The Beast in the Lair

 The Beast in the lair of my memory needs to expose its scales and fangs…

 

The technological force that metes out our daily rewards and retributions on the basis of opinion creates a cemetery filled with thoughts and ideas. There are many tombs in this cemetery: some small and incipient and some large and life changing, all imprinted upon a canvas, where a potential beautiful painting might have been, but remains bare. The general morosity that creeps in its steady pace, continues to cut and shred the past into colorful confetti, to be hauled away to the closest recycling plant somewhere far away. The present is all and All must follow the rules set forth. Over time the excess in life pits us into a delectable pantry of sweets that force us into a slumber of peaceful acquiescence and blind obedience. 

 

In a zero-sum game, as one power grows, the other must diminish. And so, it is with the law of diminishing returns as you have more, so you have less. All the collections, possessions and consumptions remit a steady tick of an emptiness within. While, hubris springs eternal, the tall reach of that mind yearns for more and in so doing empties itself into the drivel of conformity that runs like overflowing muddy rivers from a past storm. Does incivility rise with wealth? I believe it does. For if it didn’t why would so many wealthy behave with such disdain and aloofness against those with little? Yet in this big and giant cauldron where the rhapsody of the bohemians swirls and chugs, coughing from the strain of the daily toil, why are so many busy articulating the virtuous words as the expensive wine swirls in their fine crystal glasses while their deeds are rancid with exploitation?

 

But then, there is the second law of thermodynamics, which suggests that there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state. When we confine thoughts and ideas into a forced system of compliance and conformity without discourse or objectivity, the powerful become more powerful and the weaker lose their foothold in their daily lives. But as all things in life, such isolated systems decay and entropy always seeks its rewards. As Shakespeare eloquently put it, “if it be not now, yet it will come.”

 

Our todays are drowned in words. And actions are a one-way street. We live in a sea of how many likes we get, nowadays. The larger the dimension of these unwitting “thumbs up” emoji, the better our sense of selves feel for the moment. And yet there is a sinister crawl of this insidious flatter. A flattery that corrals and cajoles and lulls one to the delicious inebriated sleep. And one day, the “likes” falter and diminish, anger visits and snitchers snitch and your currents run awry, restricted to an observer and no longer able to say what you think. You wonder. Then a trail of words emerge and advise you for you consent to limit your words because they are deemed as “misinformation.” Misinformation? You think. What in heavens is that. All you wanted was to share a story that you deemed as being righteous and true, but others found it not to their liking. The hammer comes down and you are lost in the lurch of truth and denial. No debate. And, you begin to question motives.

 

I remember a one-time fellow acquaintance, I met on a flight to phoenix once who claimed that the earth was flat. Even though from the 37,000 feet vantage from his window-seat, one could see the slight curvature of the earth. Yet he maintained that truly that was a visual aberration. I argued with him over the next four hours and by the end of the flight he was quite shaken in his belief. Arguments are a mechanism for arriving at the truth. All of science is doubt. If there is none, there is no science. Nothing is settled in science as Newton-lovers found out that even the electron that buzzes around in a cloud-like manner follows the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. That matter and velocity create energy and vice versa. From nothing, something and vice versa.

 

Yet today as the sun rises and will set, words implying thoughts and intent contrary to the ideology of a few are considered “misinformation.” Why is that? Why not argue and debate? Why not hash it out in the public square, rather than preemptively censor and restrict? Why? Perhaps this is the inverse of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” It should read, “Whereof one be forced into silence, thereof one must speak.”

 

Does … malice often lend a certain cunning to stupidity when bureaucracy is at the helm? A question that pervades the mind only to come up short. Because that question cannot be answered, since conformity is the honored sequence in the linearity of today’s time pieces. What flows from here must reach there without a pebble in its path. For such a question might, just might lead to another censorship without an answer?

 

I await the mail…