Hit in the socket
Technology is a hole.
It makes me lie to my friends.
Technology has supplanted self-awareness in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Much the same way acknowledgement of pop culture has
Replaced true wisdom.
When you're hit in the socket a profound calm settles within ones psyche.
It is the feeling one gets after eating a meal, waking after a restful sleep,
Shitting, fucking, or getting high on ones drug of choice.
Technology has afforded this sentiment to the user,
A fulfilment of ones perceived need or want.
Herein lies the problem, need has been confused with want.
This is what generations of privilege and lack of strife can birth.
A general substitution of desire for ones basal urge of require.
As a friend recently recalled from the wartimes,
Praise the lord, pass the ammo.
How can the sufficient be substituted for the necessary?
Only out of bewilderment or design.
To understand human desire as a knee-jerk, Pavlovian response
Would allow capitalist hysteria to switch sufficiency
With necessity.
Who needs self-awareness when we have Twitter?
Why search ones soul when one can search the internet.
What is more satisfying than being acknowledged for ones suffering?
When there is connectivity, who needs community?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Gregorian chants have replaced the post-war celebrations.
Solemnity has substituted salubriousness.
In filling our chalice, we have become gaunt in spirit.
We have lost our community with the idea of digital immunity.
Separation from ones past does not afford ones future.
Technology has hypnotized the masses.
Creating an organic blob sustained by inorganic sources.
Shining the light of wisdom on the heap of shame
Burdening the modern pop culture.
A burden of blame focused away from the self.
There is no self-awareness, only self-fulfillment.
Like the junkie masses have consumed fake news.
They too will willingly and willfully consume the needs
Of others and substitute them with their own necessities.
Like an obsessed orphan of cosmic proportion.
Technology has replaced self-awareness with itself.
Awareness of the pop culture blob, the latest trend or fad
Has replaced the wisdom of ones self, ones own soul and being.
It's not about being anymore, it's about dying.
The hand that used to grasp my dick is now grasping the eye of Sauron.
That freedom in my pocket, the freedom to discern fact from fiction
Has in effect enslaved me to the idea that I need an idea force fed to me
In order to understand myself from the perspective of others.
The other has replaced self as the prime motivator and cause of being.
Instead of searching oneself for answers, ones now relies on others.
If I need a solution to the problem plaguing my inner psyche,
Ask the internet for the answer, ask others to understand the self.
The fundamental problem with this philosophy is that the other
Will never truly understand or empathize with the self.
The other is as cold as steel in the ribs under a moon-less sky.
In other words, searching for the self by looking to the other.
Is a form of prolonged suicide, a formula that is bound to fail
Simply because the entire epistemology of technology is fake.
It a system of knowledge based upon opinion rather than fact.
Only on the internet can popular sentiment outweigh truth.
Why would we allow ourselves to be deceived on such a profound level?
Because technology hits us in the socket.
Like a hit of crack, or a steak dinner, or some good sex.
Like a kiss or a nice breeze on a hot day.
Or a tall, cool drink.
Technology satisfies an urge inherent in the human psyche.
The urge to know or learn something.
Even if it's false, an abject lie, a tool to market a specific product
Or commodity that we do not or cannot have.
It satisfies that desire to know or at least believe in knowledge.
For without knowledge, there in only folly and chaos.
Even though the environment which created and sustains us
Catapults towards catastrophe, we are afforded the illusion
Of knowledge and fulfilment of necessity through the technology
Which deceives us into believing that they are us.
That the other is as important as the self.
That the present is as meaningful as the future.
That the past is as meaningless as the present.
That the humans are as necessary as the environment.
That the source of life is death itself.
For all it's omniscience, it's surprising that the human race
Has not overcome its inherent need for recognition.
Has not cast aside the perceived benefice of technology.
And been enlightened in the arts of environmental empathy.
But then again, we've been hit in the socket.
