The internet is training us for death. All these little videos and snapshots facsimile a torrent of memories. Micro-emotions cascade down, we feel keenly, briefly. When the end comes, we will have the flickering attention span and the emotional volatility necessary to confront our final moments. We will be wide open to everything and completely shut down to the truth of our situation. For the better and for the worse.
We are learning to die, one fleeting feeling at a time.
Conspiracies are convenient, compelling, meaningless. They are the febrile machinations of busy brains fueled by suffocating fear and boundless confidence. The big forces that guide the hands of society are more mundane: bureaucracy, attrition, pettiness, our savage appetites. There's no master plan, no puppet strings, just chaos driven by the turbulence of everyday life. No one is out to get you; you just make things hard on yourself.
It is surmised that our escape from the primal muck into consciousness and social media was precipitated by pattern recognition. It is the genesis of intelligence. Our furry forebears who saw the tiger hidden in the grass lived longer than the others. Long enough to mash bits, calling more furry forebears into being, begetting another generation just slightly better at seeing tigers in the grass- or movements in the global markets indicating the coming apocalypse. Fear is the engine of change, even as fear of change is the death of society. Fucked either way.
Apophenia is the tendency to link together unconnected things, to see patterns where none exist. It's the codex of superstition. It's the falsework where we built religion, luck, quantum mechanics and all your weird rituals to ensure the Bruins win the Cup.
Everyone wants a guided hand: God, government, the Knights Templar. We want a reason for all this mess. Why is this happening? Who did this to me/us/that poor lady?
If there's no one at the wheel, then we are careening out of control.
Clearly.
Light moves so slowly.
An offending bumper sticker skitters by on the asphalt river. By the time this indignity slams your visual cortex and your addled synapses flip it and decode, it is ancient history. But now engaged, your brain must formulate a response. Droplets of an idea cohere, organize into sounds, syllables that erupt from your wet chamber. Words burst forth, an insult perhaps, a manhood challenge, a piercing insight into the foolhardy nature of displaying personal opinion on the asses of automobiles. Your words take all the longer to erupt because you breathe and sip and masticate with that same sloppy hole. Your mood lurches like a paddleboat making a lumbering turn in a fierce current. Now you are clever and sour and living in the past.
By the time the light reaches you, the moment is gone.
Light is slow, but unencumbered. We carry all everything with us.
Drop your load, Sad Nomad.
I miss stoic masculinity. Men worked hard, looked after their families and friends, their comrades and colleagues. Would-be alphas didn't whine constantly about feeling undervalued in the face of an ever-changing world. Hush yourself. Put down your phone and grab a hammer.
Show up. Work hard. Get over yourself.
You were never special because of your pale skin or those dangly bits between your legs. What makes you special is the things you can do and the people you can help. Let's see it.
No one lives forever.
Life is sacred, at least in the abstract. But living is so profane, riven with fluids, pain, and spasms. Death rules all fates, no matter our wealth or vanity. No ice chambered brain, no decoded digital memory sponge will preserve this moment in your ballooning ego. Everything flickers out. You flicker. Out.
You are on your own now. Sleep tight, butterfly.
Do we throw our chaste children into the cauldron to appease the belching spirits of the scorched core or are we trying to save them from the sagging depravity of our failed humanity? Are they liberated from these terrible body appetites? Or are they destroyed incomplete, souls without pleasure, simmering with disappointment?
When the young body hits the rocks below, no matter our reasons, we are more and less like God.
The 24 hour news cycle is an attempt at enlightenment. Social media aspires to the complete picture, a total awareness of the rich tapestry of humanity’s glorious weirdness. But our 10% brains are not up to the task. We need gaps, empty openings where we can rest, short solace amongst all this chaos. There is too much to take in, to comprehend, to assimilate into a survivable, generous world view. We quickly fall down a well of worry and dismay. It is probably better that I don’t know what strange desires and foul feelings slosh around in the cesspool of your sloppy heart. Your hypocrisy is plain to see without your Twitter feed.
Shut that shit off, my creeper.
Spiders have talented little assholes. They consume the liquefied guts of bugs and produce the strongest material in the world. A strand more refined and flexible and stronger than the finest steel ever forged of fire. With no training they weave together impeccable designs, gorgeous networks that act as a home as well as a trap to capture their food. Some can even fly on their silk, sailing on air currents to set up life anew. Spiders transubstantiate mosquitoes into beautiful life.
People eat tacos and make loose shits and Facebook posts.
