Is this the BEST or WORST time ever to be alive?

Okay, I'm back. I'm still in Phoenix and I was driving to the Henry this morning and the thought that was on my mind because I've been looking, you know, back in my journals and in 1996, 97, I think 96 was the first time I came to Phoenix and it was a wonderland for me. But the thing that I was really. The thing that I was really pondering today is a question I've been asking as I've been looking through these journals. And that is, is this the best time ever to be alive or is this the worst time ever to be alive? It's the best of times or the worst of times.

I imagine in every era of history there was that, that question. But I realized now, today, particularly how good we have it in every practical way. I was. So I have a Tesla that has full self driving and the navigation is amazing. I literally, I get in the car, which, which I charge at my house, by the way. So I get in the car and I just say navigate to wherever I'm going. And I push the button and it opens my garage, it leaves my garage, it drives through my neighborhood, it drives out the gate, it drives into making all of the turns all the way to, to the airport or to wherever I'm going.

And then it pulls in and parks. And I realize what a. I mean, I take that for granted now because I'm here, I'm staying with a friend in the, in Scottsdale while I'm here. And I was using a car, an extra car that they have today, and it doesn't have navigation, it's a gas car. So I had to. It has a key, so I had to put in the key and had to push the button to start the car. And then I had to actually drive it. And I had to use my iPhone to use the Apple maps to get the navigation. But I was thinking all the way back, you know, in 1996, we would have had to use paper maps to imagine trying to get somewhere.

And it's kind of confusing. There's a lot of freeways in. There's a lot of freeways in, in Phoenix, like going around the city. And I realized, so in. In that really practical, usable way, life is the best that it has been. I live in Winter Haven, Florida, and I just. There's. This week there's news stories about the new electric drone vehicles that are setting up a network. The first in the country. Florida is going to be the first in the country to set up passenger drones that will go along the I4 corridor from Tampa all the way to Daytona Beach. So from St. Petersburg to Daytona beach you'll be able to get in a drone that will fly you to those areas to bypass all of the traffic.

And you'll be able to then be met by a cyber taxi, you know, which will self drive itself to take you where you're going. So in, in every practical way, transportation is the best that it has ever being. Same thing with communication. You know, the fact that I can record a video like this, I just record, I talk and then I push a button on the camera and I copy a link and I put it into an agent, a bot that my Stuart, the guy runs all of my operation stuff as bottom for me. So literally I make this video, I copy a link, I put it in this bot, put what the title is and push a button and the whole rest of this happens.

And within 30 minutes this video will be up and viewable by Everybody who has YouTube anywhere in the world can watch this. So the fact that, that we can record a message like this on a phone, I can send it through the airwaves and get it to you in your living room, whether you're next door or in Botswana, it doesn't matter. That is the best of times. Now today is election day in the US and, and the last couple of weeks, the last few weeks has been, let's say, eventful that I realized and I've had this conversation with Dan Sullivan is in the argument for is this the best time to be alive or the worst time to be alive.

You have to include and understand that in every practical, usable way that this is the best that life has to offer in terms of conveniences and opportunities and connectiveness and all of it. But the thing that is the worst of times is the battle for our minds, the battle for our internal dialogue. Everything that's going on in our minds, this little box, this little phone is sending us news and conspiracies and darkness and emergencies and fear from all corners of the earth. And our brains are not equipped for that. We're not supposed to know about every bad thing or every bad possible thing or all of the negative things that are happening in the world because our brains can't.

We're not equipped to distinguish the difference between a real threat and an imagined or constructed threat. Our brains were designed to scan our immediate environment and be concerned about the mile or two miles around us and the 150 people in our, our tribe. That's what our brains are, are made for. It's not we're not supposed to be worried or we're not equipped for dealing with all of the anxiety in all of the world. And I think that, that, you know, you would have to put that on the column of this is. I'm not going to say the worst time, but it's certainly the most. We have to be the most vigilant about this, about guarding our minds, about guarding what gets in and how that gets processed.

And I find myself in a lot of ways, my friend Jamie Smart wrote an amazing book called Clarity. And there's a whole series of the Clarity and then the little book of Clarity. And I think that that book and the, the ideas inside of it have really helped me get clarity on all of these things and how to imagine how to manage all of the input that we have and not let it drive you insane or drive you to anxiety or fear or all of those negative emotion stuff. So that's, I thought it really interesting because I'm spending so much time looking at and being reminded of what life was like in 1996, and I'm experiencing what life is like in 2026, and I'm imagining what life is going to be like in 2056.

I can't even imagine that. Of all of the things you look at, even where we are right now with AI and agency and all of the things that we're able to just follow the line of where we're starting right now, we already see what's possible. Many of the things that we have, there's not much better way for them to get to improve anymore. I mean, we've seen for the last 25 years everything that could be digitized get completely available to us. And at the level now where we already have all the music, every song ever written, recorded in history is available to us on any device whenever we want for $9 a month or whatever we pay Spotify and free in many cases if we just get it on YouTube or on the ad support Spotify.

So you think, now where does AI go? If we think that's the thing that we're on the, you know, the generative AI now, the things that we're just going to be able to speak into existence and the way that the AIs paired with robots are going to be able to make our lives unimaginably supported and expansive. So that's just a thought that I've been having as I'm spending that time straddling 1996 and 2026. But let's see in the comments where, whether you think this is the best of times or the worst of times and why.