Heavy Bombardment, Pt. 1
Earth's adolescence was marked by a period of heavy bombardment. A barrage of comets, asteroids, and miscellaneous space stuff rained from the heavens, pummeling Earth’s surface without mercy.
This was a character-building period for our fledgling world.
When the dust settled, Earth went on to spawn a bounty of biodiversity that somehow led to me spewing ponderous thoughts into a computer and publishing them to a worldwide network—viewable by anyone bored enough to care.
Our world is amazing and advanced. The culmination of the human experience can be devoured on demand. It's remarkable.
But it isn't without consequences.
People of the 21st century are experiencing a new type of heavy bombardment. It’s not a pummeling of miscellaneous space stuff but of information.
Technological Grievances
We suffocate in a vacuum of superficial distraction—vainly trying to fill the unfillable void that dwells at the center of our beings.
We seek connection in isolation, expecting technology to placate our frustrations and save us from ourselves.
We squander what is essential and are habitually overwhelmed by the great goddamn of it all.
Those in power capitalize on our collective misfortune by using technology to exploit our biases, fears, and insecurities. As far as I can tell, this plays out in one of two ways:
They get us to buy shit we don’t need for reasons we don’t understand
They spread disinformation to divide and conquer
This strategy seems to be working out beautifully.
The Struggle is Real
I haven’t been diagnosed by an expert, but it’s probably safe to say that I’m addicted to my phone. Each morning begins with me fumbling through the darkness to halt the relentless sound of my alarm app.
When I successfully end the disturbance, in a dizzy state of slumbering stupor, I proceed to peer at the harsh luminescent screen with one sleepy eye open as I start scrolling through the motions of monotony.
This is admittedly a subpar morning routine, but the day continues on in this fashion. My phone is always within reach—nudging me with an endless fountain of notifications that invariably remove me from the moment.
Believe it or not, this isn’t meant to be an anti-phone diatribe. I love the damn thing. I use it to structure time, measure workouts, navigate strange cities, find food in my proximity, kill time, write songs, develop new skills, find the best versions of things, and eavesdrop on people I have no real intention of reconnecting with.
It’s a remarkable tool of convenience and efficiency. But the more efficient things get, the more time is spent trying to maximize efficiency. It ends up being a wash.
I can barely recall what it was like to take a shit before the invention of the smartphone. Did I just stare at the wall and wonder about stuff like some sort of crazy person?
Lightning Without Thunder
There’s clearly an underlying dark side to all this tomphonery. We’re not biologically equipped to experience life in such distracting isolation. Our mental RAM is insufficient to process all the noise.
Moments of waiting used to be filled with reflection, but now the anxiety of waiting seems unbearable. We’ve lost the plot. We confuse the message with the medium. Anything that isn’t designed to algorithmically appeal to those willing to put forth the least amount of effort gets lost in a vast wasteland of information.
Time used to feel more transparent. Now it's cloudy. Everything is reduced to a sound byte, a meme, a joke. It all flashes by like lightning without thunder.
Heavy Bombardment, Pt. 2
I believe that limitations breed creativity—that quality supersedes quantity. Maybe I'm running into my figurative ink about nothing. After all, people have always felt their moment in time was pivotal in the grand scheme of things.
But perhaps we're approaching a point of critical mass, and this period of digital heavy bombardment is necessary for Earth (and its folks) to breathe more easily. Who knows? Maybe it’ll pave the way for something unexpectedly beautiful.
I need to spend more time breathing.