And yet...

Perhaps all is not lost.

I recently wrote an article based on Charles Bukowski’s observations about the state of people in his day, encapsulated within this quote:

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

—Charles Bukowski

I agreed with Bukowski. Around us is a world lost to the endless temptations of the always-on digital realms most now have access to.

The prognosis seems bleak, and the effects can already be seen. Lowered attention spans, an inability to cope with boredom, and minds preoccupied with fads and programmed causes, uncritically embraced with the conviction of addicts and zealots.

Worst of all is perhaps the trivialization of our one, fleeting life, its swiftness squandered on mildly amusing videos and nonsense, often with the express intent of killing time. Anything but boredom.

All this from novel technology absent only thirty years ago. Too recent for us to develop strong defences.

We are surely damned.

Hold up, something ain’t right

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead...

Bukowski was aware of what society did to people. He saw the failures every day.

Confused and broken, going through the motions. Empty shells, ground down by a heartless system. The assassinated never stood a chance.

Today it is more like assisted suicide than assassination. The phones and the apps drawing in the unwary to a perpetual carousel of low-effort fun. Our ancient neurotransmitters abused to keep the likes coming thick and fast.

Our existence is increasingly managed via technology, with screens keeping reality at arm’s length which both protects and isolates, conspiring to create a facsimile of life while our actual lives unfold at a remove.

This is not progress.

And yet not all are affected. Some are immune to the appeal of smartphones and one-click living. They never bought in to the hype.

The always-on, instant notification, contact-me-anytime culture is relatively new after all, not something we have had much time to adapt to. Not everyone takes to it.

Many still remember a time when they were uncontactable just by leaving the house. Now we have inverted this; we hide at home like hermits but take calls in supermarkets and parks like we are presidents managing world affairs.

A cultural memory of being unreachable lingers even in those too young to remember such a world. How did we end up here?

Others are aware of the rot and use strategies to mitigate the worst effects. They ration screen time or use basic phones to avoid temptation.

Even among those who succumb is a growing sense of the absurdity of our predicament. The fear of missing out, the loss of control over one’s mind, the shallowness, accomplishing nothing while entranced by fluff.

And the hangovers; the post-binge realization you lost an afternoon to things you can’t even remember. It all adds up, the accumulation of nothingness gets to some, it makes them think.

Plenty wish to curtail their indulgences. Some even hijack the same mediums they abuse to educate other addicts on different currents they could consider: anti-consumerism, minimalism, essentialism, mindfulness, reconnecting with nature, living small and wanting less; it is all there and it is reaching many exhausted with the dopamine treadmill they can’t quite get off.

These efforts are easy for cynics to dismiss, but they are triggered by an important consideration, an awareness something is wrong.

So even among the lost, the worst of the bunch, wandering adrift inside their digital wasteland of manipulated news, celebrity fashion and porn, many search for a way back to the beforetime. They haven’t been assassinated yet.

Make up your own mind

Men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions...

Our increasingly online lives seem crazy at times. We watch as irrational fads tear through the minds of millions, from trans kids to endless climate predictions based on magical thinking.

This operates in tandem with traditional media. Useful voices are amplified. Neutral, balanced views have long since been abandoned. Anything counter to important narratives is silenced or attacked.

It can therefore seem hopelessly crazy all the time everywhere we look. Huge swathes of the population must be deranged with psychotic levels of disconnect from reality. The things they believe seem unbelievable, but there they are, shouting loud and reaching millions.

Sometimes the unhinged seem to be the only show in town.

And yet, the worst of them, the social media platforms, are clearly not a reflection of society as a whole despite being presented as the public square.

Many normal people shun social media, or are only nominal users, occasionally checking in. This has always been the case, but sane voices are increasingly absent from notional debates as more avoid social platforms thanks to their promotion of crazy ideas.

The fastest paced apps, like Twitter and Tik Tok, cannot really hold the able. They are too geared towards the damaged. The material they promote is then a distortion, the mentally compromised looking like they make up a bigger proportion of the world than they actually do.

Social media stampedes are often picked up and amplified by traditional media which lends greater credibility to things for the casual observer. They seem important and popular.

So we see loud examples of the uninformed, the conformists and the clones while their counterweights, the informed, the independently minded and the mentally healthy, are absent.

This distortion can be difficult to discern. Seeing is believing. Manufactured hosepipe pseudonews is all many people really see. Throw in algorithms designed to show you more of what you already consume and we understand how convincing strange ideas can become.

Except for those who never see it. The majority in other words.

