If the future of America is totalitarian; if everything we’ve come to so casually take for granted falls, it will be because of the smartphone.

The link is surprisingly direct. If you become 10% less able to manage your destiny, your government will become 10% more controlling. If you become 30% less able to manage, a 30% increase will occur. There is a 1-to-1 connection between your ability to co-create your destiny into something resilient, beneficial, and full of vision; and how stable, safe, and free your society stays.

Put simpler, if: Thinky = unbearable, You = No Thinky. No Thinky = No Changey, No Changey = No Hopey.

Man without mind becomes mere animal. There is no self determination, no self critique, no expansion, no future. There is only “Me hurty” and “Me tingly”. Men in this state are putty, for they are not men at all.

“A human being is a deciding being.” -Frankl

Numbness and Islam

People with burned out tastebuds put hot sauce on everything. Look around online… It’s hot sauce on everything. We are years away from truly dealing with the satanic ramifications of the numbness we have become.

Like a tyrannical spoiled CEO who pays a dominatrix to make him bleed to feel again, we’ve lost a taste for anything but that which mixes overripe fatalism and casual sadism. It is said God speaks in a “still small voice” but only midget porn or race riots can now bend our demonically lethargic ears.

If you forego the burden of your destiny to internet-chemical-bath for long enough, you’ll eventually notice that you’re strangely drawn to Islam. This is because, once learned helplessness and perversion kink become the whole of your worldview, islam becomes irresistible.

The allure of islam is that, it not only transgresses all progressive ideals, but also all the ideals our brothers shed blood for in Iraq, our grandfathers shed blood for before them, and our forefathers shed blood for before them.

It transgresses 500 years of the protestant way of life, namely the separation of power and rule of law which, (by being based on a very sober view of man) has made the west great.

When all personal power, choice, and vision are gone; and pornbath no longer gives sufficient tingles, only sadism is left.

This is how the murder of an American hero becomes a playground of possibilities. Why is what Candace is doing with Charlie Kirk’s murder so addictive? It has nothing to do with Israel, or truth, or anything like that. It’s an enchanted invitation to a world where nothing you haven’t made up is real. The fundamental question of the internet is, “are we sure other people really exist?”

The hopelessly dull truth of Kirk being killed by Tyler Robinson, is hopelessly dull, precisely; because it does not involve me. Outside of mourning from afar; I, Zach Rudolph, do not feature in the story. And, Me no feature = Me no tingles.

But in Candace’s timeline, I do feature. Charlie’s murder was nothing but set dressing for tonight’s game show for sadists; and “Gather round everyone it’s almost time to vote on today’s scapegoat!!!”

The vast pain, risk, joy, and sorrow of a true human life replaced by the safe numbness of torturing strangers through the screen.

What Else Is There?

Practically, the answer to this it curbing the parts of the internet where you most automatically respond. You are not an animal to feed on mindlessness. You have a story, a shape, a past, a future. Choose devices which match your optimal intake quantity, and content which marinates in your soul as though a whole food.

Philosophically, the shift is from what Logotherapy calls “state orientation” (how am i feeling? how am i feeling now? what about now? what about now???) to, “object orientation” which as Elisabeth Lukas put it, is the idea that; “It’s not so important whether I feel good but whether I am good for something.”

Be good for something.

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. ... What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” -Viktor Frankl

If there be a heaven

And I’m sure that I believe that there is...

Then it must contain a likeness

Of a feeling like this:

A place where the birds outside my window,

And the relentless possible persist

Little eyes growing deeper and deeper

In a still and subtle bliss.

Where each becomes it’s fullness,

At peace but not the same...

As blood flushes nerves alive again,

And all the dreams that they sustain.

When I taste a hint of something

From that near and distant end,

It’s where gentle hands and a given ease

Unmake all schemes of fallen men.

Take me to the safe unknown,

Take me to the intimate infinity...

Where the mystic’s grasp, and my mother’s laugh

Burn their native intensity.

Drown my kingdom of grey in water,

My greasy palace of cope…

Crack this decadent callous of boredom

Under the weight of a sterner hope.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing … to find the place where all the beauty came from.” -C.S. Lewis

The hour before waking I am drowning. Alone and unprotected, the edges of my psyche emerge to have their say.

In that place I am porous.

Porous to the heavy silence of the old house around me, to the flashes of malice bubbling just below their eyes, Porous to the part of me which remains damnable, to an intense awareness of hanging in the balance before a God I cannot control. In that place I am revealed as a shaking child hiding in a grown man’s skin.

The hour before waking I am drowning in a pagan unknowing; the outer darkness where nothing is certain and faces change before they can take shape in the mind of the seer… until day finally breaks and chaos is forced to vomit me onto dry earth.

