The Gospel of Fucked

Everything is as was set into motion.

[fuckedgospel]

Quite possibly more than any other attention focusing (straining) medium, the internet has aided in forming the most aggressive abstractions from reality.

Where it used to be the case that knowledge of the world was codified through long-form trials, experimenting or exploration, the internet has obscured the value or necessity of these traditional modes. The world we live in today is privileged with unprecedented access to information and answers to most, if not all, vital questions (as well as mundane curiosities.)

It has become possible to live of the world, without having to venture into it. From the comfort and warmth of our beds, we can gauge the weather. Appliance by appliance, even our homes are being integrated into the digital age. A few twiddles of our thumbs after checking the weather and the curtains can be automatically drawn at every window, still without slinking out of bed.

So far from our agrarian roots, even food materializes at our doorsteps, stories above the ground and hundreds of miles away from the soil it originated (and hopefully did.)

Yes, we live abstractly because modes of process have been systematically denatured. We fail consistently to acknowledge the consequences of convenience playing to the loss of meaningful process. The abundance created by widespread convenience is for intent and purpose, an inflated abstraction of necessity, resulting in widespread waste and mismanagement of finite resources.

When I think about the modern aggression of abstraction, I see fewer examples more obvious than the food in our diets. May I be spared for my attempts to dazzle and entertain you with this writing, but, if you are what you eat, what are you eating?

Having our basic needs met by industrial strength convenience, most of us in developed nations find ourselves on glorified vision quests, searching for our “identity”—which in itself is an abstraction from living purposefully. From early age, we’re quickly indoctrinated into the cult of aspirationalism, immediately derailing the chances for sensible management of our time. We learn to accept meanings in symbols established outside of our own developed values, and seek self-worth from a drying pool of socially prized occupations. All the while being strung along with tokens like, “follow your bliss…your passion,” dangling like a carrot attached to a gyroscope.

 We have been duped into finding or attempting to define ourselves by limiting or wholly cauterizing our vulnerabilities. The trend itself is not unique to our time, though in continuing to do so, living for abstraction, we reject involvement with tangible realities. Numbing our senses to information or experiences that may indicate discordance with whatever imaginary paths we’ve set ourselves down has gained broad appeal in the digital age.

Stability is craved in a world where change becomes more of a dirty, frightful word in polite conversation. It is this combination of numbing comfort and idealistic aspirationalism that has dug the maze of trenches for the identity warfare and politics we’ve come to find ourselves mired in today.

Now that I’ve bored you with the bones of my broad-statements, let’s bare some meat. Clever because I’m jumping back into food. Yes?

How often do you find yourself in the midst of proud vegetarians? Vegans, or even meat eaters? How often do those terms come up and the ensuing conversation doesn’t immediately spiral into personal jihads and emotional battering? It’s almost impossible to discuss food choices today without puncturing whatever bubble has been blown around an individual’s identity to protect them from any form of criticism or objective lines of questioning. Exceeding the realm of simple personal choice, like styles of dress or musical taste, our diets have also become badges of honor, belonging, or moral superiority, served with decadent dressings.

Our food culture perfectly captures the essence of our immersion into aggressive abstraction. Why do humans eat? Simply and universally, we eat to stay alive. We need food in order to provide our body with the energy necessary to…well, look for more food. We need to eat. Humans are basically zombies with a conscience and the ability to avoid cannibalism. Devoid of our romanticized hopes and dreams of progress, the body still needs fuel. Our earlier ancestors didn’t do much more than look for food and safe places to sleep and fuck. Sounds a lot like what we do today, huh? We aren’t actually much different than our predecessors. Sure we’ve got straighter spines, and our thumbs have never been more entertained, but what else really sets us apart from early human life? Not much. Still gotta eat.

Whenever I talk to someone about food or health, a speech bubble pops up and in it a cartoon image emerges of a person running tirelessly away from a hoard of buffalo (wings) led by the pale specter of death. Running, running, running…towards a cliff. One of the hallmarks of American culture is our inability to confront death in a realistic or open manner. Deemed too morbid or emotionally draining to be discussed outside of digital pittance for the deceased immortalized by the internet, we’ve buried the subject underneath heaps of kale and kettle bells.

