If I Have Written One Thing You Should Read, It Is This

"THIS ISN'T LIFE! This is stuff! And it's become more important to you than living!" 

- Kevin Spacey, American Beauty

For the past couple weeks, my mind has felt like a stagnant pool. My intellect has been as if it was a being in a white room grasping at puffs of smoke that are memories and higher-faculty thoughts. Have you ever felt like that? Like you have lost the ability to function at the level you once did? Like you have to jumpstart your brain because you have run it aground in frivolities?

I was speaking to a friend of mine about this problem. He immediately responded that he thinks that is a growing trend. That the minds of the millennial generation have been trained to be gratified and entertained, not to retain. There is one instrument that has been able to stultify an entire generation. It is in your pocket or purse right now.  

The ability to look up an answer to any question on one's smartphone is the scourge of the modernity. Steeped in information, we feel no need to store knowledge. With our database of knowledge being kept inside Google's search engine, our culture is rife with individuals that lack the wisdom to use knowledge for making right choices. Our culture as a whole, and the majority of us as well, have traded knowledge for cleverness, and it shows.

The quote at the top of this page is amazing. Read it again. When you first read it you might instantly dismiss it. No one thinks of themselves as materialistic because we think that means owning expensive cars, massive houses, or full dinosaur skeletons (Nic Cage). The real essence of materialism isn't what you have; it's how important what you have is to how happy or fulfilled you are.

I'm tired of looking up every answer. I'm tired of knowing the second I've gotten an email or other notification. I'm tired of being "in the know". When it comes down to it, I'm tired of constantly being entertained. That is the precise definition of Netflix: Constant entertainment available to all.  

There's a well-known phrase that goes "There are never enough hours in the day." Personally I sat down and thought about it, and I watched Netflix for about 20 hours last week. I can never get that time back; and I'm finally pissed about it. I'm pissed that I choose to put the higher parts of my brain on long hiatuses in order to "relax". I'm pissed that I feel the need to keep up with a show in order to know what happened last episode. I'm pissed that it took me this long to figure out that I've been confusing "stuff" with "living". 

Some people think that I am very smart. I always tell them I'm not. Not out of some false humility, but because I think I am naturally wired to be a fantastic test-taker, not of above-average intelligence. In addition to that, I read like a madman throughout all of my youth, which allowed me to develop my lexicon and effectively hoodwink everyone with my verbiage. I was able to do that because we had no T.V. in the house, except a small one for watching movies. I haven't thanked my parents enough for that.

I'm going back to the flip phone. Do you remember how awesome those were? You never worried about protecting your phone like it was a liability. You never showed off your phone to your friends like it was some crowning achievement of your life to have it. Hopefully AT&T still carries those (if they do when I go check today I'll give a huge HOLLAAAA). If you read that and think to yourself "how would I survive?!?" think about what it means to survive. 

My point in this post is not to make you go trade your phone in or cancel Netflix (as I'm about to do). My point is that we are rapidly losing everything that distinguishes us from the animals. Our communications have degraded into feelings and sensory stimuli. Our intellects have become errand boys rather than libraries. Next time you go catch up with someone, don't bring your phone. Next time you want to watch T.V., force yourself to read a book. It'll be hard; trust me. Your mind will rebel from the lack of immediate sense stimulation and your brain will ache from reading words not as captions for videos or in pithy articles about nothing at all. All things are hard that are worth doing.

At the end of the movie, Spacey narrates this little soliloquy. For some reason it strikes me as beautiful, but in my inept mental apathy I will leave you to draw your own thoughts regarding it ;)...:

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life..."

~Worley