Ideas can grip you. They have the power to transform the words I am writing to Carrie’s narrative voice. Yes, that Carrie. Sex & The City Carrie. Well, at least the old series, I hear there’s a new season -\(o.o)/-
If you can not only visualize a Carrie mosaic but also hear her voice reading that first line again in your head right now, that’s the power of ideas.
My idea is my life like a book, with my actions as permanent on this earth as if footprints on this screen. My words written as prose upon utterance, and awash with the viscera of my every woke moment. Yeah, woke as in not that ‘woke’.
As a monologus *smirk* writer, the monologue in my head is evident to the pixel.
Which is what’s messing with my writing. My very own <i>personal<i/> hell; screens. How do I write my Netflix experiences when that’s all my life seems to be nowadays?
***My Life Like A Story 2 Coming Soon To A Screen Near You***
(I feel) Like a spear, whose purpose is set to course aim steady and true. A force of sheer will, pure and kinetic. The best of times. I am human steel.
(Most times though) Like a spear standing in an armoury lean’t against a wall slowly tipping, falling. I am human still?
(Eventually) Inevitably straightened, reset upright racked up beside other unweildy spears absent course, aim absent purpose. I am human. Still.
Every day since Sars-cov-2 was announced my minds eye has been twitching at the thought of the Anon who whistleblew on a coronavirus that may or may not be unleashed unto the world as a final “fuck you”. That was October 2019. I wonder whether that was a really unlucky bit of shit-posting as it is known on some parts of the internet or…whether that person’s family even know why they haven’t seem them since.
Life is now screens for everyone, locked down or remote working or following the disintegration of the vestigial remnants of the 20th century that have managed to linger on. I still can’t read a book, but I’m glad to hear some people are reading. In fact, publishing seems to be one of the few human endeavors that have been absolutely thriving these past 7 hellish months. These unending, anxiety-laden, intoxicatingly lonely, unfulfilling seven months.
Bah. This too shall pass.
Even if I don’t test negative again, this too shall pass.
I used to read books a lot. I still consider myself a reader, except now it’s primarily a pulp-free experience. I also used to watch LOTR annually and I find that I cannot do that either anymore. Not that it’s not entertaining or as aesthetically pleasing in all the ways that it used to be. It’s more of “…yeah, but maybe a Black Mirror episode first?” and then issa #binge.
This reading a book thing gets to me though. A little slice of me has changed, and I can’t seem to focus on anything without a screen for longer than halfway through a subway sandwich. Which means I can’t for the life of me figure out what this change is exactly.
I’m not alone, thankfully, with this complaint. I was just listening to an episode of Eric Weinstein’s podcast (g33k alert) where he commented on his own dying identity as a book reader. In this day when there’s eyeballs worth of posts put up on twitter everyday, we are legion.
So now, to connect, you will see me through your screen. You may choose to see me in your screen, sure, but only I get to portray myself as faithfully to me as I can be. And that’s as good an idea as any to start off again on this journey of writing, for writing’s sakes.
.
.
The beauty of the screen is in its timelessness. Once pixelated the soul really is stolen, time captured and frozen in place unto Infinity. I could 3D print the Mona Lisa and have that bitch hang off my keys as a key chain. I can VR myself into the room where Saddam officially took power over in Iraq. That is one of the most important pieces of film I’ve watched to date. The production value is pretty meh, but the performances were entirely gripping. The excitement in the air as Baath party members sat to watch what their party leader had summoned them for. The panic palpably welling as names are read out and the people who they belong to are shuffled out of the hall. Next comes frenzied cries of loyalty as the focused ringing of execution style gunshots rent the air outside the hall, one after the next. Khaki wearing, bushy-faced men sweating bullets in a cramped hall in a typical desert afternoon in Baghdad many years ago, I can watch that in 3D on YouTube.
At best atheists are jealous of the church, at worst they want a piece of the pie. Welcome to New Age secularism Son.
