, and spices. Dad still works as a firefighter with the other firefighters. He says that he still does his job to help people even though he can’t get money for it anymore. Luckily he knows how to fix and build a lot of things. He started teaching mom and me how to fix things too. A lot of people have come over to our house asking Dad to teach them stuff like fixing pipes and building chicken coops. Mom teaches stuff too, well she used to be a teacher so people bring their kids over to our house for her to give lessons to. A lot of our neighbors really like us, they say mom and dad are helpful and give so much to everyone. To say thank you they give us lots of food, clothes, and stuff. I guess not having money anymore isn’t so bad.

Maxine

The world just isn’t what it used to be.

That thought has plagued me every single day since The Event, but I can’t say we didn’t see it coming; we were a part of the ones that took technology and media and exploited them to our advantage in every conceivable way. The story was always, “this or that would bridge the gap between societies, would benefit every part of humanity,” meanwhile we saw the turmoil build with each advancement and knew that trouble was brewing. Some – the wealthiest of the wealthy and most powerful – began preparations by building bunkers, though calling them “bunkers” was ludicrous. Mind you, these were not the bunkers of the 1950s, but high-security underground resorts that catered to their specific tastes and were built to ensure that they could live the illusion that everything was “business as usual.” While they hid away in their multi-million-dollar safe-havens, the rest of us had to adapt and learn to navigate this entirely new territory that left many with no way to cope. Status means nothing, money means nothing, and in many ways, we mean nothing. It’s safe to say it was a big eye-opener, a lesson we all had to learn.

I spent nearly my entire life in an office. I was a user interface designer for a large corporation, I was proficient with coding, and I was on track for a huge promotion within my company. Though none of that was going to do me any good now. I can remember my first real ah-ha moment; I was fine for the first year and lived in relatively ignorant bliss – I had provisions prepared for myself prior to The Event, but it wasn’t enough. I’ll admit that I was in denial about how long this could actually go on. Even as I started to run out of food, I couldn’t see how ill-prepared I actually was. The first thing I needed fixed in my house – a busted pipe – went unrepaired because I had nothing worth any real value to trade for a plumber’s services. I tried my best, but in the end I had no hope of stopping the water damage that would inevitably come the second that pipe burst. It didn’t take long for the elites to collapse either – eventually, their security teams figured out that they no longer held any sway, that they had no power, and turned on them in order to take care of their own families. It’s situations like these that inspire a lack of trust.

The only thing that has seen any amount of success, surprisingly enough, is virtual reality headsets. It seems counterintuitive to rely on a piece of technology that came from those that played a part in the ultimate destruction of the old world, but it became one of the only ways to escape our harsh reality. And it’s amazing what some people are willing to trade just to reach that temporary escape. In hindsight, I probably could have set myself up for the long haul had I traded all of my possessions that are useless and worthless now early on, but there’s no way of knowing therefore there’s no point in dwelling on it. All I know now is that I’m quickly running out of options. We’re approaching six years since The Event took place and I’m honestly amazed I’ve made it this far…but how long can I continue like this? How much longer can the world go on like this? I don’t have the answers, and I can’t say I have hope for the future. All I know is the world isn’t what it used to be, and most likely, never will be again.