He looked at his watch. It had been an hour. An hour spent starting, stopping, pottering, staring. It used to be so easy, the words would just flow with a stream of consciousness reading the words already written on the inside of the skull. That point behind the eyes where thought focuses and identity is often held - the third eye, now blindfolded. Still there, but useless.
Another thirty minutes had passed, and all he had succeeded in doing was reading an article on article raging at someone who had spoken their truth. Truth. It no longer exists, does it? Society has encouraged us to live our truths, to speak our minds, to fight for what we believe in. But if what we live and what we speak isn't the way others think we should, or what they don't want to hear, then the outrage begins, as do the calls to have the person cancelled, have them fired, take away their livelihood.
All for speaking their truth.
In a world obsessed with identity, we are forced to protect ourselves by hiding who we actually are, what we actually think, lest we fall into the trap of speaking our own mind and attracting the wrath of the social police. Those who have taken on their own labels to make themselves feel special, so they don't have to do anything special for real. Ever wondered how strange it is that we think it is normal to identify ourselves by the people we fuck, as if who we fuck is our greatest achievement in life?
He has wondered. He has wondered many things. What else is there to do in a world where people are scared to talk about anything important, anything that actually matters. They must be wondering too right? They must have thoughts in their head, questions about the way the world works, and the way they work in it, but are too scared to raise their voice, to speak, to say, I think we might need to rethink this path we are on.
We all live in fear of something. But what it comes down to at the core, is the fear of being irrelevant, to having no one in the world that gives a shit whether we lived, or whether we died. He pondered how many of us are raging internally but instead of burning and raving, we just fade away into the dying light. It is not gentle, it is filled with fear and longing. Scared of being alone, unloved, unneeded. Scared of being in the spotlight and singled out for standing up for a true belief, instead of a socially acceptable position, measured by the assumed judgement of unknown, unfaced peers.
Unfaced peers. That might be a good title for an article that delves into the world of the faceless judgement we crave, but also fear from strangers. Spilling our lives to a global audience in a hope to impress, while our lives fall about around us. We can't even get the energy to work forty hours a week, yet we can spend twice that consuming useless shit from people we don't actually care about. It is obsessive behavior, addictive behavior, and if we were observing through sane eyes, we would see it for what it is, a sickness. But instead of getting treatment, we just relabel it as changing culture.
Redefinition is the name of the game now, where anything can be anything, as long as we all agree to call it by the same name. And, those who call it something different, will be redefined too. A good person can become evil, because they used the wrong label to reference an imaginary dragon. So caught up in the definitions, we have forgotten that the words are not the thing. No matter how many names of vitamins we speak, they won't fill our bodies with the nutrition we need.
A good man isn't someone who speaks the right words. Words are meaningless, unless we ascribe them meaning, unless we give them power over us. People think that those who use the wrong words are doing harm, but that is not the case. The harm of a word is only done by the listener who chooses to be harmed by the word. He knew it can be hard to accept this at times though, right? After all, we have been conditioned to listen out for the words that are supposed to injure us, like blades driven into our bellies in the dark alleyways. Feel the cold steel of a blade in the stomach, and then let me know if it is better than hearing a word you don't like.
Maybe that is the problem. We have become so desensitized to real violence through experiences that we never felt directly, that we are likening the feelings of discomfort to the sense of losing a limb. Maybe that is what artificial intelligence should be doing for us, creating simulations for our minds and bodies o feel what real pain is like, what cruelty can be exacted, and what horrors we will do to each other, in order to fulfill our own ideals. Fight for what you believe in, even if it means harming others. What a pathetic, sad, immature position to take.
Fuck. Another hour gone and still nothing comes to mind. Why has it become so hard to write these days? How can it be so difficult to find a topic to discuss, to mull over. Why is the mind so blank? He gave up. Another blank page. A book of blank pages, each a day lived, with nothing of note to record.
There's always tomorrow.
He keeps telling himself.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
"Unfaced Peers" sounds like it would be a great horror story XD
Or a self help book or a social commentary or some psychology something or other.
It's way too easy to overload everything XD
That use for AI would immediately make it "evil" and suddenly all AI would be banned and anyone working on it would be a criminal.
Although having said that there's a number of video games and movies and the like that should already be fulfilling/contributing to that role.
Your poor writer sounds very disconnected.
It is fast becoming one in reality ;D
So... you are saying it could save us?
He is an analogue phone in a digital world.
I'd say he did very well!
as in that story you wrote so long ago, where punishment was for the perp to feel all the pains that the perp had inflicted on others.
As they say, "no pain, no gain", right? So, if we want to rehabilitate people, it has to come from discomfort.
Could be indifference, indolence, or playing safe, etc. Truth is a free expression, even though society accords free speech, it comes with a cost and that inherent cost discourages people from speaking the truth and at times it deters people from speaking the truth.
Through interpretation.
Resonates with the Hobbesian state of Nature!
There is a cost to every action - freedom probably carries one of the highest costs, because it means making our own decisions. I think that is what scares people the most - they don't want to make the wrong one, and pay the consequences. So, they don't actually live free, because they choose to live in a cage.
That's the bitter truth of society at large.
For someone having difficulty writing, this was really good haha. But I can understand it. There is a lot of things to talk about, but sometimes words are meaningless. We can be talking to the wind for some people that just won't budge on their thinking. People have all these simulations in their heads of what things are, or should be, but a lot of times they don't do anything about it.
Even if people won't budge, there is still the space to have discussions, to open them up to thoughts that they might use later on. Habits can take 9-18 months to change even simple things - so, expecting people to shift their sense of identity, is going to take more than a conversation.
Identity is rather a very painful show. We need one so much these days. Personal brands, linkedin profiles, mails... because we need to convince people to buy us. To buy the thing. And so the gears keep grinding. Feels messy, kind of ugly at the bottom but that what it works. So people have figured that out too. They grind their own identity, they bind like molecules while hating each other for their so core diferences, never ideal.
That ol' hate, at one time religious. Great thing to reflect, thank you.
Yes. we have productized ourselves and in so doing, made ourselves disposable.
It really does happen, there was this time I literally gave up on writing that day.. absolutely blank man😂😂😂😂 but sometimes I guess our minds just wanna chill a little...
Anyone can write, but it seems not everyone has something useful to say :)
That's the truth buddy, that's just facts right there 😂
Honestly, there are days when I’d want to write but my head will be blank for hours but I usually end up writing no matter how hard it may be
A blank head is a nice place to start from, isn't it?
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