City of Dilemma or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Existential Crisis

Disclaimer: Hazardous for whom never questioned their essence. English is this author's second language, read at your own risk!

I am sitting in front of my laptop for 2 hours now and thinking how to start this - whatever this is, a post? an article? the acceptance of failure and moving upward again? When you are in a major depression, it is harder to focus on the solution, even it means writing a post. Let's start from here, what is depression anyway?

If there is an expectation, there will always be a disappointment too.

When the time humanity was having a simple life, their concern was simple too: surviving. Food, a shelter was enough for them. Then we created bureaucracy… middleman for everything… creating jobs we don't need. In fact, some of the jobs are not even real. Result? Rise in the prices. It is getting worse with gentrification. How would you like to have your BS named coffee which tastes nothing different than regular espresso?

And of course misery of working in a job you hate. Come on, be honest with yourself, if you like your job which is useless for any basic need, it is because of our love for the money.

And these all connected to technology (After the industrial revolution, depression started to considered as an illness. With the internet, it became epidemic. Think about hikikomori) When you have the world under your fingertips, on your LED screen, you desire for more. What is more? Things that you don't need maybe. Commercialized needs. Don't make me giving you a tirade from Fight Club right now. Also, It gets easier to expect more even though you don't have the hardware to achieve it. "Did you see that on social media, she was so happy. everybody is happy". This makes an inflation for emotions. People act like they are happier than they are in real life. So we want more, just to be like their fake personas. We lose our path from our real aim. An illusion to follow. It's been happening for a long time actually: American Dream - making millions of people to chase the carrot and if one of them catches it by accident, by luck, let the others believe "they can do it too!"- Only now it is like a plague. And we are not just consumer, we are the products too. We materialized ourselves. Clones of plastic personas. How depressing is that? Especially when you have a brain that you don't afraid to use.

sunrise from my house

Like in all good stories, a yin appeared in this yang: technology finally focused on cutting the middleman down. Crypto money - ideally- can clear the inflation difference which created by fiat money and decreases the prices which are inflated cause of distribution. Is this going to clear the post-modern depression? A big no! how would it be? It can only be a cure for our life standards which is lowered by the traditional monetary system. It is up to us to make our identity differentiate from conventional ways and be ourselves. Yet again, it may ease our sorrow. At least we can say F word to our crappy job.

If there is light in a sable, gloomy cave, there'd be a way to get out.

Where am I in this paradoxical equation? Well physically, I am in the heart of paradox itself, Istanbul. The named derived from Greek phrase "eis tin polin", means to the city. And it's been called like that since Byzantium era, early 1st century. Which makes perfect sense cause this was "the city".

The City: Stuck between Asian/middle eastern culture and Europe culture. In some ways, it is more middle eastern than Ba'athists and more European than any average Parisian. The economy is bad, yet you can see $400.000 cars on every corner. We have the same government for 17 years now, which doesn't have anybody who knows something remotely related to politics.

To describe Istanbul, I can use the flat I am living as an example. It has an amazing view but all the corner of ceilings are leaking. It has two big terraces, at least 50 square meters in total. But the area you can use inside is so limited, your furniture can't fit in. The landlord is too rich, but when you want to fix something at the house, she expects you to pay it from your wallet. Extreme right nationalists were staying at this flat, back in the early 80's. They mistakenly bomb the house when they try to build a bomb. The President is living in a palace 200 meters away from my house. He closed the streets and make that 5-6 hundred yrs old palace his own. (1000 room palace he built in Ankara wasn't enough apparently) But the neighborhood is filled with educated people who hate him.

We, in-betweener and millennial generations in Istanbul are struggling for a long time now. We love the city but it is suffocating. Economically we don't own anything - just like all millennials in the world-. Indifference, people with higher education and have desire to create new things, are alienated. Our existential crisis starts from here, following the money - become a sheep- or be miserable while trying to be yourself.

Ok don't worry, we almost came to a conclusion.

For the people who don't care much about money, there should be a way to survive in this materialistic world. For a person like me. A half koala, half alien. An information sponge who is partly stupid. Who quit his job to make good things for people but hit by an economic crisis… And I found my answer in the blockchain.

Cryptocurrency investment and platforms like Steemit can be good alternatives for earning money. So we can focus on ourselves and since most of us can't live like people from pre-industrial revolution era(giving up technology and just have basics, you need guts to do that) at least we can focus on things we want to achieve in life. And my choice to survive and have enough to do my art is Steemit. I will use this platform to share our experience here in this city and most importantly I want to make my projects with the help of Steem community.

Can I make it? I have no idea. But I feel like this is my last chance to get back on track and I do believe in the power of the intelligent crowd. Steem could be an answer for all the people like us, the outsiders.

Paredros