It seems as though no matter where you turn these days, something new is giving you cancer. The internet might have you believe that whole grocery stores are actually just fronts for atomic waste storage. Last year it was gluten, now it’s red or processed meats and cheese. Gurus and dieticians alike pedaling all kinds of iodizing solutions and tips to preempt your next trip to market from possibly being you and your family’s last. Suddenly providing yourself with basic nourishment seems like a matter of national security, complete with three-letter-agencies and rebel forces competing for your fragile attention and dollars.

Our separation from anything resembling “nature” is firmly knotted in the decadent hypocrisy of the “natural” food movement of the post-agrarian world. Our fears and insecurities—specifically surrounding death—provide the perfect starting medium for all kinds of industrious growths of enterprise. In the world of abstraction, labels supplement for time spent collecting objective experience or knowledge. In our fear driven world, the forks in the road are conveniently marked by simple-signage. Avoiding the crippling paralysis that might arise in the presence of exaggerated choice, is made easier with the addition of words that pander to our basic fears and desires.

These days, you can slap the word “natural” on just about anything and with that, buyers are entitled to wax on about their “healthy” choices and look down on the conventional plebs poisoning themselves with artificial ingredients. Natural has become synonymous with “good for you;” which is exactly what you want to say to anyone who tells you about their diet. Most popular snack foods today have some “natural” version of their product. Usually made without the enriched flours, corn or dyes ubiquitous among shelved food. Now, rather than caving to the primal draw to the super-naturally red, puffed corn sticks, you have the option of simulating a more refined, healthy choice in the form of muted, earth toned puffed corn sticks. This is abstraction in its purest form. The appearance of interacting with a definite article—health, in this instance—while systematically denaturing our ability to perceive parts from the whole.

While there is no doubt that the foods we consume play a large part in our health, no food is in and of itself healthy or unhealthy. Like everything else in nature, our health is systemic, responsive to countless other factors in our environment, as well as our conditioning to those responses. Eating has become a part of the ritual of death-escapism.

By now, you might be wondering why I’m going on about this. What does this have to do with the Gospel of Fucked? We all know people love to fight over trivial differences, or build themselves up on them, so why care about this pettiness?

Well, this has everything to do with the Gospel of Fucked! Let me tell you.

We aren’t ever fucked by one particular event or happening. In the Gospel of Fucked, we seek to unveil the abstraction that overwhelms the individual senses so we can deconstruct the mechanisms that wind up fucking us.

Attempting to make progress with dualistic thinking is one of the greatest personal errors we can make as individuals. What we see today in the unraveling of the democracy that we’ve taken for granted, and civility as a whole, is popular abstraction and pageantry working to segregate people in an exponentially more ways than the simpler, broad castes: race, sex, religion. We Are Fucked because our democracy, our ability to make collective changes to better the world we share, are being torn apart by terminal polarization fomenting into popular hatred.

I am openly not techno-optimistic. I appreciate the internet for the potential it has in actually being an effective tool in bridging humanity, but I believe that it is just that, potential. While I’m not trying to downplay the obvious benefits and advances to humanity the internet has enabled. Connecting with loved ones has never been easier. Meeting new people isn’t limited by physical proximities. Education has never been more accessible. These are all wonderful things, that are definitely a credit to the internet, but I’m not naive enough to think that they are the greatest happenings brought on by it. There is a very unfortunate and lazy belief that technological progress will bring unlimited prosperity to humanity. What this line of thinking conveniently ignores is the human element.

 “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

                               --E. O. Wilson

[fuckedgospel]

Welcome to The Gospel Of Fucked!

If you’re reading this, it’s likely because you’re one of the many Fucked. We’re all fucked. On a daily basis. And so as we are fucked, we fuck. The Gospel of Fucked seeks to defuse the tension and terror that comes from the often sudden and dry realization that we’ve been fucked. A great deal of fucking comes unwanted. Of course, there is fucking that we invite and enjoy, however, this kind of fucking occupies less than 1% of the fucking that we experience throughout our lives. Consensual fucking can be a beautiful, creative experience driven by the sensual divinity and agency we learn to harness through our unique life journeys. An experience that can be shared between two or twenty(+)  individuals, culminating desire in a corporal knitting of warmth and togetherness.

Unlike consensual fucking, the other 99% of fucking comes at the expense of everything we may hold dear in life. Most of the fucking that occurs in our lives works towards destroying and defiling of not only our bodies, but also our minds and the foundations granting our existence. Our lives as humans, a species amongst many other life forms, are governed by a very simple law, which is the foundation of the Gospel of Fucked: everything is as was set into motion.  

