We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? — Richard Dawkins, Unweaving The Rainbow
Modern life in the Western world has morphed into a globalist connected database. We are more aware of one another than ever fathomed in history, yet we are mentally and emotionally departed from one another. This is a cold reality.
Does this suggest two ways of connection? Personal and impersonal? This plays on two other spiritual views: deism and theism. The former is impersonal, the latter is personal. As modern life progresses alongside increasing layers of technology, have we become like deist and are now impersonal toward fellow human beings? Has technology put us farther apart by being able to see an overview of all society, or large parts of the world? Could this suggest, as man accumulates a mini-god overview of Earth, man has in fact overstepped a boundary which should’ve never been crossed due to his own inherited inclination toward self-defeatism due to his lack of responsibility toward both himself and his society as a whole? This would suggest life without technology was a form of social theism; as in, we were once personal with each other. Lack of technology brought closer unity and formed close social bonds through natural everyday life, as technology was a tool of polytheist conjuring, which has enacted further social and moral confusion by its broad scope of irresponsible ideas and ever-changing new waves of doctrine. Is technology an adversary in disguise after a certain point? What has happened to our world?
Modern Life
Every day in America you can walk into any shopping mall or grocery store and observe the eyes of the participants in this melting-pot experiment with all eyes gleaming toward the digital tracking device as in the government-approved cellphone. The thumbs stroll down the feed of image after image, spouting off meme after meme. Likes and dislikes, comments and criticisms; what is this all about? It is a deeply disturbing thing to witness how supposedly connected we are while depression and loneliness are apparently increasing as the years progress. There are many factors which undoubtedly contribute to this. The family unit has been shattered throughout the country making a dent in the natural law of how men and women were crafted to best operate, under the patriarchy, strictly traditional in their household roles. The idolizing of celebrity culture and the dominant pop culture has not only made fame an end-all-goal for many inspiring artist and creative minds, but perpetuates the promotion of anti-natural values (tribalism, patriarchal structure) which are anti-conservative standards.
Women have far too many options at their fingertips to reel in financial means through their wide selection of men while men have far too easy access to pornography and sexual stimulating product. Friendships are shallow or stale, comrades turn on one another through social media drama, endless debate of morality is on a continuous strain due to the build-up of different cultural views or political views or religious views, and modern folk are either sucked in to consumerism due to the access of uncensored capitalism encouraged by commercialism and self-realized individualism, or are cut into the fringes of society among a group of others who themselves remain at bay due to the lonely nature of the fringe life.
Modern life is not a joke any longer because the humor itself has been dried up like the blood of shooting victims in an increasingly hostile country. Part of the great divide is because the media propaganda outlets have garnered a monopoly on being the voice of reason, as another addition of fuel to fire is the internet which has opened a can of worms shouting a thousand different views and opinions on one single situation, then repeats itself with increasing vulgar every time a new one comes about.
We are all connected too much to one another. We have too many conveniences which has made us fat and lazy, too much access to self-indulging product and sexual content which has further spread apart the sexes and helped in disabling the standard Western family unit, too much political freedom which has led to a ruthlessly divided country which is piled on by the media monopoly gangsters, and certainly too many different cultural attitudes and perceived norms that have been shoved together in one basket of lunacy.
This is nothing new to those who pay keen attention and observe modern life through the political arena and cultural shifting zeitgeist. At times like these it stirs desire for minimalism and quiet countryside drives, windows rolled down, maybe a good song playing, while the modern rot is left behind in the rearview mirror. Some of us may actually obtain that for a time. Many of us will not. But one thing I’ve come to accept is this: you can’t stop what’s coming.
The Death Clock
Whether it’s civil war, or the government uses their hired killers (a.k.a. the American troops) to stomp out any outspoken voices against the tyrannical officials, or if we simply get blown off the face of the earth by an asteroid or nuclear warhead, it’s all unavoidable. Death is coming for each of us.
A person dies approximately every 11.59 seconds
Number of deaths per year: 2,720,200
Number of deaths per day: 7,453
Number of deaths per hour: 311
You can watch a United States death clock count the bodies while the blood is still warm and the mother’s tears are still fresh. And it gets thicker. Someone will be raped and left mentally and emotionally scarred until the grave sometime this year, a mother will receive a phone call around midnight that her son was impaled at the wheel of his jalopy, a gang-banger will pop a few rounds of lead into a rival gang-banger who overstepped his borders, a man will commit suicide by hanging himself tonight, a woman will drown in a swimming pool because she drank too much due to heinous loneliness and depression because of her empty womb and childless existence, another aborted child will never know the agony of watching their own offspring grow up and become addicted to drugs and slowly deteriorate and turn near skin and bone, another mass shooting will occur, someone is dying of cancer tomorrow, and soon you will die at your appointed time and most likely be forgotten in a few short years or until everyone who cared about you dies in a slow, painful manner. And all the photographs they had of you, stored in a box in the upstairs addict, will either burn up in a house fire or be tossed in the trash to make room for a new family who purchases your now dead relatives home.
