Counterfeit Confusion
Can we accept real life?
Loneliness has been a struggle lately.
It’s not just a loneliness for community in real life, as much as a longing for a world where genuine interactions are valued. I see that disappearing in favor of a world where online influencers wield power like gurus and shape worldviews of countless beings willing to settle for tribal alliances online to achieve a sense of belonging… a world where texting, tweeting, and sharing memes has redefined connection from that which used to demand presence and verbal communication to simply swapping other people’s material and substituting that for actual dialogue… a world where identity is defined by limiting bogus labels all in an attempt to feel seen and worthy to the hive mind.
I have done it too, so I am not throwing criticism from a lofty place. I just look at it now deeply in a way that is impossible to ignore. Loneliness is a consequence of participating in this modern world and I can’t deny it, nor can I pretend I prefer it anymore to the ways we related before. Aging in a world where click-bait is the supreme dopamine chase has quite literally fatigued me. Useful idiots fishing for fools, when Jesus called us to become ‘fishers of men’ for something so much more meaningful: an opportunity to live in the Kingdom and belong to the family of God.
You see I was born in an analogue age and we are rapidly moving into the digital age (on steroids), contributing unconsciously in the construction of our own sophisticated prison and there is no stopping it. Standing between two worlds, this is the plight of those born before the introduction of cell phones, and the accelerating race for digital domination.
When the novelty of the internet broke out and the beginning of social media, it was a fun, pioneering time. I remember enjoying choosing phrases and pictures I liked to represent me and my interests to others online. It seemed like an opportunity to reinvent yourself, highlight the parts of you that you wanted amplified and hide those you didn’t want recognized, and actually have control over that. Ultimately, I realized that even with all the power to create a representative of yourself online, you can’t control how others perceive it.
AI assists people to “play God,” people who are motivated by the lower instincts of greed, self promotion, desire to be popular, relevant, despite the potential lack of value of their content. I can relate, can’t you? When I was younger I was driven to be somebody important, to have a sphere of influence that gave me the power to shape minds and lead others, even if I didn’t know where I was going precisely. I was attractive and people wanted to listen simply because of my youth and vitality, but that was the bait. Was I unconsciously spiritually “catfishing?” Pretending to be more evolved than I was, because that was the game to hook potential students or clients? If so, I didn’t know it; I was too young and inexperienced in life to sincerely question it and with youthful arrogance, I actually believed I knew far more than others who had come before. It was a world where I was told to make my mark and promote myself in order to achieve confidence and ego validation. The ego is a trickster and wants to be a trendsetter, even if the trend leads to perdition or destruction. It doesn’t matter, if it sells, and success is determined by the amount sold, proving that your wares were more valuable, right?
Wrong.
It was a lie, because the values were already skewed. The culture taught us to market ourselves, our products, our services, and compete. Demonstrate somehow your difference, differentiate why others should trust you more in order to make the sale, even if what you promoted wasn’t legacy producing, or righteous in any deep, meaningful way.
Counterfeit is the word that comes to mind. It’s haunted my thoughts in the last few weeks as I maneuver surfacing memories I have of a time of real experiences given priority compared with the last decade of increased time spent scrolling to understand reality.
Counterfeit is a word that was used commonly in the past in terms of money; counterfeit currency is and was a scam that people used to produce fake dollars initially that fooled people. It has morphed into so much more though, so much more.
I feel like we are ignorantly building the structure for a counterfeit world, when we were given the keys to the Kingdom or paradise. We can’t help it. Most of us interface with technology on a daily basis, and it influences how we prioritize things. Gosh, it’s so amazing really, yet so deceptive and simultaneously soul desensitizing.
That’s the tricky thing about it. While it CAN be used for tremendous good, yes, it has also for example, mass produced and distributed pornography (including of children!), and rewarded self-glamorization, which has hurt many in a way that we can’t fully measure yet. Time will reveal the devastation of what the locusts have devoured, the lost yield of our most valuable crop: time itself and youth years spent in selfie parades promoting and producing narcissism on a mass scale.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
Many of us have sacrificed our precious time allowing our minds to be programmed by algorithms not designed for our best interest, rather cleverly curated merely to CAPTURE our attention. I ask you to consider the word “capture” - whose etymology comes from French and Latin, “captura” which is to seize, grasp or contain. The definition is “to take into one’s possession or control by force; the act of seizing or catching.” You might say, this digital technology has literally stolen our attention, our time, energy and focus that might have been otherwise used to develop real life legacies whose fruits were far more tasty than the bogus strawberries of free titties online or moments of seeming validation as an important voice in the fraudulent world of Facebook.
Please forgive my crass analogies, but I want to depict the picture of what this phony world is strongly, so as not to take it lightly. It isn’t benign, nor is it designed solely to help you by providing information, as it may pretend. Sort of like Adam and Eve, what is gained by eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge? Has your life truly improved since our society went this direction? I am not convinced that mine has. All of the great things that I have encountered in life, came through word of mouth. Most all of the people I have met that have truly become my friends, I met in real life, with the exception of only a few. But I am not someone who was raised online, and made all my friends via video games, which I am not discounting. I have met young people who have incredible friendships with others who shared their love of gaming, so much so that when they turned 18, they moved to live with their friends in different states. I just know what it is like to know myself without an online avatar as a teen and young person, and I was forced to make friends, without being able to potentially hide behind that. Of course we can hide behind other identities in real life too, but it’s not as easy to hide your identity in real life as it is online. In real life, people will see your unflattering angles in poor lighting, smell you and feel your energy. Online, you can hide a lot!
