Memoir, from just outside the box

GURU

[Note: These days I read not to escape but to discover what goes on behind the curtain. I am a fan of clarification and insight. This month, two voices grabbed my attention. I edited their essays, distilling their words to an essence that I found somewhat dark but enlightening. I present my edit sentence by sentence, with the hope that the reader will approach each sentence as a true/false exercise.]

Premise: The ARTIST is all artists, one mass movement operating with creative urgency and the desire to upgrade existence. Art is a hive effort.

Premise: The GURU is all gurus, one mass movement operating with serene focus and the ethereal duty to unleash wisdom. Wisdom is a hive effort.

BABA ONE

The fulcrum of the cultural transition from vibrancy to stagnation was the 1970s, an era remembered for leisure suits, burnt orange shag carpeting and muttonchop sideburns.

The 1970s era marked the passage from progress to reaction.

The 1970s era was the beginning of the backlash against the turbulent 1960s.

This backlash, marked by a nostalgia-tinged desire for a simpler America, fueled the reactionary political counter-movement that started with Reagan and dragged us across the asphalt and into Trumpworld.

At the more exalted level of national politics, cultural stagnation is a dive into tackiness and kitsch, Trump's faux-rococo gold leaf, the White House outfitted like a 19th century bordello.

Cultural stagnation is a form of willed self-destruction.

Mike Lofgren

BABA TWO

The toxic effects of modernization are slowly killing us... on purpose.

The real future is about quietly reducing the human surplus, an insidious genocide disguised as progress.

The American system used to depend on human labor and human consumption.

Now, suddenly, humans are a liability.

We aren't the engine of the capitalist economy anymore.

We are the inefficiency.

Humans are the bottleneck in the incipient streamlined future.

Rational, amoral, profitable capitalist systems eliminate human inefficiency by creating an environment where people voluntarily take themselves out of the game.

We are witnessing the controlled demolition of human relevance.

The Functional Melancholic

BABA THREE

Behold, our collective denial.

Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it, the agreed-upon grand delusion, the surface polished just enough to keep the machine running.

How much of life is reboot after reboot of a bad script?

I started to see how much of my life was scaffolding, the structure I built around myself to avoid asking the hardest questions.

Then came the unraveling, the long slow peeling away of the narrative, until all that was left was the silence.

Maybe the right diet will help you believe that the world isn't coming apart at the seams.

There is a whole industry built around monetizing your existential discomfort.

There is a scented candle for every flavor of dread.

There are solutions that are nothing more than aesthetically-curated distractions.

The more you seek comfort in these distractions, the more artificial it all starts to feel.

Low-frequency insanity is humming under the surface of every moment.

You find that you are trying to heal from the illusion using tools created by the illusion.

Meaning isn't guaranteed and purpose isn't handed to you in a welcome wagon gift basket.

Living with awareness is like living with the parasite called clarity.

You develop a strange relationship with time, which no longer feels linear, and yet our whole society is built on linear time.

You begin to measure time in moments of clarity.

You stop trying to force coherence onto a system that was never designed to make sense.

There is no ultimate safety or final certainty.

There is no master plan.

With trembling hands, you hold onto the strange, terrifying miracle of existence.

You develop a tolerance for discomfort and for mystery.

You realize that no one is coming to save you.

You finally stop lying to yourself.