Short Daily Update: The Collective Neurotic Experience No One Meant to Join
Week 5 – Day 31 of using AI to make me stop doomscrolling. Or..
I just realized that in both my last posts, I wrote about feeling ambivalent. The world is unraveling, and I don’t feel I have the knowledge or the words to break down what’s happening, let alone present or find solutions.
So today, I just want to say: I am with you all. In the confusion about what’s going on. In thinking that some parts of it are good, but a lot of it is bad.
Russia and Ukraine. Putin. Zelenski.
Trump and the US. Musk.
Europe. Leadership.
New elections in Germany. AfD.
Personalized Algorithms. Echo Chambers.
The future of work. Remote Work. Return to Office. Quiet quitting. Portfolio Careers.
Post-Pandemic World. Pre-War World.
War. Diplomacy. Real Politics.
The artist’s life is dead. The artist’s life has never been more alive.
Sometimes, I feel immensely hopeful. Sometimes, I think: it’s happening, the world is awakening, and we’ll all live more as a community. The human being is inherently good. I am an optimist, you know? I still am. I still have it in me. I think.
Other times, I think the world is horribly doomed. No action on climate change. Wars escalating. Empathy fading — closing doors, faces, mouths that would have welcome words otherwise.
But I am no expert. I cannot break this down. To explain it to you or even to myself. And maybe that’s why it’s so unsettling. Unnerving. Because my inability to synthesize it all shows that my brain cannot fully process the times we’re living in.
I try to stay grounded:
The kids reading a book at the beach.
The phone call with my father.
Going back to my checkups, confronting my condition.
The pain in my back after a padel match.
A new gray hair.
A message before bed saying, "I love you and miss you."
The flavor of that strawberry.
The smell of leather from my new notebook cover.
But then Instagram reminds me of what I can’t quite compute. My delivery app reminds me of that food with ingredients I can’t name but somehow got me hooked. Spotify plays a song that gets me emotional and makes me want to start a revolution. Amazon reminds me that I really wanted a new wooden cutting board because I’m getting rid of plastic.
And then I get a text from the clinic with my blood test results, and I’m back to reality. And yet, not for a moment did I leave this cozy corner of my couch. But my brain was confused,
preoccupied,
sad,
hooked,
salivating,
emotional,
rallied up,
wishing,
worried,
determined,
accepting.
All through a small screen that fits in my hands.
I cannot fully explain what’s going on. But it’s a lot. And while each of us tries to make sense of our own existence by prioritizing - consciously or not - whatever makes sense to us, some write and others read: 10 things to change your life, 5 recipes for finding purpose, 3 lessons from a solo trip…
But what we all of us are feeling is deeply confused and overwhelmed. Maybe that’s the silver lining: that the current state of the world is a collective neurotic experience.
Tomorrow, we’ll be back to our usual program: pausing the world for a moment.
The solution, since time began, is critical thinking. Not just believing any old Tom, Dick or Harry narrative that comes your way just cos it sounds like what you wanna hear or cos everyone else has fallen for them same crap.
Consensus reality falling apart at the seams like this is unsettling for a lot of people, cognitive dissonance is something we're programmed to avoid. It's stressful, disorienting. My heart goes out, it genuinely does but it's the egg breaking part of the omelette making process.
Unless our warm, comforting but ultimately bullshit narratives are stripped away, this chaotic, snake oil selling, survival of the fittest ideology - cycle is never gonna end.