Ever more and more, America is a land of the overfed yet undernourished. And as the aphorism goes, how you do one thing is how you do everything, and that is the underlying culture of mainstream America, an ever-consuming land, based on the sad underlying belief that somehow, if you simply have more and more (of anything), eventually you’ll be “happy.” As this is drilled into us from youth onward, it’s very easy to buy into, but depressing that so many never seem to see past it.

It’s been nearly two decades since I graduated from college, and living in that bubble for four years convinced me that everyone truly cared about something deeper than surfaces. Yes, we had our dumb, drunken parties and all that, like any college kids, but then we studied, thought, discussed, convinced ourselves, like so many generations before, that we were going to change the world for the better. And then I left college and took a “regular” job instead of trying to build a career, because what I wanted to do more than anything was write fiction, and settling into a grueling full-time job would have destroyed that ability. While I shouldn’t have been, I was fully shocked to hear how little all of these adults thought about anything of substance. Endless discussions of the latest TV shows and movies, new clothes and cars, a vacation once a year, and ever amassing more and more things, but almost never any discussions beyond that.

Here we are in 2024 and instead of things getting better, they’ve gotten worse. Although everyone still does not have easy access to the Internet, the majority of Americans do, allowing them near instant access to the wealth of essentially all human knowledge, but what do most of us do with it? Nonsense, distraction, endless consumption of meaningless things. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me my cat videos and the like, but those are the exception, while for many such things have become the rule.

Does this sound horribly elitist? Maybe, but I don’t seek in any way to tell people how to live, I only wish that they would think more about how they do live, because so many of them seem so sad and overwhelmed, and there are better ways out there, and I want them to be happy. For example, I currently work a retail job. Most people can’t last an hour, let alone an entire shift, without pulling out their personal phone to do God knows what. Occasionally, of course, you’re waiting for an important message, but most of the time what I see is people stuck in an endless scroll, or playing video games, but they never seem to be actually enjoying any of it. I played a ton of video games both in arcades and on early video game systems when I was growing up, because it was FUN. I watch these people every single day playing games on their phones, but never once has anyone seemed to actually been enjoying doing so. I hear them playing while on the toilet, for gods sake. Like real life, it simply seems to be about getting more and more things, no matter how unsubstantial those things are.

What’s the point of this? For a number of years now I’ve fallen in a hole, empty, desperate for something that feels safe and comfortable again after losing so many people that were important to me, endlessly consuming the equivalent of cotton candy in a sad hope to feel “okay,” but none of it ever made me feel better. The modern world is endlessly distracting and overwhelming, noisy and bright, and it’s breaking our nervous systems – sending me to the ER numerous times with numerous unexplainable physical events, which can only be tied to the trauma that is so pervasive in our culture, which we have resoundingly exported around the world in order to further line our pockets. I want to think again, question, consume what is truly nourishing in the hopes of digesting it all in order to create again, if only for myself. This is a volley into the ether, to try to get my thoughts straight, to try to activate the parts of my brain that have laid dormant, to make myself feel whole again, to approach the world from a place of enoughness, rather than scarcity.

How you do one thing is how you do all things – I seek to do things with my whole being, eating that marrow of life, absorbing it in order to be stronger in mind and body, and hopefully to find others who are at least attempting to do the same. Even if you disagree with everything I’ve said, if you have sound, reasoned, thought out arguments about why I am wholly wrong and you are right, then I’m happy, because in a world that has become dominated by knee-jerk reactions, thinking deeply is a revolutionary and rebellious act, and I applaud you for that.