By Dmitri Lipson
One day I was taking the bus there was nothing special in that, nothing unique at least; it was just a 15 ton metal box. No one even cared nor thought about what had come before to make it possible, everyone took it for granted. Why care for some heap of metal anyways? Regardless of the inventions of great men, scientists who toiled day after day, year after year, with painstaking calculation and rigorous testing. Discoveries from bronze to steel, from horse to airplane; years and years of constant effort and wills and now where are we? Oh great humanity on the verge of destroying itself with the constant press of the button that gives instant gratification.
You would be hard pressed to find anyone who wasn’t consumed by the constant need to do something: we need to see the movie tonight, we need to go to church, we need to save the poor, we need to bomb the poor. Always something to do something to love, something to hate, it’s no wonder that everyone was on their phones, everyone: overweight, morbidly obese, skinny blondes a whole sea of faces glued onto the glowing glass. There’s no talking, no jolly conversation, only quick presses and electric ones and zeros.
After I got off the bus, I walked the lonely street that led back to my house. It was pumped with endless rows of various vacant cars. Don’t get me wrong, there were drivers in them but they felt so distant; like ghosts floating by. You can’t shout to them, they just keep driving. They have places to be, people to please, They’re too busy, overworked and underpaid. Some can’t wait to get home, some are stoned out of their mind, that’s just how it is.
It can’t have always been this way. There is a reason people say the good old days, it’s not just some mindless nostalgia fueled dream, there’s something more tangible. Things just seem to be getting faker and faker, more lies more disappointments, you get older, you see things for what they are rather than what they should be.
Over the weekend, I sat in my room watching an old twenty’s movie while my sister was wearing a headset and playing the same game over and over again. She screamed and laughed with other faceless beings who she’ll never speak to again. When she was done she went to her phone to tell to her followers, her cult of mouthless text and pixels, of her wins and losses, mere numbers and statistics decided whether she was happy or screamed in frustration.
It’s not her fault, our very human constant need for love and to stave off the dreaded boredom drags us down. Whether its drugs, parties, art. Why is it that some can spend all day playing with nothing but a leaf but then others claim boredom while having thousands of opportunities and years of humanities collected knowledge at their fingertips? Why do people spend their time quarreling in petty dramas and follow trends? Maybe just to fit in, maybe just to be “edgy” or cool. Perhaps it distracts them from having to actually think about their lives, or how their being screwed over by politicians and companies. I can’t say I rightfully know the answer to these questions, But the problem is that no one is asking them.
I had a rough time in elementary school, but one of the greatest lessons I had to learn myself is that people love to divide themselves, whether its about gender, race, or musical preference. No matter how arbitrary, people love to get into groups and hate each other, it’s a primal instinct. People team up and strike down dissent, it makes you wonder sometimes, whether you should speak up at all. Do you have the wrong opinion? You might as well shut it.
People isolate themselves, as Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” states: we all just keep putting another brick on the wall, isolating ourselves and hiding from the truth, from the real horrors of society. We shudder and cry from change we bury ourselves in screens and then give ourselves to fantasy to escape from our problems and hide from each other so we can’t face rejection. We don’t call fat people fat, we pretend we are the good guys we project ourselves onto heroes instead of being them.