All life began with motion. Whether you subscribe to the big bang theory or some new quantum theory, the forces that keep us alive are constantly in motion. Without the energy created by the whizzing and whirling of matter infinitely smaller than the dust collected by our still possessions, life as we know it would not be. The walls that shield us from elemental death and erosion in time would not exist if not for the motion of protons, electrons and lesser known fundamentals of matter. The speed at which these particles move ultimately defines all matters’ presence and our perception of the universe. Everything is as was set into motion. From micro to macro, our universe is held together by this principle. An apple left to sit at the roots of the tree will eventually return to the soil as the basic elements that were motioned to form the whole.

On Earth, we live in a particular system. We call it nature. Everything in nature works with everything else in nature to produce and sustain life. However, Earth’s nature is enabled by a universal system. Our life sustaining system depends on cosmic radiation from the sun in order to set particular elements of matter into motion. Without the constant explosion of gases caused by reactions of motion within and on the surface of the sun, life on earth—as we know it—would cease to exist. Everything is as was set into motion.

Wow, I could sit here and just talk about space and sub-atomic particles forev—like another paragraph or so, but I should probably just get on with it.

The overall takeaway here is that life is a system. Everything in life works with everything else in life to do one of two things: compound or disintegrate. Whenever I hear the phrase “everything happens for a reason,” I want to explode. The problem with people is that it’s very hard for us to see or find reason unless it conforms to whatever categorical, subjective personal beliefs we’ve already conspired to believe. We are emotional creatures that more often than not experience the world as happening to us, rather than experiencing events from systemic objectivity. Everything does happen for a reason, however, our proclivity to imagine or make up those reasons often distorts the nature of reality and our abilities to actually become agents of our own authority, or will. Though our emotions enable us to experience the beauties of life—or perceive beauty at all—they can also overwhelm our other senses, forcing us further into our imagination and away from deeper connections with the surrounding world. Everything happens for a reason, but it’s not always the sappy, tragic-romance narrative we’ve weaved through our feelings. The Gospel of Fucked refutes the idea that emotion and feelings reign supreme in the happenings of the world. The Gospel of Fucked is a systemic doctrine that incorporates the human experience into the universal experience. The Gospel of Fucked is based on the principle that everything happens for a reason because everything is as was set into motion.

 Who, What?!

The world we live in, when we imagine and empathize with all life within the systems of nature, is fucked. Let me rephrase that. We are fucking the world. When I say we, I means humans. That’s not a misanthropic statement, it’s an objective fact. Let’s talk.

Prehistoric human survival was dependent on finding harmony with the cycles of nature. Early life was a constant struggle to satisfy the basic requirements to live; food, water and shelter. Without the modern conveniences we thrive on today, early peoples had to work together in order to survive the harshness of weather and famine. When these needs were met and techniques developed to enable surplus and stability, more complex civilizations were allowed to develop. By learning from other animals within the natural world, and countless trials and error, humans were able to reach an understanding of nature and its cycles that allowed them to continue thriving and evolving.

Early life, likely before complex language, was simple: survive. There was a very direct and meaningful relationship with the external world. Harmonizing with the cycle of the seasons and availability of food meant that early people had to be nomadic. Hunting and gathering was the norm before the development of the agricultural techniques that enabled settlement. Hunting and gathering happened for a reason. There was yet no other way.

Forward to the development of agriculture and the emergence of settlements. First villages, then cities, then states. Once we learned to harness our knowledge of the cycles of nature, life grew more stable. Surpluses of food and sources of potable water allowed for more existential developments. Instead of worrying where the next meal might come from, or if this winter might be their last, people were able to explore wonder instead of necessity. People were able to gather and collectively wonder, “why?” Why was the world? Why were they? Still proceeding the developments of the modern scientific method, most of the answers to “why” came from surface observations, combined with the nature of humans to imagine and oversimplify. Here spawns lore, gods and myths. The same lore, gods and myths that are now fucking us all.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility,” in reference to the development of the internet. The connection we have today, to the knowledge gathered over human history, as well as each other, has created an unprecedented New World Order. One in which all life can be connected and related to every life-sustaining system within nature. We can conceptualize and experience humanity in a way that is wholly unprecedented. Within an instant, we can open portals to lands and people previously unimaginable, unreachable without lengthy and costly travel. With the information available to us today, we have unprecedented access and connection to all that life has to offer, and for that reason, we are fucked.

