The Missing Ekon

The loads. The heavy burdens. The Huron. The Jesuits. All a long time ago. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps it's all hubris and misguided idealism. A lonely cascade of extinction reaches into the depths of all of us. "You can do anything you put your mind to." The resilient lie that sells books. Lots of books. We grow up believing it. The lie believed, is easier than the truth faced. The truth? There is no Santa, no Easter Bunny, no free rides, no way we can actually do anything we want.

So what of being happy? Truly happy? What is happy? 'Happy' is financial security? Happy is having the right things, or the right friends? Material possessions and things govern and fuel our euphoric sensation of 'happy'. 'Happy' is purely anamorphic. A brain awash in endorphin subjectivity. I prefer contentment. I accept this. I own this. I am 'OK' with this. Endorphins appear when we are missing the Ekon.

Muse. To think, or mediate deeply. To ruminate thoughtfully. To mentally bear a heavy burden. A-muse, or rather 'anti-muse', the opposite of muse. A video game. A carnival ride. Football. Thoughtless and mindless. An activity that provides the pause we need from reality. Amusement, the cancer that brings 'happy'. Amusement, the enemy of the Ekon.

Seeking the easy. Seeking the status-quo. The middle. The warm. Room temperature we look to the extrinsic, outside of the inside for a representation of the 'real'. What we are is entropy. Our problem? Not technology. Not Facebook. Not badminton. Not football. We. It is 'we' who are the problem. No thought, no mind. Ideas are dead. Nobody reads. No heavy burdens. No Constitution. No middle-class. No freedom. No Braveheart. The missing Ekon.

Morphine for the soul. Amusement works like drugs in the blood. The heart pumps it to the extremities first. Then to the organs. Then to the mind. The burden is there, but we cannot feel it. It will come back around. Someday. When we hurt the most from not hurting. When the herd is thinned. When group-think thinks not. The tank gets drained. Karl Marx had it wrong. Happy (not religion) is the opiate of the masses. Thoroughly amused we have lost the missing Ekon. Amused, we cannot see, the next iteration.

The Essential 'Next'

Nobody reads, the words are lost, the ideals are gone. Where were they to begin with? Just one form of 'liberty' being transferred to another. Another version of liberty, another iteration of it. Each iteration being a shadowy reflection of the next. It's the essential 'next'. What will the 'next' freedom essentially be?

The local DMV has it right...'Driving is a privilege not a right...'. The unfortunate ones hear this often. Recalcitrant TSA's say it....but differently. 'You must give up some liberty to fly', you could add 'to drive, to work, to live'. Each iteration, each essential 'next' requiring the passage of some legislation. The insidious maniacal chuckle after the statement, 'It's for your own good. It's your essential next'.

Porn scanners at every airport. Strip you down, rob you, take you, dehumanize you. There's human evil behind every machine, behind every bolt, every cog. "How do you destroy a nation? Pay one half of the population to kill the other half." The soul of the TSA, the soul of the DMV, the soul of Homeland. The essential next.

Interstate checkpoints. The inevitable next. "Why are you here? What is the purpose of your visit? Where are you coming from? How long do you plan to visit?" The questions, the strip-searches, full-cavity. The crimes justified in the context of security, much different than safety. Invasive and peering you are monitored from one day to the next. When you are born, when you eat, when you die. A catalog of information, a digital profile, tucked away in the bowels of a computer until...you object. You terrorist. The essential next.

So we wait, and watch for the next iteration.

What's Next?

One blog after another. Each becoming more exact and more precise than the last. I was blogging back when blogging wasn't cool, then it was, now it isn't again. Nobody reads. Talking to my dad today we discussed some ills. "Nobody reads.", he said. "Nobody reads.", I replied. Not necessarily true, people read, kind of..

I suck down a cold can of Coke. A luxury I indulge in often. Pondering on many things, trying to determine where my thoughts will lead me. A kind of philosophical adventurer I jump from stray thought to stray thought. Knowing whatever topic I tackle, I'll tend to offend someone. If they read, that is..

Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, Fascists, a slew of words that get bandied about on any major news network. The words don't mean anything anymore. They get re-defined and used so often that the emotional smack is now lost forever. Like the word 'Nigger'. It's not nice to use that word, especially by a white man. The word has lost it's intensity. We know this when we watch movies, or listen to music, one black person uses it to define another. We don't even flinch any more, lest a white man says it. It's a verbal culture because nobody reads..

Nobody reads, the words are dead, and ideals have been lost. A natural progression I suppose. If I get a reader to actually finish the essay I am surprised and elated. Read the first paragraph, then comment something shallow and meaningless. Something benign like, "Great post!" That's about it. Nobody got the idea. A few will get to the word 'Nigger' that I used in the above paragraph and post something harsh. Our society has to keep racism alive. Racism provides jobs, just ask Jesse Jackson. "Ha! There it is!" You might say. "He's a Republican. He's a conservative. He's a Fascist." If I am it doesn't matter, because nobody reads..

So, what's next? One era, melding into another, one year bleeding into the next, hardly noticeable if it weren't for the changing of the seasons. The leaves turn auburn, then brown, then are gone. Only to be replaced by small buds, flowers, then the thin green veil that continues the cycle. Is society this way? Is every season, every iteration like the last, like the next? A repetitive process, a cyclical rhythm continues to elude us. Just different enough to disguise itself so we believe we are doing something new? It's lost in any case because nobody reads..

It wasn't long ago that nobody read. Nobody read because few knew how. Scribbling on small scraps of paper, people 'made their mark' because they couldn't write. One social tapestry after another. We all know how to read, write, and most definitely type. But nobody reads, not really. A few 'Facebook' comments, maybe just enough to 'Google' something. Amazing that we have this 'World Wide Web' and aside from purchasing, social networking, and porn it is used for not much more. Piles and piles of knowledge and data have been painstakingly typed into this electronic medium. But nobody reads, the words are dead, ideals have been lost, so we just wait and watch for the next iteration.