I was sitting here, about to start writing, when I decided that I would change my mind and write about something else instead. This rarely happens, as I tend to write what is on my mind, but sometimes, what is on my mind just isn't worth it. For a little insight, the lead image would have been a shot i took at Auschwitz. But after a few days of being ill, my head doesn't need to spend more time in that frame of thought.
So here are some koi.
Still, I don't think that this is going to be a fun post either, but how many of my posts really are? I think this in itself is interesting, because for those who have met me in real life, I am actually generally pretty funny (so I have been told), even though I still talk about serious stuff. I think this is because I live by the belief that it is rarely "too soon" and there is no topic that can't be joked about.
Most people actually don't mind laughing at horrible things, unless they have personal experience with that particular horrible thing. It is "all fun and games" until it gets personal.
Personally, I think people should grow up.
Learn to laugh at the pain that this world can have, and then do something to improve the conditions. Wallowing in misery and victimhood doesn't help anyone, except the mass media and social platforms, that leverage it to drive their usage statistics and ad revenue models. They take our pain, they turn it into rage, they polarize and divide, they conquer us, because we are no longer able to find common ground - no longer able to build a strong community.
Instead, we fetishize everything, narrowing our preferences down to a sub of a subset and then through the way we are able to connect with "like minds" form distributed communities on tiny fractions of topics that do not make the world a better place. For a graphic illustration of just how twisted we have become, a man was recently caught in Australia for raping and killing dozens of dogs over the space of years and how he was caught was through a Telegram forum for this kind of behavior. It is bad enough that an individual did this, but to have communities formed around it - what the hell?
When I was at high school, there was an older man who would work around the streets and sometimes catch the same bus I was on. I was new to the city, but kids would shout "Rover" at him. Apparently, if it had existed, he might have been on that Telegram group.
Australians are good at making nicknames.
Our ability to pick and choose content is fantastic, but at the same time, it is also going to lead to different kinds of extremisms, where our thoughts and eventually actions are pushed to the edges of social behavior. Couple this with our declining ability to control our emotions, our increasing entitlement beliefs, and instant gratification conditioning, and it is of course going to lead down a dark path, for many of us. It is inevitable.
If you think about how many celebrities have fallen into bad behaviors and addiction for instance, it isn't really hard to see why. They have everything on offer, people throwing free merchandise, free drugs, free sex at them, just for being famous. Is it really hard to believe that when it is all on offer, that doesn't lead to needing more and more for the next high? Is it any surprise that there are so many overdoses, sex scandals and now, rape scandals coming out?
In some way, we are all celebrities now though, except rather than IRL sex, drugs and rock and roll, it is digital content. Anything that our heart desires is available and due to the laws of supply and demand, if there is a demand, someone will supply it. And, because the more we surround ourselves, the more we need to focus for the high, it gets increasingly narrow, increasingly extreme.
For some, it is like their near religious following of something like Crossfit, for a hipster they spend hours learning and taking care of their beard - and these things might be harmless. But, it is a normal distribution and we are all on the spectrums, which means that there is the other side of the curve too, the darker side of single-minded addiction.
We All Gotta Eat
What we crave can differ significantly.
We don't often think about how we all pretty much have the same mechanisms that drive our behaviors at our foundation, yet how they present changes. A "preference" for instance could be for a wine over a beer, but the mechanism is the same for someone who prefers a coke instead. It is the same for other preferences and desires too, but they are also influenced by other mechanisms in us, like our will power, or ability to control our emotions.
For most of us, we are able to control acting on desire to some degree, especially when we know it is socially unacceptable. But, the internet has lowered the bar, allowing us to feel safe from society and be able to connect with people who don't want to be found out either, which brings its own security. As a result, while people are screaming for safe spaces from those who don't respect made-up personal pronouns, we have safe spaces for the likes of child molesters and terrorists.
Perhaps we are focusing our fetishes on the wrong things?
I believe that we have fetishized our identities, continually narrowing what we "are" (want to believe we are) by adding increasingly granular definitions. It is this checkbox system of identity traits that we keep adding to in order to feel unique, to feel different from the next, to be special. It isn't good enough to be a human, you have to be a special human. But, it isn't good enough to be a certain color human, you have to be a certain color human with a particular education, but that isn't enough either, because there are too many of the same category, so we add more and more identity conditions until we are a minority of one.
Then wonder why so many are depressed and lonely.
That reminds me of a Chris Rock quote from one of his standup routines.
When you start watching porn, any porn’ll do. “Ah, they’re naked. Woo-hoo.” Then, later on, you’re all fucked-up. And you need a perfect porn cocktail to get you off. I was so fucked-up, I need an Asian girl with a black girl’s ass that speaks Spanish just to get my dick to move an inch.
Chris Rock
Fetish.
As I have said before, we are all on the spectrum, otherwise it isn't a spectrum. A spectrum contains all colors, which means that we all have some level autism, or some traits of a psychopath to some degree. But, it also means that we are all on that rainbow flag too, so where is my letter? Where is yours? Do you see how ridiculous and pointless this kind of segmentation is?
But it is like what I said up above. People will laugh at something horrible, unless they identify somehow with that thing. Similarly, people are going to focus their energy and attention on their own preferences and whilst they do, real terrible things that happen in the world go unchecked.
And it all gets more extreme, more polarized - and makes more money, for fewer people.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]