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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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Doing some more thinking about the metaverse/facebook thing. This may not be ordered well or make the best sense, it just a dump of various fragments I've been pondering.
I was thinking the other day that we're not in the information age anymore. We're in the entertainment age. I looked up "information age" on wikipedia and supposedly they are pushing the "imagination age" as the next thing, but I like my version better. Imagination age, are you kidding me? Totally sounds like some billionaire doublespeak. Gross. No, this is the entertainment age. Everything is for the entertainment value. Politicians are like WWE wrestlers. Countries are like sports teams. What fandom is your identity rooted in? Bread and circuses. It's a classic, gotta admit.
The "imagination age", what a joke. Guess we get to imagine a living wage and healthcare, huh? Or is it all imagination, no substance? Fever dreams of a culture on a sickbed?
I'm aware that I've been lingering at a philosophical & spiritual fork in the road for the past year or so. Me, as an individual, but also the mass techno-social development of those of us on the planet who are wealthy enough to have smartphones and computers and broadband internet as an assumption. We are dictating the drumbeat the rest of the world has to dance to, in some ways.
And our richest, most influential figures are doubling down on this intoxicating entertainment based future, where we theoretically will have all manner of conveniences and delights. We can purchase identities, purchase avatars, interact without leaving our physical home (rented room or storage unit). They'll make fantasy theme parks in virtual space with our favorite intellectual properties so we can bond with a tribe and feel belonging. We'll be distracted from issues like climate change or inequality. We'll drown our vague sense of helplessness in dazzling 3d graphics. Some of us, anyway. There's cheap meth for everyone else.
They'll make it sound so great. Maybe it will be, in some ways. And most likely countless people will pay whatever they ask to take the ride, and they won't think too hard about it because they'll feel safe and justified in numbers. It's the next big thing. Why wouldn't you want your stake your claim. It's fun, compulsively decorating your virtual house so you can forget about the fact that you can't afford real property. There's no dingy cloud of wildfire smoke to mess up your virtual view of the mountains in the metaverse!
The mental health industry will be a big winner. There'll be tons of people who need diagnosis and medication. Tons of articles to write about the importance of self-care. Tons of money to be made helping people "de-stress" and be "healthy". Plenty of fertile ground for life coaches and inspirational figures and alternative healers to cultivate an audience all over the world. Exotic spirituality will be in vogue. Everyone will be so busy chasing peace they won't have time to think about why they never reach it.
I already know where I stand with all of this. In a way it's nice to have it laid out plain and clear at last. Like I've had this gnawing sense of frustration and inadequacy for, shoot, maybe my whole adult life? Don't know quite how to fit in, can't find my place, am weirdo. This is common - I bet it's far more common to feel like an outsider than an insider - we're just too cowed to suffer the ego damage of acknowledging that openly to others. Bet most of us think of "the cool kids" as some group that doesn't include us, and maybe deep down we like our underdog identity. It's human to struggle to belong and be insecure about if we're really liked or not. It's the core engine that drives social media, isn't it? That urge to be connected and put up a nice glossy front so people will like us? So along with millions of people, I've chased the low social risk/ultimate belonging high that evolving technology and platforms promise us. Maybe I need a facebook page, maybe I need an instagram, maybe maybe maybe. Maybe this will be the thing that establishes my bit of territory and gets me the magical quality interaction I'm looking for. Obvs this hasn't panned out. And I've been mad at the Internet for failing to cater to my idea of what it should be. Because I've been around since the Internet was supposedly by/for nerds and geeks and weirdos and misunderstood geniuses and fringe trolls. I wasn't an early adopter because the computers I had access to didn't have modems. I had to save to buy myself a laptop with a 56k and pay for my own dialup. So I was in the first wave of more widespread adoption, when AOL got everyone complaining because they were onboarding the clueless. Remember all the handwringing about AOL? Ha ha ha. There was always a push-pull between user-friendliness and creating barriers for users who didn't have the self awareness to add value. The internet was a clever shortcut to the best stuff, but like any shortcut, if everyone knows and uses it then it stops being a good shortcut. Then smartphones happened, and the corps figured out how profitable the masses could be, if you dumb things down and make safe spaces so they don't feel intimidated. Make it easy for them. Dazzle them with some shiny stuff. Let them post selfies and misspelled minions memes and copious emojis. And here we are, watching the next incarnation come into being and it's going to cater to the widest audience possible by design. Triumph of the shitposter.