From unknown depths I am sprung onto something particular, textural, layered, intelligible, receptive, alive. Something which exists independent of me, something which holds the weight of my sorrows by the benign sovereignty of its nature.

In the heat by which all things live, the hall of mirrors which had enclosed me forever in on myself begin peeling away and becoming windows; as the world becomes swallowed in a rich, expectant hope.

Night will return, and by it; many things will be endured. Though in it’s innermost confidence; it trembles, for no tragedy concocted by the night can stop the blaze that is coming.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, When deep sleep falleth upon men, In slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, And sealeth their instruction.” -Job 33:15-16

To have one true love is all I’ve ever wanted.

To plunge into the cold dark corners of my soul and turn over every crooked stone; in the confidence of one most closely held, is a desire stronger than any I have otherwise known.

There, these decades of constantly treading water, of bobbing beneath and reaching for air; would truly, finally, give way to the warm solidity of dry land.

To know a future that holds something, something worth staying around to see. A blooming of health and of possibility, of inside jokes and the hundreds of tiny private rituals which constitute a love worth a whole life.

To daily experience the otherness of woman, and by its strangeness; expand beyond the dull limits of sanity. To be stretched and wrenched and tortured, by a bond that swallows all other concern.

To this I have given my allegiance. For this, I hold out hope. It is my highest ambition, my greatest desire.

As the years pass and I pile my makeshift gifts at it’s altar, the specter of the dream grows in my imagination. Every wound attributed to its lack, every joy to the possibility. Higher and higher it moves; until I can see no light above it. No source of meaning which precedes it or remains outside.

Over time, I warp and derange. I am no longer a joyful servant of a goodness I may never taste, but a junkie and a slave to a degenerate idol. I have forgotten that love is not possession; but a will to will goodness regardless of its reachability. A stubborn hope logic cannot get beneath. A decision to step beyond the blood-red desire to devour.

May this stubborn hope reveal that higher light to me once again, may my allegiance to it, outstrip all else. May I accept anything in this life so long as that light stays above and with me. That the blood on my hands be washed until I am grateful to have existed at all, that I may know being itself as very good indeed.

Until every joy I have already tasted can be relished in memory, every warm morning, cherished for the goodness it itself inextricably carries.

That I may someday die with gratitude on my tongue, were my days spent hidden in the shadow of his nearness, that this nearness may redeem the scars the years have dealt.

“Every idolatry leads eventually to despair.” -Viktor Frankl

What do you think? Leave me a comment!

Mentioned article

Imagine a shot clock. When it gets to zero, you give in to your sabotage behavior. Increasing the time on that clock is the proper frame for thinking about technology use. Before we go any further, if you’re truly down the rabbit hole, your inner nihilist may now be saying, “okay sure, but, I’ll never fully master myself, and I don’t matter anyway, so… what difference does it make?” but this attitude is decadent, faux-omnipotent, and emotivist. You are not a detached god who judges this fallen world from his remote perch. You are the fallenness and greatness of this world. Now dig in and carry your weight.

“It’s not so important whether I feel good but whether I am good for something.” -Elisabeth Lukas

1: Minimize Automatic Response

“Humanity thrives on freedom, dignity, and self determination. When we lose these we revert to automatic behaviors.” -Alexander Frankl

Of all the rewiring the smartphone era has caused, perhaps the core is increasing automatic response. Once the human responds automatically, he has been brought down to mere animal. The defining trait which marks humans as more than animal, is the capacity for choice. Your drives are stirred, but between the stirring and the action, you choose. Willpower is not fixed at birth. It grows or shrinks depending on frequency of use.

Practically this means, leave your phone in your car. If the thing you wanted to see is worthwhile, it’ll be worth walking ten steps.

The phone is like an overbearing relative. When around you can feel the weight of their presence. Without speaking, they soak the environment with all the things you know they’re thinking. Nothing is free from their subtle pressure. So I ask you, what quiet, shy parts of you will remain dormant as long as that thing is around? Are there not happy little oddnesses of your person which can only bloom when the comparison machine is out of the room?

2: Buy (don’t stream)

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” -Matthew 6:21

When you buy something, you attach to it. A song for instance. Every time you listen to a song you bought, a part of you asks, “was it worth it?” When you respond, “it was”. You get a micro insight into your identity. Streaming minimizes attachment. You are not asked to pay individually, but you are robbed of the micro insights that would’ve given you. You are not called to overcome your fear of losing the money on behalf of something worthwhile. Your loyalty is to the corporate machine which gives you a little of everything, not to a band who gave you a whole lot of something.

When you do use streaming services for say, tv and movies, dig for hidden gems related to your genre interests. The goal is participation and layering of choice.

