The User and the Used

 I happened to read part of a story last night about the lamentable situation of folks on some isolated island who had no access to the cellphone/social media culture. There was a photo of brown people sitting listlessly among the huts of some little village, apparently not knowing what to do with themselves, or perhaps pining away over the lack of something they had never had to opportunity to experience, having been denied the exhilarating heroin of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, and so on. Boo hoo, right? 

I can't help but suspect that they are better off. 

Later, I watched part of a Netflix documentary about these very platforms, narrated by employees or former employees of those same platforms, addressing what they had eventually seen as the unexpected results of where all this has ended up, which is essentially in commercial manipulation and mass mind control. Every time we use the platform, we are being closely examined, analyzed, cataloged, and then nudged this way or that in a manner that ultimately benefits the platform itself, for we the users, not the platforms, are the product.

And we are addicted. Life without this can barely be imagined--and if you are younger than I, it really cannot be imagined at all. We are born now with a cellphone in the hand. I have seen 3 year old children as fixated on the phone screen as any adult. Every morning when I awake, I reach for the cell phone, switch the world back on. Is it still there? Ah, thank God. Bells and chimes and ding-dongs sing out from the re-awakened cell, messages pop up, and I am captured once again. 

Do you know that if you are idle for very long, the platform will poke you? That's right, they know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake, they know if you've been using or not, so use for goodness' sake. A message shows up, a story, a prompt, beckoning you to click. You must! The platform wants to use its product. 

It's all pretty creepy, really. 

And I will probably end up dutifully posting this on Facebook, just as they had predicted. 

Shorting Out

 It suddenly occurred to me yesterday afternoon that Hey, I'd better make that call I've been meaning to make to the bank so that I can update my address. This is important because my card will expire in October and the bank will be sending a new one. Sending mail to an address in Indonesia is a difficult enough proposition on its own. Sending it to an old address would be fatal. 

So, late in the evening, about 10 o'clock, I suppose, I called the toll free number for Chase and, amazingly got connected straightaway. I stated my business and proceeded to read out my current address, spelling each word. At the conclusion of this process, the Chase rep said, "This is the address we have, sir." 

"Huh? Really? How can it be?" 

What sort of magic is this, I wondered. 

"Well ... according to our records, you called two months ago and made this change."

Hmm. How interesting. That was me? 

Oh well, I guess it's a new variation on the old saying: If you succeed the first time, try, try again anyway. 

I'm either way ahead of myself or way behind myself. Not sure which. 

Oomba

 I've sort of rediscovered a nice coffee place down on the beach. It's called Oomba and is actually owned by an acquaintance of mine. I've long known of it, but just recently began visiting again. I suppose that one pleasant thing about any place on the beach these days is that they are all pretty much deserted, thanks to COVID, which means I can choose wherever I want to sit and read in peace and quiet while I enjoy my coffee. Something good about COVID after all? 

Last time I went there it occurred to me as well that I could easily take a swim in the ocean if I wanted. The only trouble would be getting down the rather steep (but brief) stone stairway to the beach. In 'the olden days' I enjoyed swimming nearly every day and I guess I kinda miss it. But it had become so difficult to find a quiet place on the beach and kinda too much trouble. But I might actually try it out again here at Oomba. 

Long Time No Talk

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

 I had not heard from Ira in quite some time. Exactly how long it had been, I cannot say. My appreciation of the passage of time is getting increasingly shaky. But I will guess anyway that it has been at least two months since I heard from this young friend of mine. I use the term young as a comparative to my own age, while understanding, of course, that she would not think herself young as accounted by those who are actually young. In any case, she is some 25 years younger than I, and therefore young.  The passage of time is a comparative matter as well, and so I should note that in the past, for more than a year's time, Ira had contacted me nearly every day, sometimes more than once a day, so that two months seemed indeed a long period of silence. 

And then today I received a message, sent from an older platform, under, however, a new profile (for she had at some time quit and then had rejoined the old avenue of communication). 

"Dadddyyyy", she wrote. 

Yep. Different platform, different profile, same old (young) Ira. She has called me Daddy nearly as long as I have known her. 

Well, it turns out that she had deleted me from her contacts, along with every other male friend, at the request, or rather the demand, of a certain man with whom she had had a long running long distance relationship, most of which seemed to involve an endless cycle of fighting and breaking up. Now they are breaking up again. Forever this time. As always. 

I well remember having long talks with her previously about this guy, who for all appearances, or according to her testimony anyway, is an intensely jealous, insecure fellow, whose answer to his own insecurities seems to be to control, restrict, and monitor her every movement and social interaction. Ira has actually spent time with him in person, but for the most part they have conducted their relationship online, as he lives on the other side of the world and cannot often get to Indonesia. A rather silly idea to begin with, I reckon--these online 'relationships', I mean--and certainly not a situation suited to one weak in trust. As it is, he has attempted to surveil her by a combination of bits and pieces of news from her friends (or enemies) along with bits and pieces of his own worst imaginings. 

Moreover, though generally tormented by the very idea that she has had relationships prior to her relationship with him, he will often insist on interrogating her about the details of those relationships, which seems to me a decidedly masochistic pursuit on his part.

When Ira and I began talking, more than a year ago as I've said, we enjoyed the most entertaining conversations, full of laughter and silliness, but as time passed our conversations became more and more centered on this guy, and more and more troubling. I made a considerable effort to counsel her, to encourage her to get out from under a toxic situation. And yet the more I talked to her, the more I realized that I was not telling her anything that she did not already know. In short, she chose to remain involved and she chose ultimately to accede to his demand that she delete her community of friends and submit to surveillance such as he could manage. 

