Reject Modernity

Featured image by Wendelin Jacober. Follow the link for more of this artist’s work.

Why do I wish to be a part of a society that hates so much? I feel like I’m back in school again. I had a dream last night that I was doing a rehearsal for a theater show. High school was the last time I was in a scripted play, so I guess I equate the two. In my dream, I had no knowledge of the lines or the choreography for the dance numbers, and struggled to keep up.

I found my niche in high school: among the nerds and theatre/choir kids. I leveraged my position within those groups to win homecoming prince my junior year. But I was never among the popular kids.

I had always wanted to be popular. But I was typically younger, smarter, and fatter than most of the kids in my grade. I started school early, and I was teased for my weight. I tried running for school council, and didn’t win, because I wasn’t popular. It was very heartbreaking and I dealt with a lot of depression as a child.

It wasn’t until much later that I came to realize that I will never be universally accepted, and that I should value the few connections I do forge, because those people who I have made connections with. The rest, I will learn to live without, and interact with them only insofar as to make my way through life. I don’t need them.

It took me years to finally inculcate myself into the social media world. I have social media, but I now rarely use it, except for the few hobbies that I engage in and the side work that I do. Social media is toxic. It is a place where people can collectively wail and bemoan the behaviors of others, ruthlessly insulting each other under the guise of quasi-anonymity. I think Mike Tyson said it best.

More and more it seems like we are being drawn into a vortex of chaos that erodes our agency and ability to make decisions. I for one spend way too much time in front of a computer screen. Most of my hobbies have gone online, though I still try to find in person things to do. For all of the connection that the internet and technology can bring, there is no replacement for the real thing, technology creates a phantasm of real life, full of bile, venom, and blood.

I don’t read enough, and I’m not talking about the ersatz musings of this celebrity or the fabrications of certain politicians. I mean the classics. Things that would challenge my mind and expand my ability to reason and to think. I haven’t read enough of the dystopian novels like Animal Farm, 1984, Atlas Shrugged, the very novels we see now as roadmaps into this dystopian reality.

I find myself lacking in practical skills, and realize that when society inevitably collapses, that I am woefully unprepared. I find myself as a talker, a thinker, and a writer in a world that if things fall apart will need makers, builders, and doers. I live in the precarious position that my income will be subject to the whims of many others, and that by my previous bad decisions, I will be indentured to them for my labors. I’m trying to fix that now, and am slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but it is still years away.

I find myself asking more and more why I would want to be part of a society that actively trashes something I have no control over (my sex, my skin color, my ethnic background), and further denigrates the things I do choose to do (my religion, my weight, my preferences, my philosophy). I tried as a younger man to live in that world, to be whatever they wanted me to be in order for me to be accepted. But when it came to giving up on my core self, I couldn’t do it, and was summarily rejected. Why would I wish to trade my soul for a place in a society that wishes me to hate myself?

The fact is I don’t. The fact is I won’t. The fact is that I see behind the curtain, and that the virtues of today’s society are the vices of the soul: fault, sin, depravity, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption. (Per Wikipedia). There is no faith in this brave new world, except in the machine. And it is a jealous god, full of fire and brimstone, quick to anger, and willing to smite those it deems as heretics and heathens. Wokeism is the new religion, just at the time when I am finding my faith again.

I’ll trim my connections to this world, leaving what is necessary to function, but no more. I’ll keep you posted on my journey, and continue this blog, because it is part of what gives me purpose. I fully expect at some point that my point of view will become illegal. We’ll cross that bridge when it does. In the meantime, I wish you all the best.