2021 Start

2021 Start

I’m not in the habit of res­o­lu­tions. They’re usu­al­ly set by peo­ple with no inten­tion of keeping/maintaining them. I typ­i­cal­ly map goals out through­out the year any­way out of habit and work towards them.

As far as not so new goals go, I do want to min­i­mize cer­tain things. My time spent on anti-social media, or on-line in gen­er­al. I try to veer clear from Inter­net poi­son­ing of my soul. While I am a tech­nol­o­gist by skill and trade, I’m real­ly not. I find more ful­fill­ment in art and in writ­ing, in lit­er­a­ture and my envi­ron­ment. Pol­i­tics was putrid, it splin­tered and divid­ed peo­ple. Now there are two exit­ing camps in Amer­i­ca: the communists/socialist far left (aka rad­i­cal libs), and the ones who weren’t. I was of the lat­er group, the ones who con­sid­ered them­selves as being patri­ot­ic, which the left/libs despised (just as much as they did free­dom and the nation that they’re in). Ungrate­ful, spoiled rot­ten shits real­ly. I wish they could be offloaded into Hong Kong, main­land Chi­na or North Korea for an extend­ed vaca­tion. Might give them a new appre­ci­a­tion for the nation (some­how I doubt it, but who knows?).

I observed that I came to seri­ous­ly detest the inter­net ecosys­tem, which was hos­tile and tox­ic. It was nar­cis­sis­tic and mean spir­it­ed, and there was an evil mind­set that flour­ished there­in. Nev­er-mind the fact that it was a devour­er of one’s time and mental/emotional well-being, but also a spread­er of mis­in­for­ma­tion, con­fu­sion, and even depression.

I know we ‘feel’ like it’s a good thing, and it can be when done right. Yet most peo­ple can­not han­dle it, they lack the dis­ci­pline and per­son­al tools to man­age them­selves. In a sense, it could be a won­der­ful ecosys­tem like it once was dur­ing the polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect web 1.0 era. Now? It’s a form of addic­tion and also enslave­ment. Self-enslave­ment, for we do have the option to walk away. Face­book and Twit­ter are influ­encer think tanks mass manip­u­lat­ing us all in how to think, act, behave, and even spend, who to vote for, all the choic­es you thought were your own. They want to own your ass!

What does that make us but dig­i­tal pros­ti­tutes wait­ing for par­a­sites to infect us?

The com­par­i­son mod­el con­tin­ues to main­tain rel­e­van­cy on these plat­forms, which have become immersible, inte­grat­ed and sim­u­lat­ing a need. A need for con­nec­tiv­i­ty, of attrac­tive­ness and being liked, loved, etc. Now, we watch what oth­ers watch because they watch it like a herd. Nev­er­mind if it’s the dumb­est crap imag­in­able, we feel ‘safe’ because thou­sands have watched and loved it, so it must be on the up & up. Same with books, web­sites, movies, shows, pod­casts, the like. Every­thing is a moun­tain of crap now. Our hob­bies aren’t to record life but to live it. Tak­ing a thou­sand self­ies a day does­n’t make you more attrac­tive nor perfect.

Return to simplicity

Being an adher­ent to min­i­mal­ism does­n’t mean exclu­sive­ly reduc­ing mate­ri­al­ism, it also pours into an excess of any­thing. Whether eat­ing habits to behav­ioral pat­terns. Espe­cial­ly neg­a­tiv­i­ty, which is exces­sive in the USA. This coun­try is a cul­tur­al­ly sick place. Pos­i­tiv­i­ty is often preached and sel­dom prac­ticed, except as an intel­lec­tu­al concept.

I’m also sim­pli­fy­ing books con­sumed, music, movies, every­thing that I decide to allow into my stratos­phere. These things can (and do) influ­ence our mood, behav­ior, thought lives. I don’t get lost in books any­more, I don’t have the time and where­with­al. It’s either some­thing real­ly good or not. Take this gem for instance, Barnes & Noble placed it under Poet­ry. It’s not poet­ry, it’s pure lit­er­ary garbage. It reads like the jour­nal of a snowflake white girl who is depressed, drug-induced and very dark. How these types get pub­lished isn’t sur­pris­ing, but what is is that some greedy, sou­less pub­lish­er man­aged to get it pub­lished in the first place. Now a bunch of clue­less, wit­less mil­len­ni­als will find such fare and declare it as genius. You know because it has lots of vul­gar­i­ty, ban­ter­ing and twit­ter sexchanges.

2021 is a brand spank­ing new year. I went into 2020 with so many pos­i­tive dec­la­ra­tions and then it turned south at the onset. Now I’m prayer­ful of a sea­son of change and calm, and maybe just maybe a recov­ery to a health­i­er, brighter, and entire­ly bet­ter place than we once were.