Total Recall
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I'm 25. As a graduating class of 2018 human Gen Z presenting male (but not really), all of the behavioral issues in the classrooms that I observed growing up sound exactly the same as what is described by teachers nowadays, just without the obvious external implements like the always-out cell phones, tablets, or possibility of students using AI to complete assignments, or even those artificial agents playing a role in those kids joining or be rejected from the workforce. Maybe it was just because I was the quiet type of autistic, but I would get so frustrated that I would almost pass out when we had to pause the learning because some group of kids in the class was talking and they wouldn't stop for more than 30 seconds. These types of interruptions STILL happen daily at our workplaces, too, the trivial kind where we get stalled by nothing in particular on a random Monday for an hour because a coworker has to talk our head off about what they've heard on the news, and they picked us because we're good listeners. I can only hear so many of these stories, as the good listener, before I lose my fucking mind. I cannot be the only one who's seeing how this growing lack of care or worry that others seem to have for our work peer groups, immigrants, and waning critical thinking faculties is affecting every single person and socioeconomic environment on the planet. We need the time to be able to comprehend the things that happen to us every day, and to learn new words, and new skills, and to learn more about other people. Nobody even knows what the hell I'm talking about half the time; if you could understand this passage as a singular thought manifesting over the course of several sentences and did not get bored while reading through my thought process, you're actually doing better mentally than most people seem to be nowadays. I know it's somewhat trite for me to say that while using my strange vocabulary, but you are. And I really don't mean that as a dig if you don't get it, either. You are doing well and are of sound enough mind to function properly in society if you can understand words, regardless of your disorders or lack thereof. You deserve to live, and to live happily. The emotional maturity that blooms from that understanding can come later, right now, I need to talk about everything that's wrong. Because the first step for changing ANYTHING you could ever dream of is admitting that there is a problem, a root cause. My problem, like most people nowadays, is anxiety and social withdrawal caused by a complete and utter lack of certainty in the future we're being presented with every single day. This is a total recall of the things that stress me out or makes me lose faith in the future of humanity, what needs to change for those things to feel okay.
Not to bash on neurotypical folks, but you have a lot less you're worrying about in your daily routine. OCD is a disorder that can carve sculptures of endless paranoia from the beautiful mental marbles of chaos and uncertainty. A blank, ivory canvas that feels not like the new beginning it should, but an endless void. And my marbles? Have gone. What would Hunter Thompson have tried, in my shoes? But I digress. That story is for poetry.
Smartphones marked the obvious beginning of the behavioral issues and deterioration of in-person or "constant" relationships. The types of friendships that you form because you have to be around people, so you have to try to like them a little bit and your social sphere HAD to be limited because there was no other choice to even make. I unknowingly saved all of the manic energy for stupid projects at home after getting done with the "actually important" schoolwork or hanging out with friends who actually wanted to hang out with me. My peers were using phones all the time as their main mode of engagement with each other and I was completely left behind as someone who needed to actually talk to the real person, at least on a net call or in person for hours but definitely not just by texting, to understand them. I hated the learning because I wanted to socialize more than anything else in the world, but I also hated socializing through the screen. I craved a community that I could be physical with, present with, and was so extremely sensitive to touch and emotion throughout high school that there's no way the impression I left was anything but obviously, closetedly, trans, and just completely unable to say it in so many words because I couldn't even understand it underneath the feeling of ostracization. I literally don't even know anyone from that far in the past anymore unless they still keep in touch with me, because I cannot keep up with the race to maintain actually strong, bonded relationships in this environment. If you're here, even if you don't know me, thanks for reading. Thanks for being someone who cared to see beyond the emotional mask I've been putting on for 25 years, and am still gradually learning how to take off.
Sometimes, though, the lack of contact grows exhausting. I wish those super old friends or even newer ones could just come over for dinner. I see them posting and I don't reach out either, because I know they can't, and they're not going to call me either. Because nobody can. Because the world is a market of exponentially growing labor, and you get to choose one person and maybe a hobby to really dedicate that "extra" unspent time to, as if even time is a currency. Why are we not living in paradise? What is humanity's endgame? Do you all really just want to suck all the resources out of the earth until there's nothing left, and then we explode all of the other remaining peoples of the world in a desperate scramble for scraps all over the depressed rotting corpse of Mother Earth? Is that not what is currently happening right now? Am I just destined to have to observe this shit and deal with it like everyone else does until my own cells implode and have no individually perceivable effect on my environment? What is the point of all these groundbreaking developments in science, in our understanding of the universe, and the reproduction of all of these people in our species, if I'm never going to be able to talk to them or share our cultures with one another, because in real life when people can't hide their face behind the black mirror, everyone is just so constantly rude and cold and two-faced to each other? In the America that kept all of its doors unlocked? The hatred needs to stop. Certainly, life is not given to everyone equally, but we could all be living in peace and actually supporting the less fortunate if we refused to keep this machine of war going for a while and took care of the people who need care. The kids kind of need this cycle to be broken to break this trance, this death march, this burgeoning idiocracy.
