1. Lately I've been wondering: if our society is sick -- and for the sake of argument, let's say it is -- what if the internet is the cause? I'm not convinced we can blame the internet for everything -- history was pretty rotten before the internet -- but I still think there's a case to be made that, but for the internet, we wouldn't be ruled by politicians who are actively dismantling the government (as a social contract as opposed to a tool of enrichment) at an unprecedented rate (and, so far, getting away with it). And even if we agree that the internet is the -- or at least a -- cause, then what are we supposed to do about it? We're so far in. It's not like we can quit, the way you might do with cigarettes or a bad but critically acclaimed television show like Westworld. How do you #resist the internet?
2. I have no answers except that -- now that I'm a senior citizen -- I never get tired of looking at the ivy.
3. Or the birch tree.
4. Or the ferns and hellibores and everything else that leads an internet-free existence.
5. Once my jealousy of these non-sentient beings gives way, however, I'm left feeling (relatively) calm and (somewhat) determined. It's not a desire to #resist, per se, but an awareness that, whatever else is happening, my heart is beating and that's enough. (Because I'm not sure my heart ever beats on the internet.) And with this awareness comes a conviction that everyone needs and deserves something beautiful -- and tangible -- to believe in, which (notwithstanding history) seems attainable until I remember that the internet, which, when it's in the wrong hands -- as it so often is -- robs us of this opportunity. It's a means of mass incarceration -- in both a literal sense and to the extent we are all prisoners of approximately five corporations --- and mass thought control.
6. I'm convinced that the internet is increasingly being used as a weapon to destroy this belief and the hope it implies. And the fact that it seems to be working is a big, existential threat. Maybe the biggest?
7. I have no answers except one: when you're caught in a riptide, the best strategy -- if you don't want to drown -- is not to fight, but to let the current carry you until it's lost in the sea, at which point you can swim to a new part of the shore, where everything will look perfect through your watery, resurrected eyes.
