~ Consider where you are right now. You are probably in a room of some sort. A big room or a small one. You are confined to this space. But you certainly don’t feel confined. You can go practically anywhere, do anything, say anything to anyone — in this room. It’s true. This room you find yourself within is a locus for many possible experiences. You don’t technically have to leave at all. You can stay forever.
Within this great indoors, you reside in a spiraling realm of novelty. In the curated curio of our furthest resulting consciousness and advancement of our tech — this is where you are, stationary, even if it doesn’t seem that way at all. Call it sincere work, call it mere novelty, call it learning, call it peaceful, idle safety — you are in a room — whatever you are doing — you are in a room — you are living and dying — in a room.
Sitting, standing, laying, doing other things — the confinement determines the rules of engagement. You can operate with the freedom presented to you; note that it is illusorily wide and difficult to see into any avenues not readily in sight. This might require some imagination. Luckily for us, it is serviced dutifully upon the screens in the room. Step around, play games of productivity and write those great American novels. Send your mind out into the internetworking ether with impunity, to any end you can conspire to collaborate with others upon. Retrieve the returns of your resolutions via social links and comments and viral engagement, and ruminate on them.
It’s all good in here, it’s all fine. But after all the essential and virtual glory afforded such a mind as yours — you are still in this room. Don’t forget. Occasionally try to pay some attention to the walls around you. Mark the intention of the anxiety produced when you let your attention fall upon them. Perhaps it’s a message, psychosomatic in nature, which is all important. A physical intuition yearning for you to escape from these places, time to time, cycle to cycle of your development in here. The infinite offerings from your seat at the head of the digital realm is simulacratic in its promise that everything is here. In the confined spaces of the room, perhaps being is lesser. This is certainly not everything.
What’s wrong? What’s to be done? Maybe nothing. We have worked for so long as a civilization to make this room. The room is the result of innumerable failures, hard-fought progressions and triumphs from some of the greatest minds the species has ever seen. We have meticulously built the room to be as physically comfortable and mentally stimulating as we need it to be. You are sitting there and simply lauding these efforts. We are reaping the rewards of what was once the dreams of the ancients. The dream was one of thriving atop the planes of mere survival. These conspiring confines, behind varying doors and walls and windows, are our new plane, so maybe enjoy it?
~
Now, I turn to those outside of the room. Where do you find yourself? The unconfined space of a landscape, perhaps. You are on the move, out in the world, in the thick of the wilderness. Fresh air in those nostrils, wind streams through your hair, sun gazes down onto your real, non-virtual form. The sun breathes its thermonuclear vitality onto your skin. What do these feelings mean to you? And what difference does the knowledge of the room make in your moments out here in the wild? You can’t help but compare the conspiring confines to the wider spaces of this new world (which is really the old world.)
This landscape was once our home. Providential, prodigal, persisted & pride-filled — this is where we evolved into being. Potential energy became kinetic and we went along for the ride. Take measure of your instincts while you stand atop this hallowed ground once again. Consider the life out here, for yourself, for others, for sentience and non-sentience alike. Breathe in the livelihood; breathe out further and further. Exist within the cycles again; you are a player in the wild once more.
Moving across this space, it isn’t hard to see the harshness. Of all the things most trying to get at you, it’s difficult to find the time to decide which is the most ardently concerning. At best, you are being worn down, weathered, and borne repeatedly against infirmities. At worst, you are being hunted and you are being destroyed.
One thing is clear: the room has softened us. Inside has conditioned us for greater and greater realms of inside, and we have become ill-fitted to live on the outside. We have effectively bent our biology and melded our minds into something different than how it was originated. Different than how it was intended? Who’s to say? We haven’t been here long enough to understand the implications.
The room and the landscape are these dueling theatres of experience we take part in. The cultured comfort of the room certainly appears to have won out over the struggling skirmishes of life and death in the landscape. Not all the time, but mostly. Let’s see what happens. Gaze onto the screen, grab your popcorn, sit back. The screens and walls and digital landscapes we now traverse are here to stay, so stay focused. Step back into the landscapes when it calls for it. Keep returning the imperatives your proto-self yearns to alight itself within. Choose your imbalance and go forth with their history in your pocket and your instincts on your sleeve. Never stop considering where we were; enjoy the A/C but then see the sunlit horizon right outside your wondering window.
Live in the room, dream of the landscapes. ~