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” -Chesterton

3: Place Gate-ing Content

Part of our dis-regulation is the removal of the connection between places and modes of living. If you ate in the bathroom, relieved yourself in the kitchen, and cooked food by running an extension cord out by the mailbox, just to swap it all the next day, you may find life lacks a feeling of curation. Connecting, for example; certain podcasts to certain places you go each week, may build over time, a sense that certain places represent particular tones of experience. A place becomes a fabric of memories of a certain type and feeling. Conversely, having everything everywhere leads to nothing meaning much anywhere. We have lost the sanity of separation of categories and the subtle delight of temporary deprivation.

4: Finish Things

Perhaps the simplest algorithm for finding what information suits you, is deciding that you’re going to finish at least one thing each day. Reading, watching, or listening, once per day you are going to roll credits. When this enters your consideration, you automatically start sorting towards meaning.

5: Take a 10 Minute Gap

Have you ever been so internet sick that your felt-sense of profundity quietly withered out of existence? If I take in too much, my feeling of “Oh wow…. I’ll be thinking about that 5 years from now.” goes away. No matter how deep or interesting, everything becomes washed in interchangeability. The antidote to this is stopping between things, to let their flavor simmer in your consciousness before moving on.

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.” -C.S. Lewis (out of the silent planet)

6: Does It Stir Unrelated Ideas?

Another meaning-sorting mechanism is, does it stir unrelated ideas in you? Does it cause what I call “generative irritation”? Think of your mind like a radio. Different content tunes your mind to different stations. Some stations please the mind like cotton candy. But some prick and spur the mind into originality and invention. When this happens, take note.

7: Hide Your Darlings

If something (i.e. some form of art) is deeply moving you, hide it. Don’t tell people about it until its effect has worn off. Attention pollutes intention, and new ideas are very frail. You are unlikely to receive any from something once you have prostituted it to the public.

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” –Ovid

8: Return To What Made You

Earlier today I felt like the roaming blue dot of the gps who doesn’t have enough service to find you. I put on a podcast, this podcast was the first one I ever loved so much that I went through the entire back catalogue multiple times (sometime around 2013-2014). Hadn’t heard it in a while, but enjoyed as much as ever. Returning to things you once valued; to find they still hold significance for you, is deeply orienting. It pulls you away from the noise and shows a continuity between who you are, and the things which made you. It can make you right again in some deep way.

9: Replace Depression With Stress

It is better to be stressed than depressed, and if you are depressed you do not need commiseration, you need agency. Which, short term, means you need stress. Depression is ruminating, isolating, and pulling into oneself. If you are there, sign yourself up for enough things which will demand you bending your comfort zone, that stress replaces depression. Eventually your agency will increase, and both depression and stress with shrink in the face of your growing competence.

“If you want self-esteem, do esteemable acts.” -Francine D. Ward

I hope something here has blessed you, has put time on your sabotage shot clock. May God give us both strength for the road ahead.

Only courage and humility can create something better than the intoxication of sabotage. In my case, I feared that voicing the conflicts I had with my faith would bring the world down. I also knew that once I did voice them, I may grow drunk on breaking norms and fall into believing my own version as gospel.

The way I got out of this was the recognition of time. The recognition that, “For now, I must say what I have never been brave enough to say. But it’s possible and even likely that the long term may prove some part of me wrong.”

One must not fall in love with the joy of throwing Molotovs. The way out of sabotage is the courage of Job. For years, thinking of God escalated my sabotage. I had theologically fortified my self destruction. But I began to leave sabotage when I decided that even if I could not believe God was good, I still believed some things were good and that he was why. At my lowest points, I struggled to believe that people were good either, and in very delicate moments, I was in such turmoil, that the most I could believe in; was, “this coffee is mercy.” when everything was hell, I could still believe that the goodness of good coffee was real goodness. Therefore real goodness did exist, therefore it was still worthwhile for me to try and participate in it. Even if in seemingly meager ways.

May the hum of our presence heal the tiny hidden wounds of those around us, like the goodness of good coffee.

“If there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things. Things will not abandon you. The nights are still there, and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands. Everything in the world of Things and animals is filled with being, of which you are part.” -Rilke

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin.” -Zechariah 4:10

I saw you again today but pretended not to care so you wouldn’t have to.

If you do not feel as I do, surely what you do feel must be great discomfort.

Perhaps the light in my eyes is a compliment to you. I hope that it is. But when I see you you seem taken aback.

Either you are taken aback because you also feel something you will not express, or you are taken aback because my feelings for you make you so uncomfortable you go into some sort of self-protective hole.

