Attention.
We’re rats living in overpopulated cages. A deluge of new information and new entertainment is blasted at us 24 hours a day. Bright lights and overstimulation prevent us from the type of deep thought that’s necessary for a fulfilled life.
Always connected and always distracted, we’re told that down time is dead time.
But this ignores the reality that the best human innovations spontaneously emerge from our subconscious mind when it’s at rest.
Do you ever notice the way light dances like diamonds on the crest of a wave?
In solitude I dwell on the nostalgia I have for a place that doesn’t exist yet.
And when I write, I don’t do it to gain followers or participate in some kind of political revolution. Writing is thinking and I believe that the secrets to the universe are inside us: we’re vessels for ideas that exist in some dimension that we can’t communicate with directly.
So I understand why Ginsberg took peyote and stayed by that typewriter until he collapsed.
And I understand why Balzac had 50 cups of coffee a day.
These men were possessed by the thoughts that were inside, desperately trying to escape into this physical dimension.
And in the dead of night the secrets of the universe seem so clear to me.
Walk out into the desert and you’ll know what a woman is.
Stare into the campfire and you’ll realise that the meaning of life isn’t to be found in the nothingness that’s on the news.
The naked sky is an impossibility and yet we drown it out with man-made analogues.
This world of plastic lights and megabytes obfuscates the true nature of our reality.
Everyone’s locked in meaningless battles over meaningless territory. They wonder if the car they drive impresses their friends. They spend time thinking about how they can make their LinkedIn profile look more impressive to some recruiter in Dubai.
Can you honestly tell me that you enjoy living in your windowless cube, poisoning your body with fake food and accumulating fake dollars? Y
ou sacrifice your health in the pursuit of what, exactly?
The Stoics knew that our lives mattered. Every. Single. Day. Every action, too. Honour. Duty. Glory. Valour.
What glory is there in the life you live? Are you really bettering society? What do you stand for?
These questions should haunt you every day.
They haunt me.
So when I look around and see a society in a decay, I can’t stay quiet about it.
We're ruled over by doublespeak leaches who preach virtue which is seemingly to be enforced with an iron fist. They're trying to turn us all into debt slaves: HECS and mortgage tied around our ankles as they walk us out to sea.
But does anybody even notice this? And why do they voluntarily vote for it?
Maybe it's because they've been sedated by Netflix and distracted by the promise of fake glory. Turned into vessels who blindly obey the propaganda machine.
And I wonder what would happen if they simply stopped and paid attention to the beauty that lies in nature.
Like those diamond waves or the impossibility of the night sky.
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