There's a Carl Sagan quote I've stumbled across here and there, and it's probably the scariest thing I've ever read, but I still read it wherever I find it: "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
I like astrology and I'm not even mad. Would I even have stooped to astrology if quality mental health care were available to me? Astrology was a desperate last resort, not my first choice. It did measurably improve my life by giving me a different perspective of myself, and I greatly enjoy the mythology and symbology of it and I like being a little spooky woo-woo. But what led me to astrology was the failure of established paths of help and the general depressive rot of modern life. If you're missing a leg and you can't get a proper prosthetic, you make do with whatever works as a crutch. That's kind of how I think of astrology. Spiritual pursuits in general. But if it enables you to get around and function, that's an improvement over crawling on the pavement, right? And people with two whole legs may sneer at your crutch and call it names, but they have no idea what led you to need it. Lucky them.
Carl Sagan is right. Terrifyingly so. And he saw this so long ago.
Here we are, in the entertainment age. The internet is so glutted with low quality garbage it takes work to find the true bits.
I've been thinking about the seven deadly sins. Everyone knows about the seven deadly sins - I bet most people could list the majority off the top of their heads. Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth. But we think about them as more of a curious antique relic and less as something meaningful. They turn up frequently as creative inspiration - they did a seven sins themed photoshoot in a Top Model episode, for example. But I'm starting to think they were named the seven deadly sins for actual genuine good reason, whether or not you buy into the concept of sin. Look at the state of our society and tell me it's not actively cultivating expressions of those sins to escalating problems. If you think about it, current social media is all about encouraging and amplifying those vices. Attention is the bottom line, not whether the source is positive or negative. You could even say that Trump embodies the seven deadly sins - he is certainly successful in getting attention. We are permitting and celebrating these qualities, and clearly they are being rewarded. Which encourages more of the behavior.
Name the seven virtues that contrast the seven sins. Bet you can't - I sure can't. I have to look them up. Nobody does themed photoshoots with them. Chastity (meh, I prefer fidelity here), temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility. What a bunch of downers. That won't keep you glued to facebook. You might put your phone down and go for a walk if the seven virtues were popular and encouraged.
The seven sins/virtues could be a practical litmus test for directions to take my life. Stay away from the seven sins, pursue the seven virtues. Simple.
I've been thinking about that old flag I saw in the revolutionary war museum, the one that said "NO UNION WITH SLAVERY". I imagine at the time they meant "no (united states) with slavery" but I interpret it to mean "no (joining) with slavery". I like the expression so much, I wanted to embroider it on my coat and wear it around. But, I also don't want to minimize the horror that was historical slavery. Maybe we are in a form of genuine bondage right now, but we aren't being auctioned off in the town square and forced to wear collars that prevent us from sleeping and physically whipped and starved and treated as animals and forced to hide what little culture we can make and keep for ourselves. It's not the same. I've no idea what my ancestors did 150 years ago to someone else's ancestors, or to what extent I benefit from that suffering today. I don't feel good about potentially disrespecting real past misery with my modern ignorance. So I want to find a different turn of phrase that expresses a similar ideal.
This led me to Jose Rizal. He is a Philippine cultural hero who wrote about revolution from the Spanish colonial government in the late 1800s. He was executed. I know nothing about the history of the Phillipines, but so much of the world has suffered as a colony under one imperial nation or another, it's not hard to guess the gist. Jose Rizal had some awesome things to say - the language is a bit christian focused and antique, but still powerful. I'm gonna list some quotes:
(Two characters having a conversation at the end of El Filibusterismo (The Reign of Greed))
“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its perfume, you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor Simoun!”
