Are we prisoners in this Digital Age?#

I stare into the blankness of the computer screen. The cursor blinks in and out of existence. I wait for something… a sense– a purpose. I expect to know what to write before it is written. Just as I am about to get a word in, my phone beeps with a notification. I reach for it.

The cellphone disrupts our lives in many ways; it takes us from the present moment and fills our minds with the arbitrary. We are forced to care about things that don’t matter at all. We’re fighting an internal, proxy war waged between our complacency and our purpose. The complacency is bolstered by the corporations trying to capitalize on its comfort, and the purpose is the soul searching for something deeper.

In today’s world, the self has been diluted by the consistent debasement of a dream. We dream that we can become more, but the aspiration is corrupted by our loss of attention. To be alive before the existence of attention-seeking software was a privilege because human potential could be understood. The algorithm is a weight wrapped around the feet of the mind, restricting our movement to the same singular space… a cell; it hinders the ability to explore.

Being born into the world fraught with screens and devices is akin to being born into prison. The mind will never understand its ability; it will never understand itself. What makes the human mind so powerful is existentialism; it can correct itself; it can feel pain from the past and anxiety for the future. If we keep locking ourselves into these digital prisons, we’ll reap the consequences– those being the death of the aspiration for creativity or originality. A mind that cannot sit with itself can never produce anything truly its own. It’s a void in the soul, a void that consumes will. Without the will, no beneficial change will ever occur.

Colonialism was once control over a population to make them buy, sell, or produce whatever benefited the throne. Now, the players have changed: the corporations have capitalized on our attention, forcing the people to become products that are sold. The primary drive for change over the span of history has been emotion. Disgust, love, or hate have moved society forward. The digital age takes that away too. It dulls the senses into constant dopamine release; thus, devaluing anything one loves. It kills passion and responsibility and replaces them with an escape to a state that always knows what to expect– something comfortable.

When I reach for the phone, I lose the day. I spend hours looking at it, scrolling through meaningless videos; I’m nauseated. My work remains undone. I don’t grow or improve; I just rot. If every day is a gift, what happens when the mind is rewired to just want pure dopamine? The days will be cursed by an intellectual plague, which ravages the host that is attempting to create itself. Death was never the act of dying. No, it is betraying the days to act.

For the majority of history, humans believed their God governed the snow, the rain, and the storms. It is that same shadow belief, which controls our ability to grow today. We are not procrastinators or “lazy”; rather we are the prisoners of the digital age, which walls off our access to change. The cursor is still blinking; as long as there is life, there is hope for escape from the prison we’ve locked ourselves inside. We only need to recognize that we hold the key.