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Opinions expressed within the content are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of any listed websites, their affiliates, any entity physical or otherwise, anything, anyone or any other form of matter that isn’t completely and uniquely, me.
23 June 2024
What do you see when you imagine yourself on your deathbed?
A sanitary, fluorescent-lit, alcohol-scented hospital room? Your frail, fading body hooked to machines. The incessant chirps, beeps, and buzzes emitting from said apparatus. Cold plastic monitors clipped to your fingers and stuck to your chest. Floor to ceiling windows showcasing a view of yet another menacing, concrete skyscraper. People standing all around you (if you’re lucky), more interested in what is going on in their social-media-world-of-strangers than the fact that you’re breathing in your final breaths.
Well, that’s the goodbye that technology will probably give you.
I’m pretty sure we all want to die surrounded by family and friends, looking out of windows onto yellows, greens, and blues. Or to be laid on the grass, watching the clouds, watching them and our happy thoughts roll by. We all want to die with physical touch, smiles, laughter, and time to share altogether, reminiscing.
Why then, don’t we live the same way?
Instead, we live in a flood of information, instant gratification, a fast past automated blur. Everything should have been done by yesterday. All systems go. You snooze, you lose.
We mock people without technology, calling them simpletons.
But don’t we also say ignorance is bliss, innocence is pure, and blessed are the meek?
We’re a species of contradictions and hypocrisy.
Deep inside all of us there’s a longing for a simpler life. I wish it were that easy. I wish I could be like them. I wish I could just leave my job and go … our animal instincts, calling us back to the wild. To open fields and deep oceans - seeking adventure, romance, and stories. But we seek these not in our daily lives but through social media, movies, and television. More technology - showing us the way life could be – rather than us going out and actually experiencing it for ourselves and making the life that we want our reality to be.
Why don’t we live the way we want to?
We say that we do certain things because it is what the rest of society does. We write 2000 emails a week because everyone else in the office does. We buy expensive things because we want to conform to the fads and trends of the world. We fall for gimmicks and depend on gadgets because we’re judged if we don’t. We measure our success based on the successes of those around us.
But if everyone is secretly longing to get out of the system and off the grid – why don’t we?
We have cultivated building blocks of apathy and ego. Year after year, stacking them higher and higher until creativity, imagination, and dreams are completely trapped behind impregnable walls of delusion affirmations that everything is great out here.
To have or even want less is a silly idea. It’s selling yourself short. It’s being irresponsible. It’s not working hard enough. It’s being lazy. It’s not being proactive. We scorn those who are not actively seeking to be better, to have more, to go faster.
Is that simply because we’re jealous?
We’re an angry people. Everyone is constantly on edge. Ticking time bombs waiting to explode at the slightest aggravation. There is no such thing as patience anymore.
Road rage for example, is a big issue in Singapore. With cars being so expensive, everyone in a race to get somewhere, and stress levels skyrocketing, Singapore’s road rage incidents have increased. We’re putting deadlines and schedules ahead of common decency and public safety. Fuelled by competition and weaponised with fast vehicles this obsession extrapolates.
Wars are fought with buttons and computers. I’m sure you’d think twice if you had to look a man in the eye before killing him. Technology gives us the ability to blow up faceless enemies. Trigger happy sadists in armed warfare, and they’ve got one hand on the detonator and the other is holding a vodka martini.
Technology speeds things up and if we’re already going at a speed that we cannot handle, do we really need more horsepower?
We’re a group of primal animals, already fighting and killing each other, is more artillery really what the world needs?
Are we in so far over our heads, fed with lies and deception that we’re just building and building in order to escape from the guilt to admitting that we messed up and that we’re not happy? Are we privately waiting for the world to implode so that we don’t have to clean up our mess or admit defeat? Are we purposely on a road to destruction to go out in a bang – live fast, die young?
Advancements in technology have robbed us of compassion, empathy, imagination, a sense of wonder, communication skills, the ability to work with our hands – many things that make us human.
So then, is more technology really what we need?