I'm so terrified all the time of the next widespread catastrophic disaster, inflicted by mankind or nature, upon mankind or nature, and I feel as though I can't share the feeling with anyone who isn't still close to me now for fear of disturbing the peace. Because anything slightly controversial is unspeakable or not really meant for anyone but my partner and I to worry about. I don't want to make even more conflict happen. That would just be bullshit for the people in my life. I want everyone to be happy. I don't want to bring my constant worries around with me like a ball and chain, but I am constantly reminded of the state of the world by the state of my own life. It seems like, to the vast majority of new people I'm introduced to, I'm not worth the trouble to get to know, and should fade quickly or hermit myself away somewhere warm and safe and untouchable with the few people I actually trust and otherwise stay quiet in the workplace.
At the end of the day, I'm not worried about the kids and our educational system for no reason. I feel as though my autistic need for near-constant laid back socialization and obsession-placating has slammed directly into the shitty way that the real world works in exactly the same way all of the kids in school now are going to feel too. And unfortunately, these hyperfixations and tics and learned behaviors and actual skills aren't really skills we can use for quick-growing gainful employment. This is what all us younger people are going to have to do because we have to join the workforce to survive, just like everyone always has. There will be workplace tantrums that could spell the end of entire industries. I'm responsible for a few myself already, not to that particular scale but certainly for taking a few days off that I legitimately couldn't have survived without. I just have it in the back of my head that at any moment we could reach that breaking point. It doesn't have to be my breaking point, or be caused by me, or be my fault or my generation's fault at all. Some random idiot wielding unlawful tariff powers could spell the death of the entire American steel industry and that has the potential to affect us all. Is this not exactly why we threw tea into the Boston harbor in our own country's history??? Just like so many other Americans who slipped through the cracks of this broken system and leaders that don't care about anything but the money and market value individuals can generate for them. Do we not all have intrinsic value as human beings?
Every mistake I've made has felt like the end of the world. This is because the system was made to cause us to feel this way at every point of failure, every deviation from the norm. You don't even get to hear about what's happening to the children, how we fail them, anymore except through the lens of what the technology is doing to them, because that is the contentious opinion that journalists nowadays are trying to sway people towards. No. The enemy of our peace of mind is the intense desire and longing of those who own the most social and capital power to feel something, some unattainable level of gratification or satisfaction somehow worthy of the people and cultures they sacrificed, to have their position. Again, what was, is, and will forever be. I refuse to be inauthentic anymore to anyone in the face of this unserious wave of developments looking to corrupt everything, every piece of art anyone in this world could say they loved or cared about before everything seemingly "went to shit." No. We found America's, capitalism's, extreme point of failure in 2008, and congress failed to do anything about correcting it - they didn't even TRY to do anything about it, they made it worse with Citizens United. This act of legislation did, in fact, make it easier for financial bubbles, just like the housing bubble, just like this dumbass AI bubble, to form. And we're staring this one right in the face and mocking it without participating in the updraft or hype, this time, because we can see it for what it is. We can't let the 20's happen again in the same way they literally already happened. It's such a stupid cycle to perpetuate. No, even the liberals refuse to help us.
I've always loved the ocean. Nobody seems to care about that place anymore even though it's so so so much of our planet's biosphere. No, we can't fix it alone, but how does that lead to - let's just cut all the funding for fixing that, who cares??? I don't get it. We have this ONE planet. I may seem otherworldly, but I care about this place a LOT. None of us are making it to a terraformed Mars or a cleaned up Earth if we can't work together.
As a writer, I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be someone like me while growing up with AI in the mix. What can they even talk about, seriously, with their peer group? There's no way they're all placid consumers, all only interested in the baby side of the world. I certainly wasn't. They're absolutely also right here with people like us on the internet, because it's a social vacuum that can never be allowed to turn off, lest we completely "lose touch" with everyone we know. All I've ever known is this loose superficial connection with people in real life who don't even get to know who I really am because I've always kept that "me" hidden. Why can't I try something new? I can. You can. It's happening every day, all the time. You just need to take the proper steps for yourself. I already came out to my doctor and she was cool about it.
Any kids like me out there, do yourself a favor and disconnect, keep being yourselves and keep doing what you dream of doing, as long as you can find something to be passionate about, you can make it work. Me? I think I'm going to keep doing this and producing music sometimes, I guess. I need some way to actually exercise my right to freedom of speech. Might as well let some swell internet friends and strangers in on the ride.
I mean oops sorry I'm an alien; pretend you didn't intercept any of that.