I wrote this in 2016 when I was living in the country of the so-called American dream.
I grimce, I nod, thinking this must be a lie for sure. I read the phrase in the lower right corner of an envelope that probably contains one of the many propositions of financial credit sent to my sister, as surely they reach to the majority of people living in this country (you can guess what country is it).
After more than two weeks of hard work making the contents of this website, with all that entails.
I end up with a fairly high level of fatigue, for having to be stuck with this computer, and the network as a cobweb maniac.
I can not avoid the feeling of disgust when I read the eloquent phrase: «see inside for an interactive experience.» To see myself wasting my life, swiping on the screen smartphone the photos on Instagram. Their views of the world recorded with their cell phones. Asserting themselfs in this virtual space-witness their «experiences».
But it is precisely the word experience that strikes me hard. See inside for an interactive EXPERIENCE ?
I repeat to myself sarcastically. These bank officials supposedly are intended to provide an interactive experience … as if they were able to do magic. Obviously it’s a decoy. A mirage. A false promise. My inner adventurer tells me: This is an ambush !! One trick to lure you into consuming something you do not need.
Surely this is not the right place to find what you’re looking for… my good friend.
It is very easy to take the bait when diving into this ocean of information, on a wrong turn one might enocunter the unconscious side of the collective. This netherworld responds easily to our subconscious. Distraction and satisfaction with easy stimulus are available at the push of a button.
Like what Jung called the collective unconscious, a place we access through dreams. Also reachable through the legends of mythology, which are made of an intangible matter common to all mankind, from any time, place or race.
A similar world that Freud refered to as the subcosncious . When we sleep we go to a place free from all censorship where all our desires, fantasies and fears are alive. Those which we often do not dare to express or to live in our daily lives.
Of course the sense that I am giving to the internet in this case is a little different. Although what happens in it is quite similar. We have access to all the luminous side of the human being, but also its darker one.
Just as in night’s dreams on the internet we can behave without inhibitions, as we have the illusion of not exposing our true self. Then it’s as if the internet give us the possibility of entering a masquerade party, where what happens or what we do is not under our true identity, or under the identity we have forged in «real» world.
And I put it in quotes, because in the «real» world we do not show ourselves as we really are, but we do it through filters. Which fade very easily while entering the underworld of internet.
One could say that we have the opportunity to interact with the unconscious of others. But something strange happens because we do it consciously. Could we call it a conscious act ?
Would we act consciously in an environment in which it is permissible to do everything we do only in the field of dreams, when our consciousness is asleep?
Is this a tool that helps us to know the dark side that we would not dare to recognize in ourselves?
I don’t know for sure … and I am beeing too intense. This is a subject that interests me a lot, but what led me to start this text was something else.
The boring dependence we create for these so called intelligent devices. The trend to gradually robotize ourselves.
Truely I could not turn to be a sedentary man and be 24 hours conected to a network, where all sensory stimuli that my body receives are only a few electronic pulses sent by a computer. Visiting places, meeting people, reading, listening to the reflections of someone, etc. Everything within this tasteless virtual state. That’s definitely not enough for me.
Not even when the technology reaches such a degree that we put chips in the brain to provide us with immediate learning as seen in the movie Matrix. I think that kind of immediacy steals the opportunity to feel the journey.
Something inside me would notice the void. «My body is lacking a real feeling» My heart would say. The fact that things are immediate take away much from the whole experience. Suffering does not exist without joy. Or rather, the joy does not exist without work. We have to work, we must exhaust our strenght to reach the top of a mountain, or to reach to the other side, where the oddly shaped rock island exites our imagination.
If everything was given to me just by the push of a button, much would I be missing. To feel how time passes, to use my strength, to enjoy rest. To express my love with touch, words or my song. That’s what life is about. To live the process.
Sometimes it would seem that we skip the moment. In the urge of; what’s next ?
The real movement, the human creation and our intervention in the world goes far beyond the effortless reception of stimuli through the stultifying Black Box. Machines!! amazing dessert dispensers that only increases our fears and hesitations to commit ourselves to life!
When I stop seeing the machine as a tool and take it for the source, then I start to let myself be used by it.
I forbear myself to get the real taste of the lips of a woman, of clinging to the Earth with my feet, embracing the Ocean or face the forces of Nature 😉
…
