grant all 50 states independence, and let the states come back together into whatever new nation or collection of nations they wish to form.
Kind of reminds me of this map from the Unofficial Fallout TTRPG:
Here the 48 contiguous States are divvied up between 13 Commonwealths with Alaska being part of the Northwest and Hawaii being in the Southwest.
You know, you do raise a valid point, here. Note-taking has become something of a lost art/skill in the smartphone age. Not many people write shit down in notebooks and journals outside of what they are required to do in school, college, university in the US, anyway. I’m personally working on getting my groove back when it comes to taking notes on things, because as much as I love to create content I find it hard not to go into a rambling diatribe without notes. Honestly the dumbing down of America has led to a lot of people not writing shit down and that’s going to be a huge problem down the line.
This. We have a culture that doesn’t allow for much in the way of personal time.
As Mark Twain once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”