“I knew it,” murmured the sick man, “and therefore I encouraged the tyranny.”
“Yes, my friend, but more corrupt influences than anything else were spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an idea. From this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring, and if anything were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom, for mushrooms only can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is that the vices of the government are fatal to it, they cause its death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. Like master, like slave! Like government, like country!”
Like master, like slave. Hot damn. And he says elsewhere, "Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages tyrants: there are no despots where there are no slaves! Man is in his own nature so wicked that he always abuses complaisance."
Later this gets quoted from Jose Rizal as "There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves."
I find this quote super interesting because of the symbiotic relationship between tyrant and slave. He's saying that tyrants exist because they are given permission. This seems victim-blamey and unfair, on the one hand. Do you hold the tyrant at fault for enslaving people, or do you instead shame the enslaved people for "allowing" the tyrant. But if all the slaves wait for an official authority to show up and haul off the tyrant for punishment ... that's how tyrants stay in power, but civilization is spared a big risky change. If we never accepted our roles as slaves in the first place, the tyrant could not have assumed power. If someone didn't want his favors or money or influence or whatever the tyrant could give, he could not have gained a foothold. It might have ended with a bunch of murdered folk, but they would not have been slaves. What is stronger - fear of harm or death, or desire for freedom?
The idea that tyrants and slaves are in each other's image is interesting. Is the tyrant figure that rises a secret dark fantasy of the enslaved that accept him? I'm thinking about the red hats specifically. Before the 2016 election we had a group of people who felt victimized, left behind, persecuted. Afraid of having things taken away from them (guns, jobs, way of life, etc.). So they opted to rally behind Trump. He is their tyrant made in their image. He stoked their fear of others, their victimhood and their desire to see the left punished. They already were enslaved and accepted it - they wanted a strongman to rise to be their chosen master and they were thrilled to put him in power. I was reading somewhere - someone expressed confusion because they didn't understand what the red hats saw in Trump, and someone else explained that they thought it was because Trump gave them permission to sin and be the awful, horrible people they secretly wanted to be. He's a rich, sociopathic asshole, and they all want permission to be rich, sociopathic assholes and he normalizes it.
Do we look at various leaders and see a mirror of the traits that the people beneath them see worthy of promotion. If most CEOs are sociopaths, do we as a culture admire sociopaths. Do we value the rich more simply for being rich and being able to purchase the trappings we covet. Have we had some hand in making our own tyrants (which we can then complain about and point at to absolve ourselves of change). "Why won't those greedy rich billionaires do some good with their money? It's all their fault." And we absolve ourselves of the grueling work necessary to fix the system, one small layer at a time, because it would cut into our social media scrolling. Secretly, we desire to amass scrooge mcduck cartoon levels of wealth and we don't want to kill that dream for ourselves. So we are enslaved and we accept it. Our masters get to be cartoon villains and we get to blame them for our woes. Everyone wins.
I am reminded of an article by The Last Psychiatrist where he talked about a scene from Django Unchained. Maybe it's stuck in my head because I watched Django Unchained recently. It's too difficult to sum up with a quick quote.
The point being that the system is potentially so insidious and repressive that freeing ourselves from it requires such a jarring mindset shift we may not even be capable of comprehending. Even if we believe we have achieved our freedom, it might only be a reward granted by the system. We all participate in the system to certain degrees because it has lottery like potential to benefit us. We might be one of the lucky ones. We expect to be compensated with security, so we can own stuff and not share with others. We have expectations that we won't suffer random physical harm from other people. We have expectations of hot and cold running water, a safe place to poop, a long life and broadband internet. We expect entertainment on tap and a variety of food.
These expectations are pantomimed for us in the media we consume. Products promise to give us extra security, better health, more convenience, more comfort, reduce work. We want these upgrades, of course we do. What does it cost? What do we need to do to afford it? How unfortunate are the people who can't? We only think about the personal benefit, not how the sausage is made. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made.