Death is the end. All else is a distraction from it. All your talent is trash, really. No one cares. Famous people will become like those black-and-white TV stars no one in the twenty-first century knows or recognizes, that great fantasy novelist will one day have their books out of print and be forgotten while someone new comes along capitalizing on it for inspiration without giving credit, the latest and greatest Hollywood blockbuster will soon be replaced by something else regurgitated from a replica of the original inspired by a play from an author now completely oblivious to all modern society written in an era where folks could never experience those fifteen minutes of fame that they may be judged and ridiculed by a thousand strangers, and no one will ever again say something so profound that it’ll strike conviction and fear or joy and wonder into generations upon generations to come ever again. This is the end.
Folks label themselves as liberal or conservative, or some edgy group or fringe faction of society. They engage in a form of socialism through collective voting patterns, or engage in online meme practice and then repeat, find sparks of joy in an absolute minuscule blip of the whole of history while feeling higher than life at the moment, then they all, at a given point, have their heart stop, the lungs breathe no longer, the blood turns cold and black, their funeral is held, the body buried and that’s their little story.
The next year is nearly here where 2020 will arrive and all social media will hashtag about it while celebrities enjoy fancy parties while posting selfies on social media about it, the big shiny ball will count down another year of divisive political rhetoric, someone will get too drunk that night and kill another person in a car crash, someone will break up with someone unexpectedly and send them down a path where they’ll end up marrying someone who’ll only drive them to utter misery, and many orphans will not see an adopted father or mother for the holiday season as they sit alone in the orphanage, and everyone everywhere will make new year revolution list that’ll die out in less than a few full weeks as the blunt reality sets in that nothing has changed, nothing is really different, and we are all going to die. Some of us will go peacefully drugged into oblivion, others will suffocate in their own blood, some will take a pistol into the back of the throat to avoid the inner degrading plague that’ll tear them up from within.
All that lies between life and death could, philosophically speaking, be viewed as one giant distraction. What does it genuinely matter at all the things you do on this tiny spec of dust? Some will tell you that meaning comes by what you make it. Others will tell you that life has value in helping others. Some will utilize terms like love or hope or some fairytale jargon to preoccupy the brain that’ll one day decompose and smell like a piece of hooker’s ass.
Final Thoughts
Has modern life given us more distractions than any other time in history? Has it increased our joy, by and through entertainment, until the grave? What has it done for the relationship between children and parents by creating stiff competition from government or celebrities, as both have now become part of the bourgeois class by owning the factories of morality? What has it done for men and women in terms of forming healthy relationships that flow naturally without political influence or forced cultural abnormals?
Modern life is a tragedy. Perhaps it’s the great technological distraction, fueled by sub-genres of drama and labels and social babble, that at least brings some peace of mind until you die. Perhaps modern life helps include all folks with our social media platforms that help us feel like mini-gods in a cold world fueled by the likes or comments of two-faced positivity. Perhaps equality-for-all will bring a brief utopia, under digital delusion, that’ll satisfy the blunt inquiry in many minds as we march to the grave, godless, hopeless. Perhaps the death clock placed upon each of our heads is really just an allusion and death is not the end and we’ll all begin a totally new spiritual journey with our spirit guides, or whatever makes a person feel safest as they close their eyes tonight.
Does any of it matter? We all are going to die. Some of you reading this may be dead before this time next year. Your comment is void and will echo a brief sentiment of your anonymous existence as the same applies to your ancestors only a hundred years ago. No one knows who they were or what their precious little dreams were. Were they abused as a child? What’s it matter to any of us since the abuser is dead along with the victim, and why cry of morality when the situation is now void? Is your potential future abuse a mere pre-void and the morality in question will soon slip away into blankness while justice (whatever that means anymore) is only briefly touched on by later relatives discussing it over coffee and bagels, laughing at family inside jokes moments afterwards? Go cry me a river. Modern life, if it indeed does anything of value, may at least push back the blunt gut-punch of knowing that you’re going to die. And you are going to forever be forgotten.
I’m glad I’m not an atheist.