(part 295) Would The Real Us Please Stand Up

I find myself longing for something more, something solid, something I can depend on, other than my ability to continue on in the face of ongoing disasters and hardship. It gets dreary knowing I will always have the strength for one more battle. I've had a lifetime of battles. Back in 2007, when I began this blog, I suppose there was something I expected to achieve beyond just writing it for the sake of writing. In the back of my mind, somewhere, there must have been at least a hope that something good would come of all this. But in 2015 all I see are the same old consistent, "Oh shit!" moments I've grown accustomed to. I have watched people come and go for decades, and the only difference between the virtual, and analog versions, is I used to be able to actually see them walk away. Now days all I see is the absence of things with no real explanation as to why. Like a bunch of slots that once contained color they now stand opaque and empty. Some mysterious communication that makes it's point by the absence of communication. It allows one, this brave new virtual world, to say something without having to say anything at all. I can liken it to the past, where someone who consistently showed up at your door suddenly stops, giving you little or no warning, or reason for it. But the world of virtual friends, and lovers, is entirely different from the old school versions of, "see ya later!" In the new version, those who communicate the message of, "see ya later" may have never been present in the first place. So the mind fucking reality, is, that you now feel the loss of something never possessed in the first place. Like a make believe, make believe.

The problem I have, is trying to use the same medium, that didn't work, to fix the problem of it not working. Like trying to put out a fire by using more fire. If it failed, which it did, to adequately make  relationships real, then it is insanity to try and now make the failure into a success by employing the same means. But this is all the virtual can offer, in and of it's self. It is strictly limited to it's own built in limitations. We have suckered ourselves into doing it for convenience. We can travel the world, virtually, from one end to the other, simply by sitting at a keyboard in our underwear, tapping out whatever the hell we want. The more we do it, the more we do it. And the more we do it the less we do of the other, like seeing people in person. We cannot be there so now we don't have to. We have online get-togethers with moving pictures and sound, but we don't have each other. We have more than nothing, but far less than what is actually available. It is a hideous way to communicate, unless it is absolutely better than nothing at all, which surely happens. But my complaint is viewed from the standpoint that virtual communication, in place of real human contact, is a form of mental, physical, and emotional, capitulation, which has, and is, numbing us to the need for real person to person relationships. Why bother? We can just go online and present anything, in any context, at anytime, to almost anyone. We can weave bullshit into whole cloth with our fingertips. We can lie and deceive in secret, because the online "us" is no more than a dancing puppet whose strings are manipulated by the "real-us" in the background.

There are those who will say, as they always do, that the virtual world allows them to make contact with things, and people, that they otherwise could never do, and I understand, and agree, with this sentiment. But again, my position is framed around the doing this instead of doing the other. Instead of going to meet someone in person the, opting out, for the keyboard instead, is a growing and loathsome reality. It appears that too many people stare at screens, of all sizes, in all sorts of different places, rather than into the eyes and hearts of real people. They send type written messages rather than have real conversations. I see people walking across the street looking at their phone, oblivious to where they are, and unaware of what they are doing. I don't do that, but I am complicit in this madness to some degree, and tell myself daily to turn the damn thing off and go do something else. "Hell, walk to the mailbox Bob, you may run into a real person and get to say hello, and who knows, maybe they'll say hello back, and give you a smile...

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