I hate the thought that it’s the latter but I am not (yet at least) wholly convinced otherwise. So I smile, say little, and leave. I want to ask you how you are, I want to know. To know everything. What tune do you sing to yourself as you get ready to leave the house? What nicknames did you give to your pets? What do you wish your parents knew about your love for them? What do you wish you knew about their love for you? Do you secretly want a quiet life with an adoring husband and rosy cheeked children? Or do I just want you to want that? Do I see you when I look at you? or do I see my desire covering a million tiny cracks until everything appears perfect?

In some ways I am not sure we would ever work. You don’t strike me as particularly mature or interested in others. You seem trapped in your head the way only young people can be. But no matter how poor the ending or the logic which brought us there, I can’t help but wish I were in there with you.

I know you are not (as I) somewhere writing sad words to soothe your broken heart. I know you do not care. Perhaps that is why I do. Perhaps if you saw me as worthy I would know it also, perhaps the darkness wouldn’t whisper so loud. Though, perhaps I must fight those voices without you.

May God give me the strength.

“True love is to will the good of the other.” -Aquinas

Leftism is for babies and by babies.

Babies kill people that make them mad then blame you for blaming them… if you didn’t want murder, why didn’t you give them everything they wanted before they asked? Oh, so it’s MY fault? HOW COULD I BE TO BLAME? IM A BABY!

Each night as they pull their binkie over their toesies, some tincy wincy part of their itty bitty conscious quietly suggests “Y’know, maybe murder over disagreement isn’t really fair” but then they remember,

What am I some cringe ass grandpa who posts Ronald Reagan memes and wears all white new balances???

DOWN WITH FASCISTS!!! EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE IS VIOLENCE!!! CANDY! I WANT CANDY!!!

It’s a little old brick house in an old southern neighborhood where everyone knows everyone and neighbors lower their windows to chat as they drive by.

I was able to get it cheap because it needs some sweat, love, paint, deep cleaning and flooring repairs.

Even though it’s a great situation, the stress has made me unable to write normally… it’s like there’s a fat sumo wrestler sitting on my brain whose gut swallows my thoughts before they reach me. Part of life I guess.

Just wanted you guys to know that I don’t take you for granted and I eagerly await being more back to normal soon.

Screen life is a mode of living aimed at two things: safety and novelty. From my bed in my house I gorge on every perversity of the earth and it feels (in one sense) very novel.

It’s logical we’re drawn to this as, “variety is the spice of life”. I am not so sure however, that novelty is also the pan-seared steak or freshly cut watermelon of life.

It’s also necessary to point out that while screens are weapons-grade novelty for the brain, screen life is anti-novel for the rest of your senses. Your mind may (at first) find a walk through the woods or a conversation with a barista insufficiently novel, but your body definitely finds sitting inside insufficiently novel.

The more we indulge novelty, the darker our tastes become… and the more secluded we live, the more secluded we must live.

We are becoming creatures with the sadistic appetite of Nero and the interpersonal courage of a newborn fox.

You cannot savor distinct notes of flavor when drinking from a fire hydrant.

Texture: (the quality created by the combination of the different elements in a work of music or literature.)

I want to suggest a new ideal. Texture.

What if we optimized, not for a spike of novelty; but for how many senses are used?

A few days ago I was set to go to my weekly cigar group, though extremely tired from work and considering going home. Had I gone home I’d have skipped between YouTube videos, watched 30 minutes of a movie or at best played video games with friends until it was time to sleep. But I pushed through and went.

It was not a rush. There was no spike in the veins jolt. But I sat there with men I love, men who love me, and took in the moment. His cute little kids were running around, his puppy wanted me to hold her paw, as we chatted about what life has been for us that week. At one point the conversation turned slightly more serious and I was able to encourage one of the men in a way that left me thinking, “now this, is why I do everything.”

In the Americana of the fields and towns I passed along the way, in the scents of tobacco and whiskey, in the psychological shift of changing location, in the sense of my past and how they accept it, the sense of my future and how they’ll be there with me, in all of that; there was richness, texture.

A life aimed at novelty presupposes that the foremost meaning of life is drugs.

Alone, you dose yourself with dopamine bombs until your mind is spun into a fever pitch of oblivion. It’s a kind of anti-social, controlled enchantment.

Life is hard and we all need ways to cope. We all need to occasionally feel the play in the gears to know we are still human. But the reason dosing cannot enrich life in the way nature or the presence of other people can, is that we control it. We cannot be grateful because we are omnipotent.

The reason time with nature or other people does enrich us, is because each are fundamentally independent from us.

In our smallness we feel taken by life into a world we have not made and cannot control. The ocean calms because it is sovereign, and other people are never exactly who we’d have them be. In this otherness we grow, and are (uncomfortable) yet grateful that otherness (and therefore possibility) still exists.

“In order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission. If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuisance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential.” -Chesterton