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I am trying to be optimistic about spiritual crisis: a spiritual crisis, is, after all, an opportunity. Or should be. Or can be. Or that’s what I’m trying to figure out — if I can shape a new self out of the self that I’m just about ready to abandon: this brain-drained, over-stimulated, over-triggered, post-internet self that I find so disappointing. Me.
Baudrillard: “There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.”
I feel the same way about the phone open for no reason — the phone in my hands, or yours. The phone that is on, floating above the glassy surface of our eyes, for no reason other than because they already are, because they must: because there’s a will-to-look.
What is communicating with me? Who am I communicating with? Who am I that is communicating? Why do I communicate? Why do insert myself into this massive lava-flow of information? Why am I unable to stand to the side? And watch. Or just ignore it — read a book. Or nothing: stare out the window?
Why can no one stare out the window anymore?
Why can’t we do nothing anymore?
Why must we look at a screen?
Is it because it’s always looking at us?
