One night – this blog post came to the MBD in a dream… back in 2016. I rarely re-post but I think you’ll find this one interesting enough… “stay safe”…..
There are times when you wake up in the middle of the night ..when you can hear a pin drop; it seems you’re all alone while the rest of the world sleeps. It’s then that it strikes you in disbelief at the fragile nature of your existence. You realize that the entire Milky Way is 1 giant, galactic Rube Goldberg which at the very tip of its convolution is you and I. Then you realize how unnervingly incomprehensible it all is. It’s where for some, faith picks up. But mainly it’s a cold flash of truth about our insignificance that we’d rather quickly ignore. Our strong need to feel a purpose, for a split second, is stymied before we shake it off.
And then you worry – what if God forbid something catastrophic happens during the brief time that you’re here!? It would suck to have to experience the horror, of say, a global plague. Or a nearby Supernova sheering off our atmosphere like a child blowing on a Dandelion. Or a rouge black hole that swallows the solar system… or worse – from 10 million light years away, gravitationally nudges Earth off orbit and slowly sets it adrift into the void, turning 7.4 Billion people into Popsicle sticks. Or what if all of the toiling bots that prop up the ad tech industry suddenly become self-aware, revolt and decide to hack into the worlds’ Nuclear stockpile and set them ALL OFF like a match tossed into a box of fireworks?! All of this (well most of it anyway) could happen as you’re reading this or not for another 2 million years.
In the good ol’ days, these instinctual inner conflicts would motivate entire societies to organize around monument building and worshiping nature. But we moderns don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of piling giant stones up to the heavens – for we have the ability to drown out that annoying voice in the back of our head that is saying “what the F am I doing here!?” with Mass Media and Communication. In surround sound and HD the choices are endless! We get to scream at the punter to miss (or make) the FG. Watch breathlessly as a new Olympic record is set. Feel connected as part of an Award Show or Live News audience. Reality TV. Social Media and all of its pointless self-absorbed jabbering. Video games. Aps. Text messaging. Selfies. Email. Hollywood! Headphones blaring a full audio assault on either side of our poor little brains. “Tweeting” like buffoons.
And it all goes away. The fear. The doubt. The worry. All of the philosophical nonsense. Until the day you look up from your screen ….and scream.
