Age of the mind

For a decade now, humanity has transitioned into a new age. 

You wouldn’t say caught up in chain-linked turbulent events streaming constantly through the media filter of reality and the trials and tribulations of daily life. However, the invention and widespread distribution of a miniature device opened up new avenues of thought but also new issues. In 2012, the smartphone reached the threshold of one billion units sold. In other words, one billion people around the world got hooked to a global network of information. Today, it’s estimated that there are around 6.9 billion smartphones in use, approximately 86% of the world's population.

The smartphone has become such an indispensable commodity for some that going about one's life without it is almost inconceivable. It’s always in hands-reach and when a thought pops up so does the device. You go to it to check the time and you get the news, you go for news and you get a jump-scare. It became like an appendix to a mind choked by excessively consuming information, much of which is of poor quality, that eventually generates perpetual stress. No wonder psychological issues and burnout have seen a rise parallel to this novel development, in a predominantly materialistic society there’s little to no education and discipline on how to keep your head clean and healthy.

Between instant communication, non-stop entertainment and all-round commercial endeavors, the user also gets the comfort of not using any critical thinking in dealing with various issues but two clicks away receives a ready-made answer that fits its idealised view of the world. Various appealing media outlets and hoards of celebrity idols funnel a range of topics that make the unwary user feel well informed and like they have some say in the matter.

In such a climate it’s no wonder that the world might seem like it’s going crazy sometimes, maybe it is, or maybe its just the heat. Increasingly stuck in an echo-chamber reality of the mind, walled in by tight social bubbles with familiarities, approvals and validations and superimposed by a thick virtual reality and further away from the actual reality with it's increasingly pressing issues. Who has time for actual reality when you can kick back and numb-out from manically mentally masturbating to some fantasy provided by your favorite streaming service. Right?

I try to keep myself away from such thoughts and the crippling pessimism you can easily slide into with such discombobulating prospects, but then again there’s also some good things going on and one of them is not the alleged artificial intelligence crushing the creative industries with mediocrities but rather the backlash of the creative minds forced into a corner.

We are still in a period of transition, but into what exactly it's hard to say. The age of the mind, the age of madness, the age of delusion or the age of mindfuck, all seem like fair titles at the moment.

Artificial spirituality

The way artificial intelligence has captivated the hearts and especially the minds of some people lately, leads one to think that it might represent a spiritual manifestation of a society that has grown entrapped in artificial habitats, away from their natural, organic condition with which they can hardly associate anymore.

Since the down of humanity, religions have been bolstered by creative manifestations that we broadly call the humanities. Art, music, poetry, dance, theater and philosophy are such fundamental manifestations found at the core of every religion. However, nowadays, such expressions are experienced in a deeply artificial context and away from a genuine social context. They are experienced remotely through the screen, in pixel renderings and copper coil vibrations that play out in our mind and gravely lack the benefits of direct contact with the actual creative manifestation in an actual social space. Even the act of socialising has degenerated to the pitiful point of sitting enclosed in an artificial space, pounding a keyboard to an insubstantial end, perpetually tangled in a conversation with hyperconceptual characters living in our mind rather than another person, where the information we receive through the screen is narrated and acted out in our head, placing an emotional twist and tone on every word we read.

The same inclination can be noticed with our foods, where they are no longer the byproducts of a natural, organic process, but forced to be grown by artificial ideals. Generically modified fruits and vegetables, forced grown with chemical fertilizers and infused with residual pesticides and herbicides. The same goes with a range of meats coming from animals that no longer live and grow by natural laws in habitats suitable for them, but have a short and miserable existence in artificial spaces jacked with concentrated feeds and heavily medicated to ensure they successfully reach the chopping treadmill in record time. However, even though this sounds like a nightmare, this practice has been hypernormalised to the point we can hardly consider that it has crossed the borders of insanity.
The ideal of giving a product a longer shelf life and even making it aesthetically appealing overshadows its vital nutritional qualities to the point that it can hardly be called food anymore, but a poor surrogate tailored to the ideals of the market and the artificial intellect that fails to intuitively recognise the genuine from the illusion. Objectively we eat to keep ourselves healthy and functioning; subjectively, most people eat to stimulate their senses. In a sinister way, we turned our foods into physical hyperconcepts, making it seem like the actual thing and even enhancing it’s aesthetic value so it would appeal to our artificial ideals.

Artificially grown food, artificial social interactions and artificial aspirations, all consolidate an uncanny habitat that plays a heavy mental influence on it’s unwary inhabitants.
Is it that the hype around artificial intelligence might have little to nothing to do with the program and its benefits, but represents the intellect of the person that that has grown accustomed to an artificial existence and the hyperconcept of artificial intelligence might point to the intellect of the believer and not the program?