What sort of human is technological progress creating? Not merely technological progress, but progress in service of the elimination of boredom, of satiating our bottomless appetite for instant gratification. I see too many people walking, driving, sitting, eating, while holding a small rectangular object that constantly steals the attention of its owner. People walking their dogs spend their time staring at their phone. People drive around town, on highways, while staring at this small screen, this digital savior who delivers us from our requirement to think, to sit in frustrated boredom. It is the most powerful narcotic we’ve ever developed, and yet we don’t see it that way, and so we freely indulge, 24 hours a day, giving our children access to it, incipiating their addiction as soon as possible, creating lifelong addicts out of our children. Why do we continue to deliver our children to these megacorp beasts and their drugs, knowing what will happen? Social media addiction, porn addiction, an addiction to instant gratification. This is the brave new world, the dystopia we always knew was coming in some form, but didn’t realize the path until we’d reached the end. There is nowhere else to go. The drug of convenience, the screen as god, the digital narcotic that addles the brain, creating almost irreversible neural pathways of reward. There is no progress, no reaching for the stars, no reaching of our potential, no real future, as long as this omnipresent drug remains a primary fixation in our lives.
We require emancipation of this technology, just as an addict requires it of the substance they’ve found themselves chained to. 5G instant gratification, 24/7, is rebarbarizing our minds, suffocating our souls, muffling our humanity and dragging us back to an animal state. We need boredom, we need to think, we need our minds to wander, we need to develop the ability to sit with our selves, free of this drug, a drug that amounts to the most dangerous narcotic known to our species.
We are not equipped to handle this level of technological advancement, but somehow we’ve found our selves here and now bear witness to its abominable effects. At the current rate, for our future we only have a geometric proliferation of screens, of new and more subtle gadgets and programs whose gift is convenience, a further emancipation, by small bloops and beeps, of our ability to think.
What separates us from the animal kingdom other than our ability to think? And yet we are stuck on a wide and swiftly flowing current straight towards an animal existence. How long is the road back from Hell, and how many will even awaken long enough to make the first move on that road? And when every fiber of their being is straining to remain in the state of technological oblivion?
Convenience, delivered by the god technology, is our final drug, unless we make a concerted effort to consciously reject it.
