I’m four chapters into Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and its poignant critique of this modern dystopia I’m living in already upsets me. “Feeling lurks in the interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.” Bored? Order bullshit you don’t need from the internet– free next day delivery. Scroll on your phone. Listen to music. Drive to the countryside. Wish you were somebody else. Think of all the ways you’re not good enough. Spend $50 on alpha-hydroxy moisturizer, $40 on retinol eye cream. Mix chlorophyll into your water. Get some pizza, soak it in ranch. Avoid that feeling that awaits you in the silence – dark, unruly, a threat to the constant pleasure you’d much rather enjoy.
This attack on our attention span is not some secondary externality to the main goal of increasing consumption– it is its own initiative entirely. Flood their lives with dopamine, disruption, notifications, manufactured scarcity. Show them everything that they don’t have and make them spend their entire lives desperately trying to get there. Keep them from developing the ability to focus, concentrate, think critically. Fuck it, keep them from wanting to feel or think altogether. Those emotions are much too scary, turbulent; better to be hushed out with a constant stream of chatter, distraction. Don’t let them see their reality as it truly is. Isolate them from each other, pit them against one another. Make them feel powerless under the requirements of what we need from them: produce, consume, produce, consume. It’s the only way. Make them believe these thoughts are their own, that they weren’t repeated incessantly since the day they were born. Feed them narratives of success that guarantee eventual happiness, so long as they do what we want: produce, consume, produce, consume.
You must produce to succeed. How much have you produced? How have you contributed to society? How important are you? Success is measured by consumption, measured by metrics like: how many countries have you travelled to? What kind of car do you drive? How big is your house? What’s in your fridge? What’s in your bathroom cabinet? To prove that you are important you must produce as much as you can so you can consume as much as you can – backpack in the Italian Dolomites, wear Parisian fashion, eat $100 sushi.
Don’t ask questions! Where does this come from? What impact is this having on the planet? Will this make me happy? Of course, it will! Now, shut up. No more questions. You’re wasting time getting where you need to be. It’s certainly not here. Look at how miserable you are here. Your house is too small, your life is so boring. You’ve been to Italy but never to Greece. Gross, sad, no! You need novelty, excitement, a fresh rush of dopamine. Buy something else – new shirt? night light? Envision your next trip. Dream about the big house you’ll get some day if you keep working hard. Finally, then, you can be happy.
But it will never be enough, can’t you see?! The idea that you don’t have enough, that you AREN’T enough, follows you wherever you go. You finally travelled the world, you ate amazing food and shat it out, you have your big mansion with the pool. But now you have wrinkles. And, oh, your back hurts. You can’t go in the sun with your face looking like an old plastic bag and swimming is just too exhausting. No, better to sit inside and watch videos, look back on pictures of when you were young and beautiful. Romanticize that part of your life – oh, if only I could only go back to when I was young and beautiful! I would finally be happy. And so the cycle goes. Anywhere but here. Anything but this.
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