I want to be careful writing these blawg posts. I've been mindfully observing when they teeter on the edge of broadcasting a journal entry and don't want these pieces to become public posts of what should be private conversations with a therapist. I do however wish to share pieces of experiences, thoughts, feelings, and little tidbits of life here and there, while preserving the integrity of the mystery of me and not oversharing too much.
I've noticed (as I'm sure many have) a saturation of emotional content online in recent years. “Influencers” divulging increasing numbers of details of everything from their genetic complications, mental health challenges, and anything that remotely resembles “sadbait”.
Then of course there is the more direct approach of crying on camera.
I think by now most people can recognize “ragebait” videos and are familiar with algorithmic prioritization of divisive content. There's been a long history in media of this practice. The current president of the United States has had a great run using the negative biases of media to continue to be highlighted in it on a daily basis. And of course there is a certain responsibility of power and how it is used to continue the media onslaught to (quoting Lippman's 1922 book, Public Opinion) “manufacture consent”.
Consumer Demand for Cynical and Negative News Frames by Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka is a cool piece of research out of McGill University investigating the demand side of negative content rather than analyzing the supply side. There does seem to be some interesting psychology at play in terms of what people say they are interested in seeing, and what they actually end up clicking and watching when given the choice between a neutral or uplifting story vs. danger, crisis, or meltdown.
The town-cryers though. The sadness. The “core-core” posts of a certain tone of music being played over hopeful, melancholic, or dramatic montages have also found success. It works man. Movies that make you cry are often very good. The algorithms seem to be picking up what we're putting down in terms of strong emotional reactivity and prioritization.
Anyways, I write all this to say. I'm not sure about it.
To quote a good friend of mine Kevin, I think there are always multiple truths.
Last night in my Irish class, where we often will linger on grammar conversation or a unique Etymology of a certain word, someone mentioned the term “broadcasting” itself was picked up by radio, in the early stages of public media. It came from the world of farming, as a farmer spread their seeds across their field, they “broadcasted” them. I couldn't help but think what a fascinating clue this was to the function of media in society. And it does make me wonder about what kinds of seeds I want to sow.
I had a thought the other day in the shower.
I am quite fascinated by the m y s t e r y of life. The liminal spaces of dreams or the notes between the notes in music. I devote a lot of time and energy in my life discussing strange phenomena, or yet undiscovered truths of the universe with both myself and loved ones.
The funny thought in the shower occurred around the topic of extraterrestrials and non-human intelligence. I don't really wish to convince anyone of anything here. Non-human intelligence simply exists. Of course one can look at the recent developments of quantum computing, “artificial" intelligence, or the infinite wisdom of the animal world, even a plant or a mushroom. Non-human intelligence simply exists.
The point I'm trying to make here is that there does seem to be a lot of noise in the last few years of people who claim to work in government who have spotted aircraft that don't move in ways that make sense to our current understanding of physics, and even the pilots themselves who come into contact with these craft having strange or altered memories after, often detailing a “second trip” or a continued journey taking place in their mind beyond the documented encounter. They are forever changed by it.
And even in ancient times people documented strange experiences with “angels” or cave paintings represented some animal human hybrid or encounter with a star or circle in the sky. Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything here. These stories and depictions are well documented.
I'm also not trying to say it's definitely aliens, or it's definitely angels, or the people were definitely insane, or they definitely just made it up, or they were definitely cataloging a myth with intention and knowledge of it's fiction, or even that they definitely took some consciousness altering substance to have the encounter. I don't know at all, it could be any individual or combination of those possibilities or some unknown thing I haven't even considered. I personally tend to gravitate towards classified undiscovered military tech for the aircraft stuff. And for the person-to-person encounters, I sway towards the “future us” theory that maybe we are leaping through time so to speak to have these experiences and perhaps our future selves have gotten so advanced they can manipulate time to visit themselves in the past and nudge the past them along to get to a future where they can end up there in the past. It's all a little mind boggling.
I do encourage people to look into google's latest quantum computing capabilities and it's seeming ability “to jump in time” to solve equations previously thought impossible. They do seem to be jumping ahead to grab information from the future.
I am in the shower though, thinking all of this through. And I have this thought.
We always want the aliens to be so advanced in terms of intellect. Even the term non-human intelligence admits a sort of cognition bias. Most pop culture depictions of androids, aliens, or advanced life forms seem to have forgone their other faculties to prioritize brainpower and hyper rational reasoning. What is intelligence though? A thinker I admire, once said, “That's the problem with artificial intelligence or the quesiton of ‘sentience’, we haven't defined these ideas properly ourselves.”
I agree with that.
And my shower thought kind of fell along those lines.
What if the alien is a feeling?
What if the most advanced “us” is actually advanced in terms of feelings.
What does an advancement in feelings even look like? Feel like?
Maybe our feelings will be the vehicle that guides us where we need to go. Maybe an alien encounter is as simple as a fleeting feeling that comes after a certain experience and moves us towards a concrete decision. Maybe feelings hide the secrets of time. Maybe this is why our algorithms keep feeding them back to us. We've cut one another off from humanity. We're isolating further and further into phone world. Niche online forums and political silos. We don't get the real time feedback in our nervous systems of how someone else's breathing effects ours, how much tone of voice matters, and micro interactions and facial expressions. This is what we evolved for, what we evolved from. To relate in these ways.
Maybe our feelings can translate faster than the speed of light. The speed of information? The feelings states themselves being some form of inward time travel or extraterrestrial encounter.
Behind the screen the algorithm provides a cheap replacement. Or maybe a hint that the strong feelings we crave on screens, are the very same freedom we can chase beyond it. A future of deeper and deeper feeling. Advancing us to the dawn of a new age.
That was my thought in the shower anyways. Or maybe it was a feeling?