By Ilija Saula

SCENES FROM SAN FRANCISCO AS A WARNING TO THE WORLD

There is an old saying used to describe a point of no return: “the gourd has cracked.” We usually apply it to broken friendships or political alliances. But standing today on the streets of San Francisco, a city once synonymous with the gold rush and the Eldorado of freedom, one cannot escape the feeling that something far more profound has cracked here: the fundamental part of our shared humanity.

What a traveler sees in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin or SoMa are not merely people without shelter. They are human shells, bodies emptied of life, reduced to physiological existence in an eerie silence. You see them: heads bowed, bodies folded at unnatural angles, trapped in what medicine calls the “fentanyl half‑sleep.” This is not the poverty we read about in history books. This is the metastasis of a neoliberal order that has turned the human being — the most refined spark of the cosmos — into waste of the modern age.

LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND LOSS OF HOPE

In other parts of the world, even among the homeless, you often find a spark — a story, a gesture of resistance, a ritual of survival, a shred of dignity preserved in rags. In San Francisco, the capital of technological wealth, that spark has been systematically extinguished.

The combination of fentanyl and xylazine — chemical monsters that flooded the streets in 2025 and 2026 — accomplished what even the harshest prisons could not: they erased personality. These people are “half‑dead” because society has decided it is cheaper to let them drug themselves into oblivion than to repair the systemic anomalies that pushed them there.

Why are all their heads bowed? Because the weight of fentanyl is stronger than gravity — but also because the shame of society has grown so immense that no one dares look anyone else in the eyes. While a kilometer away young billionaires design artificial intelligence to “save the world,” the sidewalks reveal a truth: that same world does not know how to save a single human being from the pavement.

THE TRAP WE HAVE ALL FALLEN INTO

We must not deceive ourselves into thinking this is a problem “over there.” San Francisco is merely a laboratory of the future that awaits us if we do not change course. The neoliberal model has convinced us that success is solely personal merit, and failure solely personal fault. This is the most dangerous lie of our century.

When a person loses a job, when the cost of living devours an entire paycheck, when loneliness becomes the only companion — the edge of the abyss is near. Falling into that river of despair is not a choice; it is a fall into a trap set by a society that demands superhuman speed in the race for profit.

A CALL TO AWAKENING: LET US MAKE THE HUMAN BEING RICH

Our responsibility as human beings is immense. We must not allow it to become normal to walk past living monuments of suffering without feeling anger. The debate about distributing resources for basic existence must not remain an academic exercise — it must become a question of civilizational survival.

What does it mean to “make the human being rich”? It does not mean filling a bank account. It means:

• investing in human purpose
• ensuring that education and work serve the person, not the other way around
• building foundations instead of patching holes

Universal basic income, accessible housing, and free mental‑health support are not expenses — they are investments in ensuring that tomorrow we do not watch our own children “nodding off” on the street. A person without hope is a person without a future. If society does not extend a hand before he steps into the abyss, that is exactly where he will end up.

A MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO WATCH AND THOSE WHO ARE SINKING

If this text reaches someone who feels the ground slipping beneath their feet, who feels they are “next in line for the abyss”: know that your productivity or your current condition does not define your worth. You were entrusted to this planet as its most precious element. Do not let chemical oblivion convince you that there is no return.

And for all of us who still walk upright: San Francisco is no longer just a city — it is a mirror. In it we see what happens when profit becomes God and the human being becomes a resource. We must urgently stop the river that is carrying humanity toward collapse. We must demand systems that protect human dignity before the last “gourd” cracks.

Because when that happens, it will no longer matter who was rich and who was poor. Only a barren planet will remain, wandered by shadows of what we once called human beings. The choice is still ours, but time is running out. Let us make the human being rich — in spirit, in meaning, in security — for that is the only gold ever worth seeking.