Well, the world didn't end. Now what?

Today, I have read.

Read and read and read like I've not read in an age. I don't know why I've read so much, though I suspect it has to do with the isolation of my temporary pastoral setting; house sitting for my mother in my hometown of Werris Creek. I read mostly articles, IM's, Reddit and facebook statuses, although there was a book in there as well (which I am reading as an Adobe PDF).

There's not a lot to do here. Besides taking the dog for a jog and a few chores, all I've done is sit on this laptop reading like a man possessed. Like a vacuum for the words that scroll onto my screen. And there were a lot of words.

It's been a strange day. A day that warrants my first blog post in months, apparently, because my day of reading has also been a day of pondering many things. Having only the dogs for company means I've had a lot of time for analysis and reflection, mostly about myself and the things that I've been reading about. I usually won't shut up when I'm around people, so perhaps this alone time has given my usual verbosity no external outlet. So a blog it is.

The great big pot of philosophy soup has been boiling over in my head, perhaps transferring it to the screen to shout to the world will make it simmer off and make a bit more sense. At least, I hope it will, for my sake and yours.

In case you didn't get that last part, this blog will be much more stream-of-consciousness than most of my writing. If that's not your bag, thanks for reading this far and happy new year!

2013 is here, looks like we're headed to the future after all, and quickly.

I'm continually astounded the fact that I live in an invisible web of interweaving communication, powered by the billions of fast moving fingers on keyboards (or thumbs on smartphones) around the world right now. Tweeting, blogging, buzzing, sharing, engaging. Communication technologies advancing at a ridiculous rate, changing the very culture of all humankind in radical, never before seen ways.

I like to read. I was a bookworm as a kid, and as soon as 10-year-old me found out about the Internet, I was on it. Chatting, reading, making websites. But these days... I wonder what kind of animal I am becoming, and I wonder about my peers too, as we all make our way down this technological rabbit hole that humanity has been presented with.

I have come to accept this is the reality of my life. I'm long past caring whether I may spend more time on the Internet than others. Now, it is simply one stimulus on my brain after another. That Reddit link is blue. Click. Read, synthesise. Determine if I'm interested enough to read more. Determine if it's funny/interesting/poignant enough to share on my Facebook feed (which I'm also religiously alt-tabbing to to appease my short attention span.) The link is purple now. Move on.

By the end of say, a few hours of browsing, there's always too many tabs at the top of my screen to even read the titles. I shift in and out of several engaging articles, not because I am bored of them per se, more that I have to find my fix of internet novelty every few minutes. I'm sure this is some kind of Pavlovian conditioning I have done to myself. I blame my relentless curiosity. It can make writing my blogs quite difficult, as I always keep imagining people having trouble reading them because I forget the words on the page don't get up and dawdle away as often as my mind does.

I have a mind that won't shut up when I'm trying to sleep, yet gives me nothing when I'm seeking that perfect sentence or phrasing to perfectly illustrate my point. I have a mind that verifies my opinion on a wide variety of issues, yet then gives me weird emotions which cloud my logic and distract me whenever I get a chance to fully explore them with others. I have a mind that seeks narcissistic pleasure by exposing those who I intend to belittle as hypocrites. I have a mind that fears the unknown, the unexplained, and seeks to belay those fears through the light of knowledge. I want to love my family and get frustrated when I can't find a partner to give love to. I am a human that fears criticism and being proven wrong. Though these sentences feel weird as they flow from my fingertips, I feel like I am freeing myself in a world full of putrid personal PR campaigns, though it will be to my detriment in the long run playing the greater fool on these topics. What am I saying to my audience here? What am I trying to achieve, with these revelations of my weakness to the world?

I suppose I am a flawed monkey, albeit a super-evolved one. Just like you. And I suppose I was just trying to remind us both of that fact. Make of it what you will.

Time to get smart, human-creatures.

I wonder how long it's going to take before people start getting super-intelligent. Theoretically, it should be soon. I wonder what's holding us back? I am currently experiencing the extreme first world problem of being too inundated with interesting stuff to read on the internet, that I am literally opening too many windows to keep track of and getting lost in a rabbit-warren like sea of information, articles, videos, social media statuses, tweets, IMs and the like. Perhaps that is the problem? Oceans of information, a universe to discover, and one tiny little human brain and 24 hours a day for each of us. (And that's not even counting the times we get distracted.)

Yet even in my reading of all the fascinating and wonderful articles my laptop screen, the Internet, and curiousity have delivered unto me today, I still wonder why I see the troubling behaviour in the people around me, and more importantly, in myself.

Denial. Aggression. Territoriality. Superiority. Fear. I see it in facebook statuses, I hear it in real conversations. Amongst friends and family, too.

I make no mistake of thinking humanity are going to be able to emancipate themselves from their emotions and physiology, but in a world where our technology is outpacing our values, we are simply going to have to. That's what's up. And in this century, I really predict we are going to see a big crunch, especially with the kids in the generation I'm in onward, where all of us are displaced in a world where our old ways of doing shit are just no longer relevant, yet we're expected to carry on as if they are.

And by that time, I really want the super-intelligent people to have at least started to appear. The logical ones. The Vulcans, if you will. Those who can literally see past the putrid ego that has been forced upon the greater majority of us, by both our own emotions and our society with its many corruptions. Our instant self-gratification society, if it continues, will rot at the core without people who can assess problems and detach subjectivity and emotion from them.


I have to sleep now. This blog post could have been much bigger and grander, if I could just slip a little collar around each of the thoughts that were brilliant in my mind, but too elusive to translate to the page during the writing process.

This is a year of personal growth for me. Like every year should be, I suppose. If you've made it this far in the post, thanks. I don't even think my point was made quite as I intended, but perhaps my initial central thesis got lost in the wind as so many thoughts do, in this world of information overload.

I have started a fitness kick recently, and if I get good results and a kickin' new bod I might start writing about that this year. Teach you guys how it worked for me or something. I'm also transferring my life long love of writing from the communications to the education sector (IE I'm studying my Masters to become a teacher this year). My encounters with the students might provide something a little less morose and wishy washy for you all to read as well. Anyway, until next time...


Peace and Love,

Willskis