Is It Any Wonder?

People. I’m often quite bewildered at just how fragile; ill-equipped, and frankly hopeless they can be at taking responsibility for their existence. I find their failings at dealing with even the most basic of life’s challenges catastrophic. The excuses; the refusal to learn; the lack of analysis; the incompetence at critical thinking and that damned apathy that tends to ensue. Ultimately you people are contributing vantablack into a collective pit of nihilism.

I’m sure some of you are thinking what is going on here…What a harsh opening statement, and about what? Well, my line of questioning does not get any calmer just yet… Stick around folks.

Am I too hard on people? Perhaps too hard, or have been too hard on me? The concern grows… Am I beginning to degenerate and display the signs of a misanthrope, or a modern-day version of Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man? On the other hand, is it perhaps the individual and the society at large NOT being hard enough on ourselves which has lead me to this observation and in turn this line of questioning? Or is this a question of bankruptcy in the competency department? A severe lacking of self-sufficient and oriented people; and if that’s the case, then what does that say about our society at large?

”Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

What a can of worms, a whirlwind of thoughts which if not properly dealt with, will quickly transcend into ambivalence with overtones of despair. There’s a whole bunch of questions here, but something suddenly dawned upon me. It was cathartic in a way! While there are still no solid answers, after all, there are always questions, I began to relax; to understand perhaps some of the reasons why.

Is it any wonder? We’re living in an age where a watch can unlock a computer for us just by proximity. An algorithmic age where Netflix makes film suggestions; Spotify is your musicologist on shuffle and YouTube auto-plays videos for you without any intervention on your part. We’re in a biometric age where a phone suggests, stores and secures all your passwords; hell you don’t even need to know them, all you need is your face or your fingerprint and it’s got you covered. An anti-information age where narratives are packaged, why think or act for yourself or your family when you adopt a preset; a set of highly defined constructs which by the way you dare not question… Will we even need to decide on what to cook and eat in the near future or will that be automated too? Finally, and perhaps most importantly; we’re in an age where society tells you it’s okay to not be okay. After all, the fault could never be with you, right? So simply sit back and follow blindly remembering to project onto everyone else without ever taking responsibility. Why better prepare your toolbox so you might become your best self, the person you are supposed to be?

I’m writing about these things because at a base level, we media composers are at least in some part observers; even nominally psychologists. It’s our job to see humans, hear stories, to imagine. We must try to understand the human experience if we are to attempt to communicate our findings through music or even sound. I’m also writing this as an antidote to my feelings of insanity on the subject, am I alone here? Is anyone else seeing or feeling this?

The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.
- Tom Robbins

Technology has always been with us and not just in the modern definition of the term; a piano, a pair of scissors, a toothbrush, a pen, a calculator, a computer. All of these objects are complex pieces of technology. All of these tools have moved us on as a species and many of them I’m sure restructured much of society in the past… We do however have to wonder if Skynet is now running the show? Was there a slide of hand we all missed? Have we allowed technocracy to go too far; and if so, does it now govern itself with a handful of oligarchs holding the key to humanity? Perhaps tech is now the primary and humans the secondary, all with our own sets of carefully devised instruction manuals. Manuals which of course will be renewed with each “update”, or each time the construct changes. It certainly seems this way to me, and you better blindly accept your terms of service!

“Machines like objectives and not other perspectives.”
- James Tunney

I'm sounding very anti-tech and that’s not the case, far from it… But tech (in the modern sense of the word) has changed, and I’m not so sure for the better! It used to be hard to use, you needed to invest your time and develop skills to work it out. We used to build our computers from scratch, mod our games consoles, run phone lines into our bedrooms to access the internet (No Wifi).. You tweaking it until it was just right for you, you broke it constantly and spent days fixing it (mostly with your mates) and that was just the hardware side of it… And you learnt a hell of a lot along the way, it was a tool and a tool you built for yourself, it never had a sense of controlling you.

So what’s my point? Well despite my opening statement and often despair at them, I’m on team people. I’m a proponent of diversity of thought; of freedom before God; of responsibility, reliability and competence so we might stand up straight and support others in stocking up their toolbox. Perhaps that means lending them some tools, and you may find some of them broken and in the repair shop from time to time. It may even be you need to borrow some of theirs, but the basic kit should always be readily available within the community. As a side note to this paragraph, I'm also a man who is worried for my fellow man and my occasional attitude and frustration towards them; especially in this new technocratic paradigm where human decisions are seemingly on autopilot with the option to go back to manual slowly fading away… I felt the need to document this.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”
- Peter 5:10

It’s time to put your phone in Aeroplane mode and if you can’t do that, throw it in the bin! Work up the ability to sit in a silent room for 2 hours at a time and contemplate your existence and try to hear your soul. Stop expecting someone else, the state or your community to solve all your problems and embrace the fact that life is hard and it’s supposed to be that way. Read all the books and learn how to internalise, or simply dismiss information based on common sense (there is a plethora of lies of there). Build some resilience, embrace stoicism and introduce discomforts into your life (fasting, cold showers and the occasional winter night without heating might be a good start, it will certainly reinforce gratitude). Take responsibility and stop blindly accepting those terms of the agreement which are forcing you into a prison of mind, body and spirit. Be a contrarian, be sceptical, be intrigued by the world and talk to people about your findings and thoughts despite their potential disagreement with you.

In closing, It’s not okay to not be okay. It is however okay to not be okay and to be actively doing something about it.

-MWB-