As a millennial, I find myself caught between a rock and hard place; I have followed the dragon into his den with nothing besides a shillelagh dipped in poison, only to realize the den is also my home, and I have no light.
Out in San Francisco in 2016 at twenty two years old, from the suburbs of Chicago, I am a spectator in a throng of hyperactive wanna-do’s that seem to have achieved one thousand years of success relatively effortlessly. If I were a director of a movie, I would capture this feeling of fast-paceness with the image of a bolder, standing still in a river somewhere in Juneau, splitting the rushing waters that flow hurriedly through it. Things move fast around you but even faster when you actually take a look at what is going on. There is technical, and then there is techy, and techy has a dark side that no one is acknowledging. Reality aversion.
But before I do delve into the potential side effects of living in a city, with more convenience than necessary, I want to make it clear I am not raising my fist high in a high protest and screaming, “down with the technological boom!” I possess no picket signs. I am not dangerously armed or preaching revolt. I like convenience just like you like convenience, just like your dog likes convenience, just like cancer likes a convenient host. I score the dopamine-fueled rush of a Tinder notification just like you do.
But nonetheless, I do refuse to sit here and call it only “good”. There is a side of the tech boom no one is acknowledging that is inherently “bad”. It actually makes sense why no one is acknowledging it, because for the most part, it is part and parcel with our conditioning that is, for the most part, unnoticed. I will actually correct myself even further on that statement- It is designed to go unnoticed. If we look at it like this way, we realize it’s really not our fault we are incompetent at holding intimate, substantive, and real conversation with some other for more than ten minutes before we feel distracted or uneasy. Our egos are nothing more than function. The function that is being activated now when we look up from our convenience is mostly threat and anxiety. This isn’t anything clinical. This is just what it means to be a human being.
Decisions, specifically our reactions, are made and decided upon long before they are brought into conscious awareness where they are then acted out. Without concentrated, equanimous, decision skill, this really applies for everything emotional. Lets look at it like this. A drunk driver is speeding down a rural road at night. As you kiss your partner goodnight after the movies, the headlights roll over an open hill. You think you hear the Some Girls album by The Rolling Stones. Then your partners face is painted in gold from the dome reflective lightning. Before you know it, your legs are mangled, she is without a scratch on her body, and can barely get the words out, “You saved me, you saved me…”
These decisions are programmed into our being, to promote survival, and the continuance of the gene pool. It is in the same programming that we are designed to avoid the bad, and hold onto the good.
What the tech boom has done a great job of doing, is providing us a distraction from life. Which, in itself, is necessary. By no means should we live ascetic, distraction-free lives. The relief of escape—of convenience—feels good. When something feels good, it is nothing more than our brains signaling reward. Orgasms feel good during sex because our programming knows it’s beneficial for continuance. A steak tastes good because its caloric and we need calories to survive and renew deputed energy. Lying feels bad because manipulation screws up social order.
This is all to say that when we seek false refuge in convenience by incessantly checking Instagram or Facebook for a notification we expect to arrive, we’re actually avoiding our experience as a human being. We’re avoiding it for the right reasons too. No doubt. Being a human being is hard. All of us reading this right now were born into a realm of suffering, where pain exists. But what I want to bring to you all today is this idea that as long as we continue to ignore our experience, hold onto the good of life and deny the bad, we as millennials will forever be trapped in a cycle of misery.
Look up. Experience life in gross abundance. Talk to someone.
Be here now.
Because right now, it’s like this.
G.
