I was tidying up the office over the weekend and came across a stack of old notebooks that I hadn’t opened in years. Inside were abstract shopping lists. Scribbles measurements of something long forgotten.
Amidst all this randomness, I found a lot of notes and journal entries. Thoughts I’d poured out and left within the pages. I’ve decided to start publishing these entries as a lot of them follow the theme of the podcast.
This one’s from the winter of 2015. I can only surmise that from my mention of it in the entry itself. I’m not sure what sort of headspace I was in back then, but the state of world was clearly on my mind.
Here’s the first entry. More to follow.
It is a gloomy Tuesday afternoon. The air is thick with the vacant hubris of determined Christmas shoppers. Their zeitgeist is distinct. Cocooned within a bubble of self, impenetrable and unburstable. Punctured only by a cord of invisible microwaves. Tethering them to their reality.
Society circa 2015. Heaven knows what version we’re running on now. What accepted release of the human condition has propagated out on the winds of media, ideologies, and popularism?
The channel is running 24 hour propaganda over a baseline of static. A perpetual background hiss itches at the mind, noticed only by the part of us that we choose to ignore.
It is our greatest defence, to ignore. Our flood barriers keeping out the wash of over information. If we ever peeked over those walls to see what lies beyond, the sight would emblazon our minds in terror. We could never be practising humans again.
We have become aspirational underachievers. Dissociatively connected via lines as intangible as the connections themselves. We are the most intertwined with the lives of others as we have ever been in all of human history. Yet alone we stand in this crowded room, sipping our drinks, wondering where it all went wrong.
How did we get to this party? And who the hell invited us?
I feel there has been a terrible loss of memory. Something intrinsic and inherent to us has escaped our waking thoughts, yet lingers like cosmic background radiation. We are the shining stars of the Universe screeching away from each other at incomprehensible speeds. Becoming faint, distant pin-pricks of human brilliance.
As that brilliance fades, so too does our edge. We are in danger of becoming blunt instruments. Discarded and reduced to a means to an end.
The past few years have demonstrated, once again, the rift between those who have, and those who have not. This is not a new occurrence. It’s been the nature of human culture since the beginning. Or at least as far as we can remember. Since the pyramids were erected by slaves for the ruling elite. Since Middle Age nobility forced the common man to work the fields and husband the animals.
Nothing has changed except the methods of exploitation. Just another flavour of shit ice-cream.
What’s the exploitative methodology now? Not fear or violence, or the threat of starvation. The collapse of the individual is the adage of the age. Out of that collapse have sprouted great stone monoliths. Tall corporate trees whose branches shroud the people beneath in shadow and stunt their growth. Their tendrils reach into us like parasites, sucking our marrow dry.
The poison to kill these trees lies within us. Each day we, the democratic free people, silently vote through consumption. That very freedom is being eroded by the ever rushing water that flows around us. It engulfs us and we, dutifully, drink from it. Even though the taste is acrid. We welcome it. It satiates our thirst.
These monoliths have strategised and engineered control, growing ever more efficient over the centuries. They draw us into their bark, pulling us inwards and upwards with the promise of sunlight. Our mindsets become contaminated by their thick, egregious sap.
During the day, when we roam within their offices and institutions under the pale effervescence of electric light, they instil their doctrines and codes. Upon returning home, we eat their food and drink their wine. We watch their television programmes as our minds settle after the toils of our indenturement. Entertainment punctuated by advertisements.
Our thoughts are quietly infested by the parasitic kings whom, without us, would wither and starve and crumble to death.
Herein lies our power. That we should truly, consciously realise this relationship. That we should collectively become aware of this worm in our bellies, and all strive to vomit it out.