Our model is the trapezoid…

Actual institute may not match photo…

Film Guy: “Cows don’t look like cows on film, you gotta use horses.”

Ralph Wiggum: “What do you do when you need something that looks like a horse?”

Film Guy: “Usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.”

We endure so much, as sentient creatures on this exhausted planet. The effect of this on our default settings can be depressing. That’s what happened to me. Nothing really, but over time, enough to damage my sorting mechanisms so that any incoming good news gets thrown out with the rest. SPAM filtered to prevent pockets of malware being installed in my mind. Paranoid. Easy. It’s harder to fight it, almost impossible to differentiate between the latent hostile and the active positives. A corporate tragedy. Another lost individual.

First thing each morning I have to have a cup of tea. If I start my day with coffee, I’m always humming on the wrong frequency. A kind of Bobcat Goldthwaite derangement. Subtley skewing any incoming data into absurd, manic humour or fierce, agressive reaction. Fun. But not healthy. So tea it is. Nice and strong, because I feel sick if it isn’t. Can’t stomach fruit first thing. Have to eat something though.

Obsessed with functionality, me. Like a vote for sanity in a rigged election, my mind tries to combat the oil-slicks and fibreless glugging factors of the media world. Tries. See that word there? Pitiful. You know it will fail, don’t you. I love that scene in Matrix Reloaded where Neo is attacked by a swarm of Agent Smiths. They dominate him in a huge seething pile until – boom – he surges free. A pulse of energy that they can’t resist. On good days, I believe that there will be some chemical, some frequency, some magic word that will dissolve the critical mass of weight and liberate the system without destroying it. Like Neo does.

I suppose that’s the core of my fear. That the efficient replacement of so many small functions with little band aids of code will eventually make so many dependencies that I am no longer organic. No longer independent. Incapable of survival without it’s succour.

Childbirth frightened me for exactly that reason. Survival of the fittest depends on a transparency of health that humans are outsmarting. Botox, surgery, implants. How do you know how beautiful or healthy the genes are? What happens when we are able to make adjustments to the genes themselves? Are we really smarter than natural selection? I can’t believe that humans are able to let it be. We want remote controls, heated seats, plug and play connectivity. But it has to be biodegradable, organic and sustainable too. Are those motivations ideologically polar?

I am in the stream because I was born human. So many shortcuts and invisible outcomes, slowly amassing behind the scenes, like lines of old code that no longer hyperlink or format anything, like space junk from a hundred successful launches. Digital photos from a holiday that you’d hardly remember without the proof.

I read back over this and I know what would happen to me. People who question things are mad. Madness is the death stick, pointed like an accusation of communism or witchcraft, needing no proof because it’s a lens through which the accused is being seen. Of course I would say that. I must be mad.

Release the trolls.

Discuss.