I looked a little bit into "mental slavery" - turns out it's a term already in use for decades by Black and African leaders. Which makes perfect sense. A entire large group of people have already been neck deep in the struggle for cultural healing due to enslavement. Makes sense they would have done a great deal more deep thinking than anyone else on the subject. Who is best suited to teach lessons about enslavement? People who suffered enslavement, duh. The problem with our mainstream western culture is we can't even acknowledge that we are currently enslaved. The red hats might be closer than anyone else. They know something is wrong and they're hopping mad about it. They just think the solution is their own form of tyrant because they can't/won't humble themselves to accept the truth. They have too much pride to see themselves as enslaved. They're just mad that they lost their once lofty position in the enslavement chain and they want it back. They've got it half right: they are at least angry about something being wrong. Most of us can't summon that same conviction. Gen X's famous apathy has been a thing for like 30 years.
So I ran across some sermons by Martin Luther King jr where he talked about mental enslavement, and holy shit, no wonder they assassinated this guy. I only know the cliff notes version of MLKjr. Civil rights, "I have a dream", yada yada, next chapter in the history book. It's kinda funny that by making him a generic household name and giving him a holiday, they effectively stopped people from learning more about him and pursuing his line of thinking. That was in the past, right? The adults fixed racism, right? He's got a statue and a holiday and everything. As a white person brought up in largely white communities I simply can't grasp the impact of the civil rights struggle. I get it in a generic "racism bad" sense but there's no real emotional handle for me to grab. It's not possible for me to wrap my mind around that experience, no more than someone without a uterus could comprehend living with a menstrual cycle. You can be sympathetic about it but you haven't lived with the physical and mental impact. Nobody's wrong for having different experiences, it's just not possible to imagine something and have it be just as impactful as living it in the flesh. So I haven't had a reason to read more on MLKjr because it didn't seem relevant to my life.
Anyway, this sermon has blown my mind. Everyone should read this, it is seriously amazing. It is the exact perfect thing I needed to read, because it encapsulates so clearly my major issues with christianity and the world at large. This was written seventy years ago. SEVENTY YEARS AGO. There's a lot of religion in it but I feel like the core message is for anyone/everyone.
It's like I've been halfheartedly pulling at a thread running through the length of my life and this sermon just unravelled the whole thing. I've been caught up with trying to be in the majority, preoccupied with the push-pull to conform. I've felt it keenly in the progression of my art. I've felt it in the role I mime in my family. I've felt it in connection to my job/money-making prospects. I've felt it regarding the Internet and how I use the technology we enjoy today. It's everywhere, it's woven in everything. It's the advertisements and the data tracking and the influencers and the pushing of "health".
"Everybody is passionately seeking to be well adjusted, nobody wants to be maladjusted. (...) The world is in dire need of a society of the creative maladjusted."
It's just an amazing thing to read. I really want to be one of the creatively maladjusted. How do I do this in a genuine way? How are others doing it?
And of course my first instinct was to see if there was some group who had made the society a real thing. Surely others have read this sermon and have been doing the work for a while. I want to see what that looks like. See, it's funny because I immediately look for the group of "cool kids". Some big nonconformist I am, right? Ha ha.
Are there already creatively maladjusted out in the Internet? Sort of, kind of. But nothing like I was hoping. There's an art group that unfortunately suffers from the problem I have with a lot of art groups. I'm not an emotion/feeling based artist and I have a hard time identifying with capital-A Artists who make art to express emotions. I just don't speak the same language, it seems like. I don't put intrinsic value in an emotional expression. I don't make art to release feelings. So sometimes I don't feel like an Artist. A lot of the so-called "fine arts" seem like bizarre alien territory for me. I admire technical execution and skill but I like there to be some thought or story in the work. I'm looking for more of a mental idea expression, a communication, a puzzle in the details, a symbol. I'm looking for a practical application. I guess that's why I skew more into art-as-wearable and tattoos, because they are worn, they are a practical useful expression as part of a living person. Fine oil paintings on a wall leave me cold, but art on a tshirt or a backpack or skin or a water bottle or whatever is useful and alive and interesting. So I struggle to connect to feeling-based Artists who aspire to make Fine Art. That's not what art is to me or what interests me. I don't speak that language. Anyway, sometimes it makes art focused groups tricky, especially if they are far over on the feeling scale and they aspire to hang in galleries and such. But when generic people think "Artist" that is the mental picture they get.
