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The Self-annihilating ‘cult of self’
by shirl Monday, Jun 29 2015, 11:53am
international / prose / post

The human species is a social species, though you wouldn’t know it today. The corporate manipulated digital revolution has produced massive alienation and social dislocation on a scale never before seen, yet those intentionally led into self-obsession/absorption (narcissism) only see their own (digital) images which they share with their ‘digital’ friends on digital devices/media; these ‘friends’ respond by sending their own ‘selfies’ and around it goes – already it becomes apparent that this corporate designed slaughter of our need to be social is a monumental tragedy.

To replace the need for social interaction and fill the gnawing vacuum in the lives of ‘me’ generations they are encouraged to indulge the self in ever more ‘interesting’ ways; the “selfie” is the symbolic epitome of this soul destroying cult and ‘smart’ devices/gadgets have become indispensable to the lost souls of that generation. Yet the need and that gnawing feeling for meaningful contact never leaves as it is instinctive, so digital magicians produce ever more gadgets that are designed to capture the self in many different ways both as mirrors and as a resource to the corporate elites that manipulated new technologies to serve THEIR interests and intentionally isolate, alienate and enslave.

The digital generations are in fact thoroughly addicted to their digital devices without which they begin to panic – though those devices make subjects of their users that become ever more dependent on their devices and gadgets.

The invigorating salt spray of a walk by the sea, the scents and other sensory impressions nature offers can never be captured in the rich symphony in which they naturally occur. The smell of a rose – though tech-corporations are doing their best in that regard – in a garden which provides all the necessary sensory ingredients to feed the souls of humankind are lost to the digitally enslaved.

In their frantic search to compensate for the inadequacies of digital devices techno-magicians contrive new ways to substitute the irreplaceable, a walk in a valley with your beloved in arm surrounded by a symphony of little waterfalls, the melodic harmonies of birds and the visual lushness of the vegetation with all its accompanying scents, a smart phone or computer, no matter how ‘smart’ becomes the impoverished device that it actually is!

Humans evolved in a biosphere not a circuit board, and there simply is no substitute for real social intimacy and the sensory food our senses and souls require, which nature happily and freely provides.

In contrast to the REAL, the constant pursuit of the delusory digital self leads directly to that self and nothing else. Isolation, alienation and a vacuous existence is the result. So in your frantic need to replace and fill that mysterious hollow feeling make sure you line up in the streets for the next release of your favourite, enslaving, soul and life-destroying digital gadget!

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_lonely_american_20150628