That clichéd saying that hits so hard now that I am older: parents would always say, “It’s that damn phone,” and now, honestly, they were right. I am a true performer; I performed most of my life to get what I want out of people. The younger i was, the easier it was, and as you get older, that performance does start to feel hollow and overly reactive when it stops working, everything starts to feel like a threat against your existence. Performing for validation, attention, one day you wot be a kid anymore, it wont be as easy, to get what you want out of people by just performing, you start to feel disconnected from yourself and others because in that performance you never go to truly make any connections besides invoking a reaction, you watch the world go on and live as if everything is some holographic cinemiatic scene that isn’t real. I think this was brought on by my upbringing, but I think social media has played a big role in that as well. I think it affects a lot of people in my generation. Thanks to some great thought curators, the world panopticon has come into my life, and I am obsessed with how it relates to power, performance, and control. The clubs aren’t fun anymore, everybody is antisocial and has anxiety, and I think this is caused by our phones. It’s crazy how having a camera on you makes you ultimately alter your behavior, and how people are very scapegoat-like, we will punish others for their humanity, and secretly have internal battles of our own to fight. In this setting, the panopticon is not just the phones; it’s our upbringing, cultures, and beliefs. I think now that I am getting older, people are running to what’s comfortable and known, conservatism. Sometimes I think people naturally yearn for hierarchies, and in some extreme cases, fascism. I feel so sad saying that, but in a world built on individualism, there arent too much expression of such, and it seems that they are trying to kill that. When I say they, I mean us, the human race as one consciousness, is probably like a body trying to perform homeostasis, leaning back into the old, washing and repeating cycles, death, hate, war, all acts of love to feel that dysfunctional regulation again. We must let our minds and bodies evolve to develop a new place of comfort. Comfort in adventure, existence, patience, and love. We judge ourselves constantly by the measurement of some old white man’s power plays that were set out in the year 1200. Today, I challenge myself to destroy that. I am not under constant surveillance, I am not a product, I am free as much as I tell myself to be.. So I ask myself every day, Who am i? What do I want? What’s my role and place outside of the Western world and patriarchal conditioning? That’s the journey I am on. Self-Liberation.
I think I might be the biggest victim of paralysis by analysis, perpetually critically thinking about human behavior (my own mostly), there are so many things that I don’t know, and my intuition brings me to a zealous and persumptuous thoughts that there lies some knowledge that one might seek about the essence and the dynamic of human nature and behavior to gain then the insight or clairvoyance of manipulating this life into everything that i want it to be. Through this journey, I noticed that I am also a part of that world, people get to see the whole 360 dimensions of my physical self that I can’t see. This phenomenon that I was building didn’t take into consideration my humanity, the relationships I have with others, and the truth in the fact that I am indeed not bigger than the program. I can optimize my life, go after accolades, receive praise, and win. Hell, I can even dominate the entire human race because I am just that awesome, but that wouldn’t change the fact that those successes wouldn’t mean anything without the relativity of other people. Something I am lacking is a true connection to others, and a lot of that is my fault. I am not worried about connecting with other people; I want to have a clearer vision in the context of the world I am living in. Now I think that i don’t know if I am saying this right, but im on a tight rope, in the clouds, and below me are two ways to live, the right side shows success through grit, toughness, logic, proving a point, survival and necissity based, the other is more perceptual, big picture, purpose based, less ego. It feels like in this world you can’t have both, you can’t be a winner and also an empath or a philanthropist, you can’t be altruistic and a cunning business person. Do I have to give up one for the other? Everything can seem so black and white sometimes, but I am truthfully hoping that with my faith, when I do choose a side to jump off that tight rope, the traits will be in one atmosphere for me to flourish in? Maybe my cup with overflow with the abundance of not having to choose…here’s to hoping.
