The Big Disconnect – by Brad I.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of post-collegiate soul searching lately. Looking at my place in the world and wondering where my efforts would be most effectively applied. Seems pretty straight forward, but unforuntately, it isn’t. Things are pulling from all directions now. We don’t have a youth movement, our wars are manufactured (and thus, pretty tough to get behind on a personal level) and our counterculture is bought and sold for $9.95 with the click of a button. It is a spiritual war now, and it’s completely internal. Separating fact from fiction, distraction from value, and love from desire is the real challenge now. They have us right where they want us.

Right now I’m going with the theory that most of this has principally been triggered by a trend in the last decade or so where things have shifted from the idea of ‘segments’ to the specific individual. Myspace, cell phones, blogging, MTV Cribs, Viacom, Clear Channel and a host of other forces have yielded a generation of people utterly obsessed with themselves. An army of one. I’ll be the first to admit I’m no different. I’m vain as fuck, I wear my identity on my sleeve, and I post things like this as a form of catharsis more than a vehicle of influence. To make matters worse, the ‘so what’ mentality that was romanticized in the late 80s alt-rock movement has come back to truly screw us. Maybe it’s a hangover from the Reaganomics era, but it seems like ‘The Machine’ caught on, and they’ve been honing their manipulation skills ever since. So now we’ve got an administration who bullshitted their way into office by preying on the faith of the bible-thumpers, the greed of the rich and their insatiable thirst, and the fear of the rest of us by convincing us that we’ll certainly die an early and agonizing death without their protection. And what’s the backlslash? A resounding “whatever.” Go buy another toy and forget a little longer. Get hooked on reality tv and ignore the gauntlet dropping right in front of you.

Who’s to blame? Obviously there’s no simple answer. But I can say this: if history is any indicator, social change happens through youth movements and youth movements are ignited by confrontational art of various forms. But everything seems so passé now. Punk rock is over 30 years old by now, and what passes for punk now can sit comfortably next to a Sheryl Crow tune on the PA system of Nordstrom’s. So where did we turn? We turned to ourselves, of course. And while I certainly endorse the ‘ol “fuck this, I’m doing it my way” adage, it’s taken on such massive (and sometimes misappropriated) proportions that we’re all completely disconnected now, on an existential level. Sure we can chat and call each other with incredible ease now, but for what purpose? We’ve become completely enamored with our own narcissism. There’s no point in listening to other people when you’re busy trying to prove to everyone that you’ve already got it figured out. You’re elite, you know the big secret, and you aren’t sharing. Unless of course, we want to fuck you, or give you money. Or both.

I guess I don’t have a firm grasp on the bigger picture either. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who’re fighting the good fight, who know what the fuck is up and don’t need to constantly appease their insecurities by pushing other people away on the pretext of ‘cool’ or ‘pretty’ or ‘rich.’ But a brief look around has convinced me that most of these people have locked themselves away from the center stage, defeated by an endless series of obstacles designed to keep them from stirring up emotion in the larger sphere of culture. Some of the older dudes, the ones who made the decision to lead instead of follow, still make an effort. Guys like Noam Chomsky, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Henry Rollins, and host of other people are still out there trying to fight the good fight. But is it just me, or does it seem like a feeble attempt? I’d like to think these people are relevant with the younger generation right now, but ultimately, I get this feeling like they’re still clinging to the topics they originally championed, and that can only go so far with so many people. It’s like they’re ready to pass the torch, but nobody’s reaching for it.

So we each follow our own paths, leading these double lives. There’s our daytime existence, the 9 to 5, where we basically turn off our humanity and sell our lives to the machine by the hour. And then, on evenings and weekends, we retaliate by distracting ourselves from the obvious – the fact that we’re just running down the clock and totally complacent about it. We convince ourselves that it’s just a little longer, that you only have to tolerate this bullshit until your ship comes in. And the result is that we’re all perpetually waiting for something better. Living in a constant holding pattern, hoping that some external force is going to swoop down and right all the wrongs and give this whole existence thing some meaning. In the meantime, it’s another day, another dollar, another payment, another comment on your homepage, another reassurance that you’re not alone in your hidden desolation and that beauty and truth are just around the corner. What if they’re not? What if they never come? What if your ship never comes in? Was all the compromise worth it?

I realize none of these are questions that have any concrete answers, but goddamnit, if I have an opportunity to pose them to a larger audience than myself, I’m going to take advantage of it. Because the balance is so far from our favor now, we have to do whatever we can to gather our collective strength to tell the monster in the suit and tie to FUCK OFF. If we don’t, what’s stopping us from the full realization of Orwell’s dystopian fears? I think this is one of the reasons I pushed to add forums to SN – and I sincerely hope they’ll get used as a vehicle for inspiration, subversion, and of course, more rants like this one.

We all need a push sometimes.

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