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B. Allen Paine's avatar

It has me, it already has me. I have been swimming in content like this for years, and it has become a sort of echo chamber. It is like I have to read this stuff to convince myself, but that has been the cycle for a long time. I look around for people who have taken this seriously enough to "sell it all and buy the field," and I have none in close proximity to me. They are all virtual beings whom I have read. I don't know what I would do without all those who agree with me. I have no mentor, example, or friend to sort this out with. No one to gather volition and agency with so I can take this damn thing on in the most practical way. I just keep reading and trying to find community online, but the medium does not seem to provide that. Lots of words, images, and talking heads, and me, stuck in a consumption cycle and swimming in a fishbowl, being suffocated by the waste. The whole techno eco-system has me. The phone is always there talking to me, but I don't know how to chuck the damn thing. I am an addict without a rehab clinic. Where does one go to detoxify long enough to get it out of the system and acquire a sort of remembering? Remembering of a time I did not constantly feel anxious, constantly feel overwhelmed. I can't even remember what it is like to feel fully present, to have joy, to amble about like a child in a world of wonder, to feel normal. Now that this unedited rant and confessions are here, I am tempted to just delete it. To go outside in my bare feet, rub dirt in my hair, braid flowers into my beard...something...anything to get on with the change that I aspire to bring down from the castle in the sky. Thank you for enduring this rant or whatever the F*** it is.

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Pairodocs's avatar

The image of "Sydney" as some demonic being struggling to be born sent a chill down my spine. When I was a teenager, a friend and I played with Ouija boards for a period of time. Until they started to scare us. Without going into details, some things happened which I could not (and cannot to this day) explain. Supernatural things. Things I would dismiss outright if I hadn't experienced them myself.

I have 15 years of post-secondary eduction, including a medical degree and post-graduate training in psychiatry. I have never been particularly religious--although I am becoming more so as I get older. I'm well aware of cognitive biases and the "power of suggestion" but, however hard I try, I cannot explain away what happened when I was a teen. Having experienced these things, I am much more open to your idea that the "principalities and powers" described in the bible are real things. Things which we don't understand and which we "usher in" at our peril. I can't explain it beyond this, and I feel a teensy bit foolish even trying. But there you go. Another brilliant essay, Mr. Kingsnorth.

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