Why are we fucked? Well, simply, because we are selfish, emotional, and as a result, easily mislead. The systems that we have created, bought into and imposed on those proceeding in nature for the last century have catered to satisfying and placating individuals, dissolving connection with the systems that actually sustain the whole. Rampant materialism combined with weakening family or tribal bonds once held in place by necessity, or religious/spiritual orders, has shaped a wedge furthering the separation of humans and our ability to make necessary connections to the world outside of ourselves. This manifests itself in a number of ways: crippling social isolation, environmental destruction, sociopathic individualism and mentally retarding abstraction.

We are all connected to this world of ideas and abstractions called the internet. Viewed objectively, the internet is nothing more than a bundle of fiber optic cables, stretched across sea floors or lingering in the air around us as WIFI, relaying queries and connections. The internet is merely a tool, but like any tool, depending on the wielder, it can be used to create or dismantle. The internet can be used to bridge or deepen connection to the world around us, the physical realities that unite us, or it can be used to slowly unravel and isolate individuals from anything resembling common ground. Unfortunately, the latter operation has been the working of the internet over the last decade or so, quickening with its simultaneous saturation in “social media.”

If the human story through time were one continuous record stream, our evolution as a species from the plains of Africa and subsequent settlings across the globe, driven by shared primal instincts and necessity, would  paint a cohesive anthropological narrative. As time progressed and civilizations advanced, the technologies crucial to those advances were all based on manipulating the natural world to circumvent the systems of nature and provide the basic necessities for life: food-stocks, water, and shelter from the elements. Necessity drove the nomads to follow the migration of game and away from the deaths of winter. Hunters and gatherers settled briefly near sources of water. Then, about 10,000 years ago, agriculture emerged, forever altering man’s relationship with nature. Larger crops meant more food, more stability, less travel and larger settlements. Agriculture forever changed man’s relationship with the natural world. No longer were we subjects to the moods and cycles of the seasons—for the most part, notwithstanding failed crops, disease, and other important variables, but for the profundity of that statement, ignore those things for now, thx, k, bye. Agriculture allowed man to finally become agents of nature, taking the reins of their bellies’ destiny like some kind of hog riding a cosmic chariot.  This development changed the course of our collective evolution, opening a new chapter and setting us up for the world we live in today. A world of unbridled convenience and maddening existentialism.  

Fast-forwarding through the minutia of agriculture changing us from chasers to cultivators—there’s tons of books and information that I don’t need to bastardize,  that you may read on your own—we’ve arrived in a new paradigm of human life. Enabled by incredible technology and the concerted efforts of forces in our past, we live in an era of unprecedented, unnatural abundance.

 Enter: The Internet.

 What has the internet done? It’s a question I find myself asking with increasing frequency as time goes on. When I say “as time goes on” I don’t mean to imply that I’ve even had a moment of pause or distance from that questions’ bearing in my day-to-day. Truth is, I’m with the internet right now. Even within the silence of my room and the stillness granted by the bulk of my electronics powered off and away from me, save for this laptop [with browsers closed], I am still online. My present runs in tandem with the happenings and wonder of what’s happening on with the internet. I can feel it around me, as though WIFI signals bear some detectable mass on my senses. Wavelengths dancing around the prism of my mind, affecting my focus on the immediate, my environment, as might a change in temperature.

               Specifically, what has the internet done to us? Like all tools or worthy inventions, the internet has no doubt impacted our development, as individuals as well as societally. But, how? What has the internet done to us?

               I’m not always sure I know what the internet is, actually. At times, it represents a nebulous cloud, comprising a digital sum of all knowledge; a near perfect and accessible mirror of the material world. Other times, I see it as a representation of the disconnection or widening separation between our unified reality and an emergence of an entirely different universe unto itself.  And then there are the moments I believe the internet is us. All of us. A collective intelligence (consciousness, even) that connects humanity as an actual appendage of evolution. Whatever it is, or whatever I might be feeling it is, I’m always wondering, “what has the internet done to us?”

