It is incredible how modern living can turn us into morons. There are few things in life as brain numbing as watching a man stare blankly and fearfully at a laptop he is trying to make work. Or an i-phone that wont switch on to the correct 'app' (application). Or a man sat at traffic lights when someone has pressed the button to cross the road, and then walked off, meaning the man is sat waiting for absolutely nothing to happen whilst an old granny with her shopping trolly walks past the passenger window atan entirely more productive speed.
The lap top is not doing what he wants it to. He has lost all element of control. The contraction of the head into the neck and the utterance of -'erm'.
Blank looks and glazed eyes. 360 degrees of potential things to looks at, multiplied by every possible angle - verticle, diagonal......but nothing noticed. Just straight ahead. The horrible realisation that this man is functioning on LESS THAN POINT.ONE PERCENT OF HIS BRAIN. That is what years of evolution have brought us to. Red faced, thick necked, and entirely DUMB-FOUNDED.
The modern man and his malfunctioning laptop. DUMBFOUNDED. The modern man and the sound of KT-Tunstal through a phone speaker while sat on hold for half an hour waiting for an insurance quote so that he can drive his car five minutes down the road......[garbled voice and guitar..."like waaaw teer"]. While the laptop botherer, trying to make a power point presentation function to visually explain exactly what he will soon atempt to orally spit out, is uttering his "erm", "why did you do that " "oooow" "doh" "coooome on" (yes, the laptop has developed a personality - and can be spoken to like one speaks to a parrot, dog, traffic light (they understand you see)). "Ahh don't freeze on me"; and he turns to you; "Its frozen, stupid THING".
All active and fully functioning human beings in the room are now also rendered frozen. And, by default - like when someone yawns and everyone in the room will eventually follow suit - likewise become DUMB-FOUNDED.
In that given moment all spark, spontaneity, creativity or beauty of a human being's potential to blossom in each fragment of a mili-second is rendered useless. What is replaced is a feeling of fear; of useless-ness; of uncreativity; of weak, pathetic impotence. I am flacid and grey. I am watered down and un-sexual. No energy is free-flowing. No interconnectedness with any other being is manifesting. My mojo has dissappeared into an LCD screen, and every second lasts ten seconds and the emptiness of my reality is growing larger by the minute and ready to engulf me.
I am held by that reliance on something which really, deep in my soul, I know I don't in fact need. The faceless face of fashion has created a world in which I must function within - and now I cannot be a creative, naturally human human - BEING. I must always be a human -doing (nothing).
All control of my own destiny has been sucked out of me by invisible forces and dissapeared into an invisible ether. I can no longer buy audio tapes of my favourite albums - becuase no body makes tape players any more. What was once in my pocket money saving range has become a collectable and I can no longer afford it. I liked the warm sound of analogue, it some how felt more natural, you know? But my favourite band's new album is available on digital download only; and the recording equipment that could make a simple guitar sound like a simple guitar is in the exclusive realm of e-bay collectable mongers. I like wearing my cap on backwards, and my shorts up to my thighs, but no one else does unless they are actually trying to, so being natural and ordinary I am beggining to feel like a bit of a prick. They are laughing at me behind my back. I have no interest in putting things up my nose. I like playing squash and running around an athletic track, yet somehow I feel dull for just being me. I have to pay for a bottle of water that came out of the ground otherwise I will go thirsty in this conference room where all the heating has been turned up to maximum becuase policy says so. I cannot have a burger and chips without the chips becuase the rules are that the burger comes with the chips. If you don't want the chips then just leave the chips. Its not my choice. The management said. I think they did. Ive never met the management. I can't really remember.
I am DUMB FOUNDED because I have been DUMBED DOWN.
I am rendered a moron by the faceless face of progression. The decision, the creative control, the beauty of my infinite beginingless wisdom potential - is left eating a third helping of the dinner that I am greedily and habitually eating even though my body is full and satisfied with the first. My mind is growing obese from never being alowed to exercise.
I am channel surfing in the cosmic slop. 50 channels a minute - but nothing is going in. I am too afraid to get off the sofa and turn the tv off standby. The short cut is killing me softly. What are we standing by for anyway? Why that little red light; the need to illustrate the safety net of "I am here for you - here at any moment". This emptyness is rendered safe by the knowledge that you don't even need to think - you don't have to move off your ever expanding bottom and dance with a sense of humour.
I am finding safety in a false security that everything is secure and nothing will change. Living within the comfort zone of technology has made me un-edgy; un-sparky; un-sexy; un-happy. I have a fear of my own creativity because to engage in it would be to open myself up to the empty infinite in a dangerous (but entirely exciting) way. Instead I am forced to let the emptiness reach out and engulf me - to suck me into the vortex of pre-tense, past-tense and non-sense; and to passively wait for this moment to end and the next to begin. I sit and wait for the traffic light to change because there is nothing else that I can do. One hundred thousand beings have had an orgasm and one hundred thousand babies have been born and one thousand beings have breathed their last breath and one hundred thousand stars have blown up and one hundred thousand waves have broken on one hundred thousand shores accross the infinite universe and I am bored. Bored. I am dumb-founded. I am lost.
I am a human-doing (nothing) and no longer a human being (everything).
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