This plays out over and over and over where I chase some "approved" path or outlet with figureheads to give me the yea or nay. I want the hoop to jump through and the treat afterward. I always assume there are some cool kids somewhere who have advanced faster/better than me and I want to be a helpful little gear in their machine and learn from them. If the enslaved define their own master, well, my master would be the phantom cool kids. They're out there somewhere, with their cool kid art meetups, talking philosophy and geekery and secret online hangouts that I can never find. Sharing all their cool kid tricks. Gah!!!
Guess I need to let go of that particular flavor of inferiority. That means accepting that I'm on my own, I gotta figure out my own path. Whenever I rely too much on others, it has a way of falling apart. It's like I was meant to take the lonely road. The only real connection I have made to others is to spouse, and to my friend who passed away. It's not by choice, it's just how it goes.
So it's equal parts hope and resignation after reading the Transformed Nonconformist. The first cost of releasing yourself from mental enslavement is giving up on finding the guiding light of an outside master.
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The long and not-very-coherent point is that I'm feeling pretty motivated to release myself from enslavement, but understanding what that means exactly is hard. It will require sacrifice. I think one piece of the puzzle is sticking close to the seven virtues and avoiding the seven sins. Seven sins = enslavement of one kind or another.
I'm a very tiny piece of a world-consuming machine. I cannot help but participate in some aspects of it. Even if I lived off grid and could grow my own food and wear my own tanned animal skins. I cannot make everything I need. There would still be laws to comply with and taxes to pay. It's not possible to abstain completely.
About a year ago when I found the small internet and the gemlogs here I took the login birchkoruk. Spouse had played through Breath of the Wild and I loved the koroks - little tree spirits that like to make puzzles out of rocks and leaves in the middle of nowhere. Link solves the puzzle and the korok jumps out "Ya ha ha, you found me!" and gives him a korok seed. It's poop. Korok seeds are poop. I love the whole idea. I like the idea of sekrit hidden puzzles. I like being an uncivilized little tree savage in the middle of nowhere. I like handing out droppings as a prize. Yes. I shall be an online korok. (Of course I misspelled korok as koruk because I was so excited I didn't spellcheck.)
So this has been my sekrit mental filth nest while I watch the slow moving disaster of the past year or so roll on. I have little rage fits about why things are gross and sad. I try to scrounge some sort of direction from the tea leaves. I gaze upon my fat little navel and try to fix myself up. What now? What now? If I were a puzzle piece, where would I fit?
Nowhere, I guess. And paradoxically, wherever I want.
Maybe I am just a korok, making puzzles in the middle of nowhere. Handing out droppings to passersby. Maybe that's it.
In the Old Internet, it seemed like an unspoken agreement that you ought to contribute something of value to the web. If someone found your shiny rock nest you wanted to display your finest, shiniest rocks. Especially since connections were slow and sometimes expensive, there was a little pressure to make it worth the download and to be courteous. Not everyone can host and manage a community, but as a community member you should be a thoughtful contributor and add to the life of the place in a positive way. Be a good neighbor. Build stuff. Share things. I acknowledge I have hermited pretty hardcore and not ventured out or given back in the past year. Been very me-focused. I regret that but also ... felt necessary. Plus, honestly, I can't contribute anything here in the way of useful hard technical skill. I am a korok. I make little puzzles from rocks and I hand out poop. That's roughly the sum of my usefulness. I swipe free flooring samples from home depot and crow about it. I make poor people art. I brew ink from fallen walnuts. Ta daaa.
MLKjr says "The world is in dire need of a society of the creative maladjusted." I am a society of one. I declare it and so it is. Cool. Now what. Now what? Now what.
Well I have something cool to embroider on my coat, I guess.