I could not sleep longer than 3am. The best I could think to do was to grab hold of Facebook and scroll away. I did so. I am weak. This is not good. The man, Mr. Zuckerberg and his company, his cheating and lying and good ‘ol college boy antics / attitude have taken us off track in a serious fashion. We, I say we but mean me… I am lost in his created wilderness. I’ve never been strong. I am tough, I endure but I am not strong. If there is a place to be beaten, a place to fall, a place to fail… I will find it. Meta and the algorithm have created just such a place. It is like drinking or taking drugs or believing wrong things. It is a place to fall, to fail, to be beaten. Mathematics, statistics, algorithms are hammers that can be used against the soul…can shrink or pound a person to mere numbers, dots on a graph, points in a matrix. Math is funny that way. It is both the underpinning of everything and the ultimate destruction of everything.
So. They think they have me and they do have me for the moment. There does remain always, the last shoe to drop, the final moment, the conclusion, the release, the proof that all of creation can be created and un-created just as easily. Seed becomes a star, a star burns out, dies, implodes. I am a vibration, a number, a point on a chart but so are the stars, the galaxies, the planets (known and unknown). Using the knowledge of, the calculation of what I can be expected to do, made more money for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos than can be counted. Theirs is a never repeating never completing decimal. What does a billion even mean? and..That billion dollars the tech-folk have stolen? It is as worthless as bit-coin. They can buy boats and cars and houses and people and governments but cannot, ever, own any of it. They, too are points on a graph and all of the material gathered around them is equally susceptible of life. There can be no protection from time/movement/change/life and there is no meaning. Meaning, we think is elusive? No. There is no meaning. Meaning is a cipher, a nothing. All that is visible, palpable is rented, is of very little consequence – not even to the algorithm. Life and rent are almost from the same root word. The lease will be up one day, Czar Nicholas found this out, Marie Antoinette found this out, the great and ancient peoples of the new world found this out. Jesus found this out.
I know there is nothing of meaning. Meaning is a word of two syllables, in English…of seven letters, generally accented on the first syllable. There are lines on paper, pixels on a screen that describe and evoke and symbolize something but there is nothing. No meaning to search for. Still, I believe in the search. It is part of the game that God or whatever set us to. In the case of M. Zuckerberg and his particular game? I use myself against myself, just as Meta and others knew I would. They hold up a mirror, a glass of many facets, a fascination. What do we see? A pretty thing? sometimes, but often, only an increasingly, very ugly thing. Here we stand. I am, you are, they are as Narcissus, staring into the glass this time and not the water. Perhaps, we have misunderstood the message of Narcissus? We are curious, we are captivated but are we truly in love with the mirror image? I dunno. Love? I believe wrong things. I thought I believed there could be love. I believe less in love every day as I fall down. I fail. I will continue so to do, until I do not. Maybe, one day I will pick up a good book and read away when I can’t sleep.
Ah.
A good book. A good movie. A great song. They do exist. Margaret Atwood writes good books. Bob Dylan makes great songs. ‘The History of Sound’ is a good movie. These are all kind works… not selling sex or violence or the destruction of the soul. Not commodifying the soul. These works nourish. There are works that nourish. Face-book is aberrant, it is abominable, it will turn to a pillar of salt one day, taking huge numbers of innocent folks along with it. It does not nourish, it destroys. It will cease to exist. Donald Trump will cease to exist. Jeff Bezos will go bankrupt. It is predictable, there is an algorithm. Perhaps the algorithm started deep in the center of the universe, long before there was time or intelligent design?
Robert On The Air 