Most of us don’t believe President Trump is Satan or Hitler. We have reasonable views on climate or mass immigration.

Most of us are not zealots for any cause, not even the ones we support. Normal people are just not that immersed in movements or events.

The very offline have always been there, and their numbers are growing. But the moderately online and the not really online exist too, just not visibly, at least not much.

Everything, then, can seem like the manufactured feelings or standard reactions of conformists because the authentic are offline living life and taking their feelings and reactions with them.

Just knowing this helps us realize how false the digital narratives often are no matter how popular they seem.

Emotional thinking

Men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

Bukowski recognized many people were other people just as Oscar Wilde had observed a century before, their views and ideas second hand.

Mass media man was a shell, a virtual automaton going through the motions as real life unfolded around him, his fear keeping it at a safe distance.

We are all affected by this. No one escapes the effects of propaganda because it is everywhere.

Insomuch as people have any ideas, for the majority it would seem Bukowski’s pessimistic observation is the right one. Addled brains, further damaged by entertainment, and poorly developed reasoning skills.

So many people seem to be manufactured by propaganda and shaped by the powerful. They have no ideas of their own. Their thoughts are slogans implanted via repetition; their convictions created by marketing teams promoting an agenda.

There is little hope since so many are already trapped, their entertaining rectangles too appealing to resist as the slop pours into their minds unhindered.

And yet this is not the whole picture. We focus too much on the negatives; mindless scrolling, ever shorter video clips, the death of longform writing.

Technology is strangling all that we are, its drive towards convenience converging on moronic, fast content devoid of substance, all of it produced by experts then focus grouped to be digestible for the unthinking masses.

But the same technology-driven world has given us all a potential voice. It has democratized content creation.

Today there are fewer barriers between producer and consumer. Content of all sorts can be made at low cost due to technology advancements. Importantly, producers can market directly to consumers with no middlemen.

Substack aims to provide a space for longform content we were told people wouldn’t read. Video platforms like YouTube provide a mechanism for video and film content, and most are free. The same platforms can store and promote music as well as specialist outlets.

Crowdfunding initiatives provide another mechanism to fund projects normally beyond the reach of solo producers.

All this has a democratization effect even when nominally controlled. The end user decides what to support, not a corporation.

This is accelerated by profound changes in consumer behaviour that seem beyond the control of anyone.

Many of us now consume less and less traditional media. Who now buys a paper or a magazine?

Mainstream television is already dead; no one tunes in despite the billions spent. One popular podcaster can reach a hundred times the people CNN or the BBC can.

This matters. The landscape has changed, and it is never going back to central command no matter how much cash the powerful spend.

The internet may be trash, but there are nuggets of pure gold. Importantly, it is really a distribution channel no one fully controls.

Tomorrow’s media landscape will be shaped by this reality no matter how much the powerful wish to control our minds and behaviour.

This means more of our neural patterns, emotions and memories created by mass media will now be shaped by choices we ourselves make. So even the impressionable and the conformists may find a way through.

Surely even Bukowski would see the potential in this.

Real life is not online

Friends, booze and companionship. A home-cooked meal, the smell of recent rain on a spring day. Someone to go home to and share life’s adventure with. A kind word from someone who cares. The good stuff isn’t digitized because it can’t be.

We are increasingly immersing inside an artificial view of life via manipulated media messages that bear no relation to what a satisfying life looks like for most.

The carefully curated bullshit of tanned, thin people on yachts, sailing around some tropical location, drinking cocktails without a care in the world, surrounded by crystal clear seas and sunshine is something we all understand isn’t real, and nor is it what we actually want as superficially appealing as it may be.

Despite the artificiality, some are taken in. We worry the very young are being mentally handicapped by aggressive apps rewiring their minds and selling them these false gods.

The mindless content, the emotional appeals to circumvent reason, the political distortions along with the fake videos, the sensationalist reporting and the bottomless pit of porn is definitely there.

But more turn away every day. More resist the lure of fake digital lives.

Some abstain completely, although many just ration or somehow manage their media consumption. Normal people are not fanatics.

Even those neck deep in it look for ways out, retaining an awareness their preoccupations are unhealthy.

This is good. We are more resilient than we realize.

So all is not lost and perhaps we must amend Bukowski’s quote to accommodate these hopeful observations:

We see digital resisters around us every day. Escaping from rooms of the distracted, streets of the distracted, cities of the distracted; guarding their thoughts, wary of convenience; people with cultivated beliefs and sincere reactions; people with healthy brains, intact souls and open to ideas.

Were he with us today perhaps Bukowski would find cause for hope.

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