Tag Archives: addiction

The World Is a Vampire

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“Advertising is legalized lying.”  —H.G. Wells

Behind every door. Around every corner. Sprouting from every sidewalk crack. Creeping in the shadows, ready to strike.

We are continuously being pitched, convinced, and enticed. An onslaught of fantastical facts, a barrage of outrageously superlative claims. Like moths to a dangerous flame, our eyes widen with the prospect of attainment and a misguided, fleeting sense of completion. But our wings are stuck in honey-coated manipulation, dragging us down into the muck as we drown in our own avarice.

Bloodsucking corporations blinded by bottom lines are constantly inventing new ways to addict, beguile, and seduce. Praying on the most vulnerable, profits are turned and blindfolds are fastened with the nonchalance of a coin flip. Unfeeling, uncaring, and unsympathetic. After one target is struck, the next simply slides into the crosshairs. People are reduced to numbers on spreadsheets, existing only to further fuel a runaway train of greed and gluttony.

Algorithms predict our habits and preferences, frighteningly anticipating each keystroke and instinctual click with a level of accuracy that could be better designated for research or solutions to help elevate mankind instead of obliterating it.

Fat cats find ways to only get fatter. Free from fear of repercussion or consequence, boundaries aren’t just crossed, they’re redrawn. Puppet masters pulling strings to make the population dance and sway to the sounds of its own funeral dirge. Laughing all the way to the stock exchange, burdened only by the weight of their preposterous bonuses and options. Congratulating themselves for another assignment masterfully accomplished.

Is there any limit to the force-feeding we must endure? Can someone please turn off the flashing neon lights and sugary slick presentations? We don’t need more things. We don’t need more waste. We don’t need any more help getting sicker, lazier, more complacent, or more apathetic.

We’re already doing a pretty astounding job of destroying ourselves without any corporate assistance.

Adolescence Interrupted

Strangers in a Strange Land

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The rules have been rewritten. The destination is hazy. The compass is hiding.

We are a people lost in the desert, on a search for solutions, seeking the meaning behind the motivation. But separation sits at the heart of the aimlessness, and a world that promised constant connection has failed to deliver.

With eyeballs perpetually fixed on blue light screens, we have chosen the velvety warm hug of cushioned insulation over the highly unpredictable and uncontrollable task of thorny socialization.

Even the most gregarious of today’s butterflies couldn’t come close to flapping wings with any of the prior pre-phone/pre-internet generations. Technology was supposed to shrink the isolation gap. Instead, it only widened the chasm. We falsely believe we’re all inseparable, but we couldn’t be more distant.

Rates of depression are skyrocketing, and a youth culture subjected to a daily barrage of hurtful slander and forced comparison is rotting our self-esteem at its core. Humans are bonding with machines and filling days, weeks, and months with passive entertainment. Get up and go simply sat down and stopped.

Apathy, avoidance, disengagement, laziness, rapidly deteriorating health, hopelessness, and general malaise can all be traced to a simple, obvious starting line. When we collectively plugged in, we all tuned out.

Looks like Timothy Leary was Nostradamus.

Adolescence Interrupted

A Generation Modified

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“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”    —Jiddu Krishnamurti

Life locked behind windows and doors.

A new reality. A new planet. A new challenge.

An opportunity to do it right this time.

Developing minds are being asked to trade outside stimuli and ordinary social interactions for a brief glimpse at grandma on a small, shaking screen or distracted learning from remote educators saddled with unfair expectations and dwindling patience for throwing blindfolded darts at moving targets.

Still, the anti-quarantine protests and a deadly desire to dive back into “normal” life dominate the headlines. If we were all in mutual agreement with some widely accepted notion that the world we constructed was normal, I think it’s time for a better blueprint.

The growing chasm of wealth disparity is threatening to hobble established empires, the planet’s resources are irresponsibly plundered to fill the coffers of selfishly shortsighted puppet masters of profit, and we remain numb to the impending downfall by affixing our eyeballs to screens that constantly, cleverly administer just enough dope (and dopamine) to keep us begging for the chance to be repeat customers.

But there is hope. The next generation has a bullshit detector the likes of which we’ve never seen, and it won’t bow at the altar of blind acquiescence. It is deeply feeling the effects of this pandemic, and that code is being imprinted and branded on impressionable, malleable mental motherboards. Lessons for the future are being ingested in the present.

Those in power better seize this final opportunity to blatantly misallocate vital financial resources, sacrifice the sick who are too scared, too poor, or too alone to save themselves, and take one last lap around that privileged scotch circle. Your cigar-stained fingers are raising a glass in celebration of your own demise.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Consequence of Inaction

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As we race to outrun imaginary deadlines set by our own unbending need to measure achievement and self-worth against an arbitrary yardstick, I can’t help but think of the mountains of wasted minutes that sit in a heap at our feet.

We’re always late, rushed, cramming far too much into far too small a window, and wondering how morning seems to sneakily turn into afternoon. We complain that “there are never enough hours in a day” and we lament an adjusted project deliverable date like it’s the end of life as we know it.

But how much of the blame sits on our shoulders? If we factor in countless distractions, daydreaming, social media addiction, and procrastination, how much more time would be available for real productivity? Is it simply a part of the human condition to crave a focus reset or soothe an overworked brain with mindless activity? Or has a society that’s built on the backbone of a dwindling collective attention span created manic little monsters who feel like they’re tackling task after task when they’re simply spinning circles in the sand?

As eye contact, basic social skills, and the English language continue to die a speedy death, I’d probably go with the latter. On a macrocosmic level, that’s pretty terrifying. But maybe the demands of a modern workplace are simply setting the foundation for a technological future in which we all function like poorly programmed robots, unable to attend meetings, complete assignments, or even arrive on time without megadoses of psychotropics buzzing in our bloodstreams.

Evolution? Hmmm…

We’re hurtling toward The Singularity, and I’m sure all these tendencies will be wildly useful when we merge man and machine, but there’s still a piece of me that thinks there’s something pretty special about a handcrafted wooden table, and the skill and focus required to start and finish.

Adolescence Interrupted