Perhaps there is some sort of attraction in this for some women, the idea of being 'possessed' by a man. Or perhaps there are some women who grant an authority to certain men over their freedom because they have been taught that men have a right to that authority. Or perhaps they tolerate such monitoring in the hope that it will prove their own loyalty in the relationship. I don't know. 

Have you ever known one of these people who come to you for advice in an unequal or abusive or untrusting relationship, and who seem to understand every bit of your best council and admonition, and agree that to continue under the existing circumstances would be futile at the least and quite possibly dangerous at the worst, and yet proceed on the exact same course as soon as the conversation is concluded? 

I have. 

And so by and by you take them less seriously. It's a broken record. You have wasted your breath.  There is a great difference between needing help and receiving help. It's sad, but there it is. You're a wonderful young woman, Ira, and I love you, but I've got to change the subject. 

One Way In And No Way Out

 Ever notice how logic is of no use in a dream? Only later when one awakes and begins to turn the thing over in his mind does he notice the various impossibilities within the dream story, and yet these impossibilities were of no matter while dreaming.

I dreamed last night of travelling to an abandoned house somewhere in a hilly country. The weather was like that of Oregon, wet, gray, perhaps sprinkling rain some of the time. I don't remember why I had gone to the house, although I know there was a reason. I may have been looking at a house for sale or for rent, but when I entered the house, I found it still furnished. The rooms I walked through were dark and gloomy and there was something that just felt wrong about the place. I saw nothing and heard nothing, and yet there was a feeling of uneasiness, unpleasantness within the place. 

When I tried to leave, I found that there was no road that would lead me away. Every route I tried ended in a dead end, conveying me back to the house. I felt both frustrated and fearful and wondered how I had gotten here in the first place, for if there was no road leading out, there cannot have been a road leading in. 

The next thing I knew, I was describing the situation to my first wife and her husband, a miraculous circumstance given that it had already been determined that I could find no way to escape the house. In any case, I described the situation to them, stressing that I really needed to go back and get my car and find a way out of there. Apparently, they took me back, I returned to my car for another try, and happened eventually to notice a very small road which I had not noticed before, no wider than a sidewalk, and this turned out to be the avenue so impossible to find beforehand. 

The next problem was that I needed to get back to my car--never mind that just a minute ago I had been in my car--which, at this point anyway, had been parked further down the hill in the city. As we reached the city however, by foot now, I realized that I had no idea whatsoever of where I had parked the car. It could be anywhere! Nor could I fathom, as I woke bit by bit, how the car could have been in the city when the earlier problem involved being trapped, with the car, at the abandoned house.  

It was a troubling dream during the dreaming, and then again troubling later to the waking mind for its inconsistencies. But of course the two troubles are totally different, aren't they, the one being a trouble to the soul and the other a trouble to the mind. 

What could this have meant? I don't know. At this time, I truly have no idea. Displacement would seem to be a theme. Desperation? Entrapment? Futility? Stagnation? 

I don't know. You tell me. 

Go Team Go

 Yesterday, I was unfriended by two people on Facebook and unfollowed by two blog readers. Welcome to the election high season! 

You know, I have unfriended only one person in my long Facebook career. I don't even know when I started using the app actually--maybe 2009? Anyway, after the election of 2016, there was one friend of mine, a close personal friend in the past, who became so extremely aggressive and insulting that, yeah, I went ahead and deleted him. I don't really mind when people disagree with me, but it's the transition to personal attacks that cross the line between reasonable debate and simple rudeness that I find intolerable. Other than that however, I have no problem at all with examining viewpoints that differ from my own and certainly don't hold them against those who hold them. How else would I learn what other people believe and why they believe it?  

But as with the period leading up to the 2016 election, one finds once again a fondness for slogans, repetitive falsehoods, and fashionable taunts ('snowflake') to be in vogue rather than any attempt at measured or intelligent debate. This makes interaction on the political level pretty much senseless. I for one am really not interested in blurting out familiar chants and platitudes, which seem all merely tools to be used in restricting one's own fuller appreciation of any issue or conflict. 

Militiaman

 A couple of days ago, a 17 year old boy, having decided for some reason that he knew, despite his tender age, what is best for people and for society in general, having concluded for some reason that he possessed full comprehension of the complex issues of law enforcement, social protest, racial tensions and a host of other adult world considerations, forthwith deputized himself and, with the encouragement and assistance of his own mother, carried an AR-15 assault rifle into the hot zone of Kenosha, Wisconsin where a combination of demonstrations and riots were occurring in response to the police shooting of a black man. The result was that instead of protecting anyone or anyone's property, the young man ended up murdering two people and essentially ending his own life. How it happens that plain citizens in Wisconsin are allowed to carry assault rifles, I do not know. At the same time, I doubt whether a black citizen could have carried an assault rifle into a public area and lasted five minutes without being shot. In the back. Seven times. And yet this boy was allowed to freely walk about, in full view of the police, lugging his fully loaded rifle. In any case, Wisconsin laws being whatever they are, the boy will now likely spend many years in jail. The boy has, with the approval of his mother, ended his own childhood and removed himself from the life of his family. He will not graduate from high school, he will not go to college, he will not work an honorable job or contribute to society or marry a woman or raise a family. Nor was he part of any 'well organized militia', as his lawyers intend to argue. He was a boy who wanted to play the part of the heroic sheriff in the wild west town, ill-equipped, and naturally so at 17, to comprehend the deadly finality of real life, to understand that real guns shoot real bullets and kill real people and that the transgressions of real laws bring about real and inescapable consequences. 'He is a good kid', some have said, and he probably is a good kid--a good kid who should have stayed home, grown up, learned about life, expanded his horizons, widened his world of social contacts, matured beyond the simple world of action movies and video games. The last thing our troubled world needed, after all, was a 17 year old self-appointed militiaman.