My recent trip to Toronto has once again reminded me why dense, wild, anarchic, action-packed, media-saturated metropolitan areas are hardly sanctuaries for the introverted soul. In fact, the word ‘metropolis’ is antithetical to the word ‘sanctuary’ in every possible way. A sanctuary is a place of repose, reprieve, silence, introspection, serenity, tranquility, and relaxation. A metropolis is a place of sensory overload, clamor, cacophony, anxiety, claustrophobia, and speed. Really and truly, there is no situational overlap between the two.
With this being said, I think we collectively pine for the sanctuary—the utopia envisaged by the exponents of scientific progress and religious idealism—but deep down inside we realize we will never reach it by following the schizoid trajectory we are currently strapped to. Deep down inside, we realize we have to decelerate a little here and step back in order to step forward. If we don’t slow down, our technological and societal bullet train may try to go beyond the track that hasn’t been built yet. It may try to jump a chasm we aren’t really prepared to jump.
Aldous Huxley once wrote, “The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving.” This day and age, his incisive comment couldn’t be any more accurate. We crave. We crave new-fangled pharmacological drugs that can allegedly heal us of all of our mortal woes and sicknesses. We crave new media devices that unmistakably distance ourselves from the dull pulse of our biorhythms. We crave immediate satiation, no matter where we are and who we are with. We crave speed in all its various manifestations. We crave power. We crave sex. We crave “the end of death,” the attainment of immortality. All of these things we crave, and all of these things are inextricably linked to the schizoid trajectory that may one day go off the tracks. If we slow down a little bit at least, we may be able to see the chasm before it kills us.
Why are these words from Erik Davis, the shrewd mystico-cultural critic, true?
“A lot of us spend our days like zombies on speed, pounding caffeine, schizo-frantically multitasking, twittering and flickering, and thereby sacrificing what is really a rather brief span on this glorious ball of disquiet to the insatiable demands of work, consumption, self-improvement, and technological mediation.”
Why do we spend our time this way? Why do we assiduously fill our schedules with activities that do nothing but engender distractions? Why do we create maladies for ourselves? Why do we create roof-brain chatter that mingles with the incessant chatter of the over-worked environment?
We need to take a step back here and decelerate. It is the only way to find some kind of sanity and sanctuary in a world filled to the brim with symbols, activities, doers, movers and shakers, and inane laws that do nothing but enslave and exploit. After all, Einstein did say we approach the speed of light when time slows down. So why don’t we just slow down time, that mutable and malleable concept we carry around in our brain pulp, and rest in the world that is always already perfect as is?
Tirade complete. Now it’s time to peel back the red curtain of Sunday. What exists on the black, mysterious stage?
1 comment:
Anytime it looks like the world is rapidly becoming a ball of shit, I stumble upon people like you writing articles like this. Where this world is going, I don't know. We inhabit a system that plays on man's nature to divide us. I can tell that your conversion would garner a hefty sum. Everybody sells out, I guess. Just don't go below your price.
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