A Line We May Soon Cross

I used to know many things. Now I know only two things. How to use my computer and how to use my phone. My computer loves doing calculus and knows almost everything. My phone can send anyone a note or summon a car. I never have to remember phone numbers or deal with mathematical notation. All I have to do is push buttons.

Online, things are great. Offline, things are fine, but my world is very small. Medically and financially, my life is precarious. Socially, it's felt incomplete since the pandemic began. Sadly, these problems can't be solved by pushing buttons. Nor can they be solved by making art. So I've given up on finding solutions.

Instead of wasting energy on such intractable problems, I just try not to think about them. Sitting here, in quarantine, I think about them anyway. Stuck in my little bedroom, I think about everything.

Philosophically, I'm stoic, living comfortably in a dystopia, watching the world go haywire. Quarantined with zero illness symptoms by a mail-in test, I've been considering the total impact of the pandemic and our response to it. This impact has so far been incomprehensibly disruptive. And there's no end in sight.

Everything has been distorted by the perpetual emergency. Low level civil unrest like the recent massive looting of supply chain trains in Los Angeles has become unsurprising. Here in Minneapolis, the major civil unrest we experienced in the summer of 2020 was followed by a crime wave. About 1% of city residents had their cars stolen in 2020-2021. Here's a map of local carjackings.

There was a moment last year when it seemed things might actually start getting better. Millions of people got vaccinated, believing the lie that mass vaccination would stop the pandemic. This of course followed our folly in believing the lie that lockdowns would stop the pandemic. Now, everybody who is paying attention knows that we were fooled. And many people aren't happy about it.

Efforts by mainstream media to channel societal anger into pointless political rituals appear increasingly weak. More and more people are waking up to the fact that who we vote for is unimportant. Democracy itself seems irrelevant in a failing state where all politicians are owned by the same financial interests. While many still cling to politics, inventing weirder and weirder partisan fights to keep themselves occupied, others haphazardly rebel against the prevailing order by looting trains and stealing cars.

Personally, I'd much rather see a constructive rebellion than the destructive nonsense we've seen so far. And if constructive is too much to ask for, I'd settle for entertainingly odd, like the religious cults in the TV series The Leftovers. Maybe that's where we're headed, though I suspect we're headed somewhere much weirder.

To a point, people are extremely adaptable. Look at all we've adapted to in just the last two years. But everybody has a line beyond which they throw up their hands and declare, "Fuck This." Collectively, I think we're approaching such a line right now. Maybe we'll cross it this spring. Maybe it'll take a little longer. Either way, crossing this line will bring us into completely uncharted territory.

(Feature image from Pixabay.)

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Read my novels:

• The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

Check out the comic I wrote:

• Finney Vol 1 Immutable Journey is available as a free e-comic.

Read my autobiographical monograph:

• Navigating Dystopia can be read for free or purchased as an NFT.