On Modern Neurotics

novalis
2 min readDec 14, 2018
  1. New York: an amazing city not to explore while you get high watch Netflix and flake on all your plans.
  2. An internalization of internet language is a newish, and evolving psychic virus. The inability to describe ourselves in types other than the predominant, somewhat official types floating around the internet — ‘ENTP, Virgo’ — etc, a sign of a complete breakdown in apparatus of introspection and self-creation. It is a tic. We talk about our jobs, our signs, our colleges — but we can’t talk about ourselves. We’re pathologically unable to.
  3. “Too act — that is true intelligence,” writes Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa means ‘act’ in terms of ‘action.’ I feel like I only know those capable of ‘acting’ in terms of faking or performing. Is everyone I know stupid? Metaphysically stupid?
  4. Tedium — a basic, underlying state produced by life in a digital consumerist society; a state which we deny by consuming more and more digital goods. Thus, we live in a tedium vortex.
  5. The most dangerous psychological action we can perform is narrativization. We shouldn’t try to tell consoling stories about our bullshit. Bullshit is bullshit.
  6. Unfortunately, we have to discard the word authentic — it means nothing. There is no authentic, or inauthentic. If there is any hope, it lies much deeper in the mind than authenticity. If we want to find a region of the mind free of thoughts implanted by corporations and their digital machines, we have to dig deep, beyond language, maybe beyond image.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

--

--