Last night, as the sun was setting, my friends and I walked to a park in downtown Athens, directly next to the lit-up Acropolis. Innocent enough.
We then climbed up onto a rock inside the park, where tourists gather to take pictures of the thing. Still pretty innocent.
As soon as we got to the top, a ginger-haired, bearded man who was squatting on top of the rock, turned towards us.
“First time in Athens?” he said with a grin.
My friend Marci, who is something like a human golden retriever, smiled back and said yes.
Uh-oh.
This allowed to the ginger-haired, bearded man to open the floodgates. Over the course of the next 20 or possibly 120 minutes, as he twisted his mustache, he covered:
* How he had been island hopping for the past 8 months…
* How he had been “defeated” by a stone staircase that led down the side of a cliff on a remote Greek island, while women and children successfully managed it in the past…
* How the Greek god of blacksmithing, Hephaestus, was repeatedly cuckolded by the Greek god of war, Ares…
* How the Athenians lost the war to the Spartans, which is not really a vote in favor of democracy…
* And, after a few twists and turns covering the current political situation in several countries, how the closing of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to a worldwide shortage of sulfur… which in turn will cause food prices to skyrocket… which in turn will lead to worldwide famine… which in turn will lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
Eventually, the guy must have felt he had exhausted his audience.
He stood up, and before walking off into the sunset, he raised his finger to the sky like Plato. “By the end of 2027!” he cried out. “Remember when the collapse happens that the aspy guy in Athens predicted it!”
Now here’s my prediction, which I fully expect to be realized by the end of 2027:
Things will be better than ever.
Humans are not like spaghetti, which flies in a straight line when you fling it at the wall. Instead we have agency, the ability to adapt and solve problems, to change the course of our flight, and to come out ok and even better off.
It’s been like that for a long, long time. And so it will be this time.
(When the end of 2027 comes and things are better than ever, remember this email newsletter predicted it.)
Of course, some people will be worse off in a year and a half. That’s always true.
But you can choose, and the decisions you make today will determine which group — better off or worse off — you will be in when the end of 2027 rolls around.
Since I’m in a prophetic mood, let me give you one more prediction:
An audience, and a strong relationship with that audience, are the only things that will have value in the future…
… because of AI, because of political uncertainty, because of increasing competition in whatever field you’re in, because of a worldwide shortage of sulfur.
Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.
Maybe you do agree with me, or at least think that having an audience and a strong relationship to that audience is a worthwhile bet to make on behalf of your future self.
If so, you might like my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen etc.” book.
I wrote that book to be interesting (at least if you find stories about persuasion and influence interesting) and provocative (hence the con men and pick up artists right at the start of the title).
The core ideas of this book, however, are really just about effective communication, or if you like, persuasion, which is ultimately what building and keeping a strong relationship is about, whether individually or in groups.
If that sounds valuable to you, and if you you wanna make a bet on yourself for the future:
https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments
P.S. To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this book, I will be kicking off a Tour de Commandments event on May 11th.
I’ll have more details about this exciting, unique, spectacular, historic, one-time, never-to-be repeated event over the next few days, as the countdown to the start gets closer and closer to zero.
If you wanna be ready for it, grab your copy of my book at the link above.