And yes, there are individuals who have successfully monetized their content online and supported families and done wholesome type activities with it, but not as many as there are consumers of it, who have gained nothing but a head full of images of other people’s lives and increased feelings of inadequacy as a result. Not to mention, screen time usually accompanies a sedentary posture, and sitting too much has contributed to many health problems as well.
Peeping Toms used to be shunned or criminalized and now we have culture of mass voyeurism on a scale human history has never seen before. We can look up anything and see it. Think about that, will you, for a moment. Maybe some things we were never meant to see. In the past, writers might tell a story of some atrocity they saw or heard an account of, and we would learn about it through their lens. Now, we can simply search the horror and see a depiction of it without any context or protection from what that might do to our psyche. There were people who travelled to dark worlds and learned of bad things, and came back and reported, but not to celebrate it. It was a warning usually, a rendering of what is possible in the human experience. Now, we can see it without any container, or moral commentary, and possibly even also glorified!
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Mathew 5:29
So, while I write this on a medium that will most likely be viewed on a little screen somewhere in your hand, or on a computer on your lap or desk, I posit these thoughts that could undermine my potential success as a writer online. I can’t help it though, because I feel this so strongly; this modern technology both breaks my heart and seduces me on the daily.
What I want is to share my thoughts and generate conversation. I would prefer it to be in real life, and of course, I do chat about these types of things with anyone who cares to discuss and isn’t too consumed by their devices to stop, observe and talk about the effects of what we are living through.
I write this here, because people rarely read newspapers or magazines anymore. Why waste the valuable resources of paper and ink, when ideas can be shared on our little screens? While I am a part of this online discussion, I am doing my best to be as authentic as I can.
I have nothing to sell you. There is no scheme or program I am pedaling to help you achieve Internet success, gain a following or get enlightened. I am not God, so I don’t believe that getting a huge following is the end all, be all of this, and while it could generate income, it could also be a hindrance in disrobing the forgery of your ‘self.’
In fact, I am turning off my ability to receive paid subscriptions on Substack. I have tried to cancel my paid subscriptions to other writers at times when I was feeling less financially secure, and ran into obstacles on this platform. Essentially, I had to unsubscribe from the writer completely in order to not be a paying subscriber anymore, which was frustrating, and not the message I wanted to send them. I could resubscribe again, but the whole process left a bad taste in my mouth, as I felt slightly strong armed to continue the payment. It’s yet another manipulation programmed into the technology, which doesn’t make it easy, and I don’t wish to inflict that on anyone else who may have wanted to financially support my writing, but then changed their mind due to whatever reason. Unlike the government, I don’t want to take extorted money. To practice faith, I am going to trust that I don’t have to employ any tactics like that to meet my needs in life, and that if my writing is genuinely valuable I will be empowered to do it more and life will reward me with the provisions I need. If I write a book, I will sell it or if you ever want to leave a contribution I will offer one time ways to do that, rather than subscriptions. We have enough ‘subscriptions’ in our lives nowadays, especially with online stuff!!
I guess, it’s that I want to live in integrity, which is hard enough, without adding the opportunities afforded online to do many unintegrious things anonymously or under the moniker of one’s “avatar”- a word chosen by tech folks to represent you online that suggests God-like attributes. The digital age pushes this agenda that you can create your identity as whatever you want, at least in that realm, but real life doesn’t exactly work that way. Of course the online fantasy world is spilling over into our real life worlds, but the truth is found in nature. We can “larp” as whatever we please, but in order to do that, you need other players in the game to pretend your role is legitimate. Hence, the push to move everything online, because it’s so much easier to manipulate people when they have no real idea of who they are and are looking to AI or other’s avatars to validate and confirm them.
Will AI be able to transform nature into its program? Will the nature of humans become so convoluted that future generations fall for transhumanism ideas and merge with machines in ways we can’t yet fully conceive of? Will our generation, those alive now, be the last of the real humans before we are so completely deceived and out of touch with reality, that we become living relics of an antiquated time? A time when humans used to prioritize talking with one another, in real life, and going on adventures directly instead of watching others do it via YouTube or playing video games or simulating any fantasy we can come up with with various AI models?
Will we settle for a counterfeit world because we fall for the delusion that we can control it?
Is life so painful that the hope and attempt in controlling it, is better than the vulnerability it takes to withstand it all?
I leave you with questions, because I don’t have the answers, and I won’t pretend to.
I must comment a moment about the depth of your realness. I met you at LA Fitness yoga and followed you to your own beautiful studio. You, with so much spiritual integrity, led me deep into my own body, fully into my divine spirit. I recall leaving your yoga class, sitting quietly in my car for many minutes. Landing myself back to earth and the- every-day after being transported up and beyond with movement, breath and sound led by you.
You are a gifted healer. Utterly real with heart that invites others to open their hearts to profound connection. I agree with all you said about depleting on-line junk disguised as connection. But you, dear one, are a real-deal seeker and truth teller, and I am grateful for your place, and inspiration, in my life.
I knew the first time I met you that you were blessed with many gifts. I wish I had words to eloquently convey my appreciation to you for those gifts that you’ve shared with me.
I to share your opinion on how the world is changed and how we’ve become more disconnected in our connected world.
Thank you for all you give to so many. I will wait patiently for that book.