Like the rest of you who remain tethered to glowing screens, this year has left me feeling constantly frayed. And like many others, my view of the internet, with its once attendant optimism for the future, has grown increasingly cynical.
I’ve been busy, of course, but peeling that inevitable excuse away, there’s this to point to for my reticence in writing.
To write, to really write, is to break momentarily free from all that has come before to forge a new pathway into the heart of darkness. To rediscover and lay bare the ancient byways that were already preexisting.
But really, we — I — should have known better. Nothing is ever proffered for free. Every time we log into a browser, tap into an app, and affix our gaze onto a screen, our every click and swipe and clack of a key is harvested and mined for every last drop of data. As William S. Burroughs, a professional junkie who would know, once said: Beware of whores who say they don't want money. The hell they don't. What they mean is that they want more money; much more.
It all seems so banal, at first. But what a Faustian bargain it is. We grow not only reliant upon these ephemeral feeds, but addicted. The declension from creator to consumer occurs so subtly that we can almost convince ourselves that we are still creative gods as we color in proscribed templates administered to us in a drip line from the inner algorithms of a Forbidden City.
Those who control the data, who can mine them for patterns that will narrow the probabilistic outcomes of each successive moment of time, grow stronger with every reinvestment of attention that we bestow within their encircled domains.
Yet here I am, freely spilling my branded pixels forth onto this particular platform which will be willingly disseminated via instant post grams in the hope that it may gain a stranger’s fleeting approval. So I keep clicking, and feeding, and posturing.
I — we — must still hope for something redemptive. Some Neo love Jesus transmutation that will imbue the raw bestiality of humanity with some kind of higher purpose and meaning.
But I know, we know, you know
that the greatest of power and riches lies within.
So long as this truth is kept just beyond immediate attention, we are in bonds.
Let 2018 be a year in which you and I and we keep this truth closer to our hearts for longer periods of time for the greater amount of common good.