Soft Rebellion

Lately, life has felt to me like a series of turbulent vignettes. I can feel the flow of time repeatedly snagged, knotted, the slack piling up behind for a brief period until it slips again with a sudden jolt, much like the feeling when drifting to sleep that you’ve been dropped out of thin air to the mattress. One day I’m arranging a new piece of music in a state of blissful ignorance, and the next I’m driving on the highway just after midnight, my attention strays from the road toward the sky in search of the moon, when I feel an immense weight fall over me and a piercing sound rings in my ears.

I would consider myself a politically conscious person, I recall almost a decade ago passionately discussing automation and the vast potential it had to bring liberation to humanity as a whole, I was cautiously optimistic, but optimistic I was. Growing up I was a bit of a science kid, endlessly curious and excited about the cutting edge of technology. And here I am now, supposedly the same consciousness as my eight year old self, taking a look around at this world, how could the child in me not feel an immense sadness at the state of things? This I believe to be true—humanity’s capability to solve its greatest problems will never triumph over the religion that is unregulated capitalism. There are many who would rather lay waste to our Earth—our Mother—in the ego driven pursuit of conquering the planets and the stars in the name of science, progress, and survival. The promise of meritocracy is and always has been a mirage within such a system, the career I chose, out of what at the time felt like necessity, is now shoulder to shoulder amongst countless others on the killing floor—not by AI, AI is simply the conduit, the convenient excuse—the hooded executioner is of course, the business owners who believe AI is the g*d-sent answer to their bottom line.

At such a pivotal moment where it is clear we must invest further in our education system in order to overcome the withering of our society, the oligarchy chooses to instead kneecap the entire system. So many things which I hold so dear, things which may take patience to fully comprehend, but are the most nourishing, are so widely overlooked and misunderstood at large, it’s a tragedy in and of itself. Throughout history great art was propped up by the elite, the kings, the extraordinarily wealthy, now the people in those roles don’t understand art at even the most fundamental level. Their souls are withered, filthy, putrid—they are hollow men whose every movement is in the pursuit of further wealth and influence. Every structure of their perspective has been built on the foundation of this system.

I remember a time when artists, such as the great David Lynch, would spit in the face of the very concept of product placement in a piece of work, today its so ingrained in every piece of “media” we consume, the very media itself merely exists as a product encompassing a product in reference to a product. In 1996 David Foster Wallace released Infinite Jest, a book in large part written about society’s addiction to entertainment, he would roll in his grave if he knew the horrors of algorithmic doom-scrolling. Furthermore, a common trope in Infinite Jest is that the government of North America, a superstate composed of Canada, United States, and Mexico, has been directly sponsored by corporations, even naming the years themselves after the highest bidding company. Earlier this month, the leader of the free world stood in front of the White House next to the world’s wealthiest man and urged people to purchase said man’s electric vehicles. And that same leader, from the moment he took office, has continuously stirred conflict with our bordering neighbors and Greenland.

At this point it’s clear that this country has been sold, and that the world as a whole may soon follow in the footsteps of America. We have bred selfish people with a low capacity for empathy, and now, especially with AI, an even lower capacity for learning. If you are reading this and too have been feeling this weight, you are not alone, anyone who comprehends this reality has quite the burden to bear. But we are the keepers of our own minds, we rule the barrier of our own kingdoms, each of us have the ability to expand our consciousness and find inner peace regardless of the happenings of the material world. As Brian Eno recently said, the very act of steering one’s attention away from the addictive grasp of social media algorithms is an act of rebellion. It’s more important than ever to crack open a book, to watch a film which requires a bit of patience and openness, and listen to music that may not hook you at first listen.

To paraphrase Marcelle Proust in In Search of Lost Time—the things which at first are often overlooked, but after some time will eventually reveal themselves to us, are the ones most worth treasuring. These are the things which we will carry with us through a lifetime, the ones which deepen our understanding of the world around us.