Memoirs of a Dying Era: Reflections for Descendants and Extraterrestrials

Prologue

In our insane world, where every day feels like a meme 'how would you explain this to aliens?', we float somewhere between reality and absurdity. Remember childhood? 'You can't do that!' - 'Why?' - 'Just because!' We live in fear of stepping out of our comfort zone, but even within it, it's not comfortable. And yet, we'll have to explain to our descendants why we lived this way. Or to the aliens, should they suddenly show up. 'Just because' is hardly going to satisfy them.

I'm one of those idiots who don't believe it's not okay to stick their fingers in the socket until they've tried it themselves. But I've been incredibly lucky in life (surprisingly still alive after tempting fate with so many 'sockets' you're not supposed to stick your fingers into), since childhood I've been imbued with a love for reading. And it so happened that, amidst a pile of useless junk I read, I encountered some genuinely smart folks who poured their thoughts onto paper. What they described in their theories and postulates, I've seen in life. These wise guys explained what's good and what's bad. And if we live in denial of this, we reap in life exactly what we sow – both good and bad.

This book is a mirror of our idiocy and the wisdom of those who have shed light on the reasons for our existence, our vices and virtues, and other facts easily verifiable through Google or ChatGPT. But most importantly - these wise men have unveiled how to deal with societal problems, how to solve them. Here's my hope: to be a kind of relay for their words through the prism of our reality. Who knows, maybe we'll have to explain to aliens why our world is the way it is. Or, when the time comes, explain to our grandchildren why, knowing what's good, we lived so poorly. Or (as it seems to me), it's us who will have to deal with all this shit that has accumulated over years of our inaction and indifference.

Perhaps these lines will be a revelation for someone, or a confirmation for others, that they are not alone in their quest to maintain unshakeable principles in a changing world.

Or maybe just a repetition of Brodsky's words: "'A citizen of a mediocre era, proudly I acknowledge myself a second-rate product my best thoughts and days to come I bequeath them as an experience in fighting suffocation'"

Nothing will change from this work, my best thoughts are second-rate creations, merely a way to fight suffocation, and I hope to leave them to the coming days.

Before we dive together into the depths of 'Memoirs of a Dying Era', allow me a moment to lift the veil slightly. These pages are not just a chronicle of times that seem ordinary to us. Through decades — from the carefree '80s to the turbulent '90s, through the changeable '00s and unpredictable '10s, right up to the '20s when, at a snap, everything changes radically — this book takes us through stories imbued with the zeitgeist of each era. Between the lines live stories, born from both my own experiences and the depths of imagination, which, despite their fictional nature, could easily occur in any corner of our boundless world. Each story here is a mirror reflecting the 'normality', penetrated by absurdity, which we too often take for granted. The world around us is a palette where black and white too often mix, creating an endless variety of shades of gray (even 'Motherland' and 'Father Leader' constantly fuck us over, the craziest BDSM incest).

And after each such story follows an attempt to decipher this absurdity, inspired by the thoughts of great minds of the past and present. These notes, like beacons, illuminate our path through the fog of habits and beliefs, showing that the world around us is something much more complicated and amazing than it seems at first glance. Perhaps, 'Memoirs of a Dying Era' will become the key to understanding this complexity. So, if your heart is open to stories that make you think, and if your mind craves for solutions hidden in the everyday, then this path is for you. Follow me, reader! Want stories? I have them.