This Place Is A Shit Hole

I don’t even like it here anymore. And not in a depressive, juvenile, learned helplessness kind of way. My eyes are open to where my responsibility lies and I don’t like where the culture I live in has ended up. Beyond Australia. Beyond any nation. Somehow, over the last twenty years, our Western home has turned to shit. Little changes took place, new things came in, a bunch of ways and experiences were discarded. Different people were brought in and what it meant to be someone that lived in this place changed. The modern world changed. The culture has become something that does not include me and the people I grew up with, at least not unless compromises are made. The culture and thereby everything.

I feel like there is countless machines acting against me and every thing and one around me. And they won and continue to win. And all I can intelligently do is withdraw into the smallest of spaces and try and hold some dignity there. Hold it and grow it.

And you may say, “Of course it all fuckin changed. That’s what cultures do”. Not like this. Not in a way that wipes out the past. Not so fuckin fast. And not in a way that gives up the good and great for the dead and destructive. An author once wrote “Something happened”, and he was right. I don’t think he knew what had happened. I don’t think anyone does. Something definitely happened. And some things were lost. Very valuable things. Whatever happened has grown and gained momentum and become a way of life, has become like water.

So much has gotten worse. That’s a simple thing to say but I think it’s almost never said but felt by many. I think a lot of people don’t like what modern life has become. The youth as well, although they have no experience of any other way. I think we made some very bad trades and we’re stuck with the bad deal and the memory of the good we gave up. “We fucked up” is a laughable understatement. The idea I want to get across is that many aspects of the way we live are not good for us. That we pushed some new ideas and new ways of living to extremes. We never had it in us to stop and accept the good we had. And these extremes are not only destroying us, but that they’re shit and I want to get away from them. Because humanity’s self destruction is a bit much to get a handle on.

New ways like mobile phones, the internet, streaming, personal computers, video, finance, celebrity, and more.

I joke and say “everyone knows civilization reached it’s peak in 1993/94”, but it’s kinda true. It’s been a slide rather than a step, unless you look closely and deliberately. Gradually, then all of a sudden. A direction was decided upon perhaps a long time ago. I have a feeling there was a battle, as there often is, and one side won out. A direction was chosen and we live now with the consequences. Maybe that was the thing that happened. Momentum and logical next steps have carried us here. It’s been a slow boil, and I have been less aware of it than many, but there are some defining characteristics that separate one period from another. That which I can point to and say, “Yeah, we lost something valuable there”. Or, “that was a bad fuckin deal we made”. And most often of all, “Oh, this is so fuckin shit”.

There are trends. There is a society. I’m aware that much of my perceived individualism is really just a product of my culture, my age, the environment I was raise and live in. I am an example. I now assume that if I have strong feelings about something, if I do something drastic in my life such as moving to a rural area, I am far from alone. If I quit my job and become unemployed for six months then there is probably something bigger than my own feelings and desires going on. That in fact I am one of many. A social animal. The dissatisfaction and dislike I feel towards the culture here is common and rarely gets spoken of out loud in public. Most of us would rather not be negative, but I think there is a relationship many of us have with our man made world that is filled with a passive, powerless disgust. Picture a look of disgust, or feel it on your own face. But publicly... A tolerance. Grinning, sometimes, and bearing. A general, pervasive, growing resentment and dislike exists just underneath, and it comes out when we’re with a small group of friends, with family, writing in a journal.

Marc Andreeson, one of the cult leaders of today, said that all companies will be tech companies. And it’s probably true. But all people tech-people? I remember around 1999 when the internet really came on, I literally said I’m not gonna do much of that. I’m not gonna “get into it”. I like that I had a go. It’s laughable how little I held out. A phone. A laptop. The internet. Online. I try to make sense of the digital existence I have, that I’m a part of. Of living in a digital world and how to navigate that, and in relation to the physical. It’s insanely interesting and I have no concrete sense of it all. The migration from the physical to the digital, in a single lifetime, is perhaps the dominant feature of the new world we made. Tech was cool in the 90’s. Now it owns us. Marc Andreeson’s statement was true and small. He did not see the true extent of the technological revolution and how it would come to define and direct humanity.

I don’t think there is a going back. Nor an exit. There is a life more aware and chosen. I am certainly not living it. But without saying clearly, without embarrassment or hedging, that this place is a shit-hole and I don’t like it here, I will not be honest or honorable in the changes I make. The “here” that is a shit-hole being my life, style, environment and relationships.

I don’t want to be a tech-person. I tried and failed many times. Coding and gaming and building with screens and retarded autistic languages. I still like and use tech. I think tech should be a small part of my life. Technology should not be the water I swim in. I should be able to go to it, pick it up and put it down and walk away from it, like a car or a book.

I don’t like the trends that I have gone along with that led me into a room, in an apartment, permanently connected to the internet and facing screens for most of my days and nights.

I don’t care for or respect the management class. From politics to banking to supermarkets to entertainment, management can all go eat a dick.

I am not happy here.

There is declining value here.

This place is a shit-hole and I don’t like it here.