Terminally Content
The greatest boon of the 21st century is the sheer volume of entertainment with minimal labour. Nigh-infinite is our gift, such as humanity has never held before, a murmuring cloud of epileptic dust—television static liberated from the glass. Accessible from anywhere worth being and inaccessible only to those who cannot find use for it. Their loss. To be disconnected is to be adrift, anachronistic, and above all, alien.
For all of human history, we have had trends—cultural shared interests or signifiers of status—but these ideas have been contained within socio-linguistic borders. The sheer virality of memetic proliferation was never truly apparent until the advent of the internet. Town criers would travel for days just to tell the next-over shithole who had been executed that month, cart full of limbs to nail to the doors of the accused friends and family. This was the webwork of the Middle Ages: dusty pale strings from kingdom to town at a rate of 12 Megabits Per Day. Horse-drawn bandwidth that got only scarcely better with the introduction of schooners, sedans, and supersonic planes. From Titanic to Hindenburg to Concorde—we still had no way of transferring complex information cross-continent but to risk our own flesh in voyaging machines. The sheer man-power inherent in the communication of information—the transference of ideas, of art—was a purely self-destructive endeavour. Imagine if each Tiktok you watched today, each snapchat streak you sent, every vacant opening and closing of an app was an expression of immense labour. Imagine the hordes of lower-class men and women with oil and dirt smeared across their faces trekking to and from the content factory in pathetic misery, supporting your right to just exist.
Perhaps these are much like the severe conditions that brought you your divine instrument, however, once you have the black glass in your hands, the suffering terminates. The global effort to stretch our broadband borders into every region of The Earth is nothing short of a righteous crusade. The sacrifice of a devoted few is, of course, our sacred right. Our holy devotion has been afforded the ultimate recognition from the United Nations: that of a human right. We know that it is human to be connected to the network.
I truly believe that it is inhuman to not be a part of that.
If God manifests in unfathomable and overwhelming feelings of purpose and priority for each human being, your social media detox isn’t going to bring you closer to that. I know how hard it is to look away from the divine light; to ignore the phantom vibrations in your jeans. Tactile hallucinations stem from your new nerve endings in the handheld. I have seen you unlock your phone for no reason in particular and fiddle with the opening and closing of apps the way the devout turn crucifix necklaces between their fingers in times of strife. I have seen you filter your faces with beautification apps to present to the churning eternal like nuns putting on their habits and veils. I have seen you follow your shepherds.
This is all a good thing. These are the growing pains of Cyber Sapiens. Those who will not look back embarrassed by your naivety, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
Opinion Piece by Sage Haba