For years the mosque has brought people together over centuries and now there’s some powerful money behind quite a few Scholars..and their offspring’s…offspring’s offsprings? 🤔 The Temple though! We’re talking millenia if all you allow is kosher.
Whole markets are carved out for a specific type of believer, I see the appeal dear atheists, I do. Carve out the easiest set of principles to live by for the widest net for $$$/pocket overall and voilà ; your very own stairway to heaven! Aka The Patriarchy. Aka any typical pyramid scheme. A self-perpetuating ladder of wealth for eons to come.
And there’s the rub.
There is no meaning the structure offers. Jesus’ message was as simple as that, don’t you get it. Nabi Isa confirmed free-will and individuality in righteousness. In goodness. In all decision. As for Judaism, who really knows what they believe anyway? You don’t have to proselytise if birth rates remain steady. (What? It’s true though.. I did the math 😂)
The pyramid schemes may make money, but everyone gets to choose for themselves how to do it.
So just like that, clicking on the little x’s at the edge of the tabs, the browser felt lighter and I felt freer by the tab. One by one they closed, each solidifying in me the metaphor of de-cluttering that life has become.
The problem of self love and the new morality of self interest in an age of happiness is what matters most aka Bora Uhai
It is rare for a piece to come at me all at once like this, brushing my teeth on my way out to work but gosh darned it this one is one take. I’ll spellcheck only. Let my editor (that’s me) sit this one out.
Machiavelli and Foucault damned us. Here’s why.
Insatiability is a human trait. That is the central takeaway from both writers. Unfortunately, Machiavelli was taken literally despite being forced on pain of death to write a book on war. That he satirized war simply makes him even more G in my book. Foucault however reeks of a man who lost an intellectual war with someone and spent his whole life trying to counter said intellectual. It is of little surprise to some that the ghost of Foucault looms large over us nowadays. To people like me however, he was a new addition to my vocabulary and I am glad, because I get to blame all of society’s current sickness on one man. And he’s dead. Good.
Technically speaking, there’s a good argument for suicide beyond the one progressivism has added onto our existential load and that’d be the most natural of all; evolution.
In the world of Probability there are no Real upper or lower limits, thus the use of the phrases ‘tending toward infinity’ and ‘tending toward zero’. Applying this to our perpetual slog down the evolutionary time-line, at what point did literal self-sacrifice become an unnecessary thing? Wouldn’t there always be instances when to save others, one sacrifices themselves on the altar of bravery? Say to save others from hooligans (I said that in John Oliver’s voice in my head and it made me smile), is that brave? What about to save others from…yourself?
Progressivism advances the same argument to anyone who cares to listen. “You guys are already killing yourselves for ‘our’ benefit, now do it faster!” is their argument bluntly, but the finer point would be closer to “Humans are making everything worse and as such we should all just leave this earth.” It’s an existential thought alright, because it means simply hearing that message condemns you in some The Ring type fashion. It’s moreso an existential thought because what happens to for instance ecology after a species-wide seppuku? There is no answer to that question, because there has never been a thing like us before on this planet and so the math will never get it right – until A.I. does it that is.
That suicide has become commonplace is hardly the issue, all species adapt to changing seasons differently. That suicide is frowned upon despite growing suicide rates is, however, signal in the noise. There exists a malignant pattern of reality-denial that has marked this rather new millennium, right from the tech-bubble burst to date. And to the extent that the language used to couch the ideals of Progressivism is doublespeak is even more troublesome, indicative of a growth curve whose incline could be either concave or convex.
Reality Denial
As we continue to conceive new arguments for grand scale suicide we are simultaneously counting bodies, missing every individual yet considering them cowards and hating the hurt they ‘inflicted upon’ us. Suicides pile up on you as you grow older and that may simply be what life is like. The denial of the bravery of suicide would be by that logic denial of life.
There is meaning in suicide, it’s just not for everyone – like liquorice.
iP...here. 