I didn’t start reading books until age 23. Apparently every century there’s a rise in great thinkers who use literature to send future civilizations a warning message.
In the 1900s Ayn Rand taught us self-interest can lead us to virtue and altruism.
In the 1800s, Emerson showed us how all of history takes place in every man.
In the 1600s, Descartes and Spinoza gave us the power of reason and rationalisation to overcome our limited knowledge of ourselves and the world.
Our great great grandparents have been trying to warn us.
The realizations we’re having now reflect revolutionary thinking throughout history: You are the solution to your own life’s problems. Now more than ever, life requires us to retool on an individual level. In response to the dawn of decentralization we must become true sovereign individuals.
God’s “I Told You So”
During the height of the Roman Empire, a young Jewish prophet revolutionized the idea of making God your only boss.
Hundreds of years before that, Aristotle showed us how to perfect our own individual lives regardless of status through cultivation of health, contribution, knowledge, and happiness.
Throughout the ages, scribes of humanity have communicated between cultures and societies, and through time by the magic of literature. Our elders leaned on these books for life and law. Societies and cultures were defined by their champion ideas.
But a new magic has arrived. Like an algae bloom of digital consciousness, the Internet has exponentially expanded into humanity’s hive-mind. Almost every human mind is interconnected via the internet. It connects the least of us to the knowledge of all-time. It dominates use-cases for our every behavior.
Not to be outpaced by advancements in technology, traumas of a rapid adaptation to changing social environments has exacerbated human pathologies and mental health disorders.
We live in a techno-democracy. Everyone has equal volume. For the first time in history, the individual shares an equal playing field with the largest institutions in distribution of messaging.
Each man has access to all-knowledge. In the infinite sea of information, the individual must distill their own salvation.
God’s Chokehold
My mom brought home a computer and my brothers helped her set it up on a little table in the kitchen. This was around ‘96 or ‘97. We popped in a disc containing dial-up Internet service “Mindspring,” and 30 minutes later we “logged in”. I was six when I first entered the Matrix.
I got my first cell phone in middle school. It was 2004. The popular selling point for phones then was a flip-open screen. Internet was browsable by text only. If you happened to have a phone that would load images, it was on a one inch screen. But I still found ways to abuse text-only Internet!
My first video chat was on a website called Stickam! when I was 19. My rock band’s post-practice ritual was to hop on a video room and chat with potential new fans, and it worked – we used Stickam to jump start a legitimate Internet following. People watched us hang out, practice, record, and perform. That’s when I realized the Internet was a dream-maker.
When I was 23 I retired from my hairstyling career and began my life of Internet citizenship as a social media marketing consultant. Like a Stephen King plot, I dropped everything and became a drone for an invisible hive mind, evangelizing door-to-door for brick-and-mortar businesses to sell their goods and services on the Internet.
It’s been seven years since the Internet started paying my bills. Since then, it’s taken over the use-cases of nearly every facet of my life.
My finances are decentralized.
My religion is decentralized.
My friendships are decentralized.
My societies are curated a la carte.
And it’s all controlled from a 4 inch piece of plastic.
I know I’m not the only one. Kids are waking up to this all around the world. Infinite information on an equal playing field is great for society, and dangerous for the individual. Our ancestors warned us of losing ourselves to groupthink of the tribe. We inherited a global tribe the day we signed up for the Internet.
It’s up to us as individuals to use this power to reach into the past and consult a multitude of counselors. To stand on the shoulders of those giants and see further than society – First for ourselves, then for our families, then for our local communities, and ultimately for the greater salvation of man. It begins in the heart and mind of the individual.
We’re surrounded by communication
and it’s burdening our individual consciousness
The Internet is our hive-mind.
That is an unmistakably new facet of human existence. Occult theorists in the 19th century predicted that we would someday develop tools for measuring mental vibrations between humans. Turns out we didn’t need to discover telepathy – We invented it.
It’s important to take control of your own individual outcomes because that’s what this new generation is going to require. The world seems new to us, but it’s a very old world. Our ancestors pointed the way out of collective insanity. Their realizations are no longer reserved for the intellectual.
We have reached a tipping point in collective human evolution. It’s up to us to pick up the principles from ancient heroes and wield them to navigate ourselves out of collective insanity, and then for our brothers and sisters.
Everyone age seven and up holds all-knowledge in the palm of their hand right now. Use it, or be used by it.
Song lyrics:
God’s gotten good at I told you so, I know
(we installed the Internet on our computer just a short time ago, and I haven’t been able to get the kids off it ever since)
God’s gotten me in a chokehold
(This song is dedicated to the day we became robots)
Watch the Matrix I told you
That this place is not what it was
We’re surrounded with communication, It’s burdening us
(I’d rather be on my computer than doing just about anything. So I guess this is the story of how it changed our lives)
God’s gotten good at I told you so, I know
God’s gotten me in a chokehold
Special thanks to Michael Dean, Arthur Plainview, and Chris Wong for your feedback on this essay.
Leave a Reply