Do you want a 15-minute life?
The answer to that question is more important than you may think.
Would you want to live in a “15-minute city”, a place where most every need you can think of is provided for within 15 minutes of your home? Sounds reasonable, perhaps even utopian, does it not? In fact, when most of us in the Western world shop for homes, we seek close proximity to stores and conveniences, schools, green spaces, etc.
But, here’s the rub. In the new 15-minute cities beginning to spring up, there is a concern that these cities have a decidedly dystopian edge to them, a sharp, thin edge of the wedge that could bite us in future. Now imagine that occasionally when you want to venture outside of your little utopia, you need a permission card, a pass of sorts, to make such journeys that are allowed only a certain number of times per year. If you feel the need to regularly exceed your annual permissions, you must register your car, and now you are under constant surveillance.
The concept of the 15-minute city presented itself to me this week via a podcast, and simultaneous to that was a news story about the proposed new bill in Brazil by freshly elected President Lulu and his government. In short, Brazil is “poised to become the first in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and banning ‘fake news and disinformation’ online, and then punishing those deemed guilty of authoring and spreading it. Such laws already exist throughout the non-democratic world, adopted years ago by the planet's most tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey”.
(The quote is from this article published just 6 days ago, if you want to read more about it: New Law Sought by Brazil's Lula to Ban and Punish "Fake News and Disinformation" Threatens the Free Internet Everywhere)
So, you ask, “What does any of this have to do with me? None of this is in my backyard…”
Indeed, but these are the sorts of signs or trends of which I spoke in a past post, where I urged you to “watch for the incongruities, the inconsistencies, and what is there between the lines. The signs for what may come in the future are always there, when we pay proper attention…”
After hearing a little bit about these 15-minute cities, I went out on the internet to find out more. I read several articles, and I selected two for this post that are extremely diametrically opposed in their viewpoints (published within 3 days of each other in January). I propose to you that this is a GOOD THING - two points of view, and the chance to apply our own discernment and critical thinking, along with the freedom to make up our own minds.
Below you’ll find links to both articles. Depending on your biases and beliefs that stem from your age and circumstances, your lifestyle, your history and upbringing, your country, your financial resources, (and on it goes), you may immediately strongly lean towards one or the other. Or, perhaps you’ll take away points from both to think about, leaving you undetermined in this moment.
But no matter the direction in which you lean, during this process please seriously consider the example of Brazil, their proposal for censorship and punishment against misinformation, and ask yourself, do you want to live in a world where your government dictates “only one point of view allowed”, and it is their point of view? Because I guarantee you, in that sort of world at least one of the articles I present below would be eliminated, and it likely would be article #2.
‘15-minute city’: How an eco-friendly living proposal turned into a heated online conspiracy theory
British Protest 15-Minute Cities Where They Will Become Prisoners of the State
This is the line that humanity walks right now. Will we accept a world where we are spoon fed unrelenting authority, or will we choose the right to choose?
© SL Hart 2023
In case you missed my last post:
Excellent Article, Susan! Journalist Mark Steyn on a trip to Ukraine last year rented a car in Poland that shut itself off at the border. The same technology could be used to stop residents from leaving their 15 minute cities.