               My question is a bit broad. When I say us, I mean all of human-kind with or without access to it. Regardless of access, the internet has undoubtedly changed the course of all life on the planet. The ability to instantly access all that is known presently of our world, and those beyond our atmosphere, connects us to a life-force comparable to our dependence on clean water. Our dreams and aspirations hinge largely on this new connection to the wealth of this planet, but I’m not always sure what the internet has done to us. With a question so broad, it’s more than easy to slip into the crevices of cynicism. Believing the internet to be as powerful a force as our most sacred natural resources draws up a kind of deifying reverence that can easily disparage perceptions of the present world, as seeing the waste or misuse of natural resources might, but the broadness of my question grants me nuance. The broad access to the internet enables hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people, the ability to communicate, share and explore the world and their experiences as individuals, which makes the internet more of a conceptual gestalt than a rigidly defined object. In other words, the internet is more a collage than a painting, which makes answering the question of what the internet has done to us an exercise in attention to the details that may not be in be obvious focus.

               The answer to what the internet has done to us actually doesn’t exist in a response as general as the question. Well, it might, but that answer would only serve to parse further questions. Broadly speaking, the internet has connected us. All of us. But what are we connecting to, and why? Why do we use the internet the way we do, or at all?

               I see no point in boring you with more vague curiosities. I think I’ve outlined my mode of questioning enough to move onto something more substantive, with respect for your time.

What has the internet done to me?

               Finally caving to the numerous suggestions made by guests on the podcasts I regularly listen to, I started and finished the Netflix series “Narcos.” The show retells the story of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug-lord, through a romantic display of art, entertainment, and humanity. The pilot episode begins with an aerial view of night-lit Bogota, Columbia in 1989. The muted-baritone voice of the shows narrator and secondary lead character, DEA agent Steve Murphy, bleeds into the scene of parting clouds and emerging cityscape:

“Now’adays the US Government can listen to anything you say. They know where you are. They know who you’re talking to. And trust me, they know who you fuckin’. You turn on a cellphone or computer and you’re doomed. But in Columbia 1989, it wasn’t that easy.  First off there was no internet, no cells. The best they had were satellite phones…”

                 Although the opening monologue focused on specifically surveillance, spying technology, something inside my brain clicked. The shows brief hold on me was suddenly interrupted and my attention had already shifted. As my eyes continued their mind-absent focus on the screen in front of me, I couldn’t hear anything but my own buzzing thoughts. The camera pans across Bogota, descending from the clouds, closing in on the city of what would have then been around four-million people. I’d just shared a joint—indica heavy—but my body abruptly stopped vibrating. The warm and fuzzy sweater tickling my insides vanished with the last traces of smoke stubbed from the crutch sitting in the ashtray. I felt alone and spiritually tiny. Like the trope of ringing ears and garbled sound after a proximate explosion, the sounds in my head were muffled, disjointed from the visuals and continued narration. My ears were ringing with my own voice, which had suddenly been amplified in the vacuum of withdrawn attention from anything happening around me. “Wow. All those people. The whole world…,” I thought to myself in a fragmented cohesion to prompt. “All those people. Unconnected…the whole world,” I continued, staring emptily at the screen. When I had finally come to make sense to myself, I realized that I had abruptly become aware that the internet hadn’t always existed. I laughed (silently, with a smile) because I’m not usually one to take for granted, but I had somehow let this fact pass due diligence.

               Resting with this past-due realization, I was shifted into a parallel universe. I was suddenly in a world that mirrored this one in mass and population, but without broadband-connection. I was sitting in the living room, the screen in front of me carrying on out of focus. Feeling had returned to my body, but the buzz remained absent. While not quite numb, I felt very little from my familiar senses. I was aware of myself, sitting in the living room in front of the screen, alone except for my partner who was tending to her painting at the time. Still feeling isolated and small, a shift in my perception of the world around me began. My immediate surroundings, the walls, the books, the otherwise background and scattered trinkets and decorations felt curiously more intimate The placement of these objects that normally escape meaningful awareness felt hauntingly present, tangible, and “real.”

               This new sensation was an experience of exactly the same world I live presently, but absent was the familiar, electric buzz of WIFI and data particles that I’ve grown used to being necessarily bathed in. The binary sweater of electric comfort that clothes and defines the body of the digital age was no longer insulating me and the numbing comfort of for granted connection disappeared, leaving me vulnerable. Human, even.

               What has the internet done?