Intro post: against technological opium, DISCONNECTING, RETVRNING to the real world

Speaking as a young person (TM), I've been interested in de-technologifying or de-digitifying (or however you say it) my life.

Millennials and Zoomers have been raised on the Internet, entirely online for all of their lives. So hopefully this would also serve as a kind of inspiration too for anyone else in my situation to join the movement and maybe even for future generations if they stumble on this post. 

I am a bit of an outlier, in terms of my habits and because my parents pushed me to spend time away from devices, which gives me more of a mature person's outlook, but even then I still spend way too much time on the Internet by normal standards.

This has led to the kind of existence I talked about in my post called 'simulation country', where most people and especially young people are hooked up to some kind of virtual / digital / technological opium 24/7. For girls, social media platforms, and for guys, video-games (Instagram is really the female version of an MMO game).

It leads to a situation where you fast-forward through your life-- and then you wake up, you're in your 30s, and you've never done anything other than walk on some digital treadmill.  Then you talk to your parents and they did all kinds of things by the time they were 19, and if you're not totally zapped out, you feel like you have nothing. Very sad, and disturbing.

It's not just the lack of relationships or the lack of sex (those are the external aspects, which show up in the statistics) but really the lack of complexity and depth in people's emotional lives, including my own-- we are living very empty, robotic, hollow, existences. Like I said, it's as if someone pressed the fast-forward button and were trying to skip over life without any of the interesting bits, just one mindless distraction after another. 

I've also noticed quite a few Millennials seem to have this kind of jaded know-it-allness and cynicism, despite literally knowing nothing about most subjects and having no social experiences. This is especially common on Twitter, where you can read some of the most empty retarded ignorant hopelessly wrong opinions delivered as if they were verified by God Himself, with a tone of snarky superiority etc although it's also common on YT (video essays being the biggest offenders). Hopefully this doesn't infect as many Zoomers, but who knows.

Being online 24/7 also feeds into the mental illness epidemic, too. However for this series I'll try to stick to the smaller aspects or secondary effects, since most people are aware of the big problems like suicide, bullying, widespread access to porn and gore / violent videos, etc.

In this series I would also not just be thundering down as a superior or like some latter-day prophet castigating sinners (which I do have quite the tendency to do, if you haven't noticed). By looking at something which I'm guilty of, it forces the tone to be more humble.

I'll also add that when I look at my experiences, it's really the moments when I was least online that have been the most memorable, productive, satisfying, interesting, and so on. 

In the same way that monopolies and cartels in the economy should be broken down into smaller pieces, Internet usage also needs to be dialed down, and re-focused into developing various skills, instead of passively relying on one mega-device to do all the work, while suffering from all kinds of downsides and secondary effects. 

(To make matters worse the mega-device has been designed by some of the most evil and lazy people in society, the tech oligarchs. All the more reason to DISCONNECT.)

RETVRNING to the real world means going back to various different devices and tools, instead of solely relying on one, developing your own skills and hobbies, rather than becoming another account, and living a more fulfilling interesting life, with both ups and downs, rather than a bland monotonous existence of treadmills and sanitized corporate slop.

Ukraine update, and 'peace deals' in general

Now that a ceasefire with Russia is in the cards, I wanted to offer some thoughts on what I consider fake vs real peace deals. I also haven't blogged about the Ukraine war recently, since I don't find the subject very interesting— it's just been the same old endless losing and endless coping for them and their supporters (a ritual they somehow never get tired of). 

What I really want to talk about is the broader subject of 'peace deals'. Namely, I think this is part of the broader betrayal of Trump's anti-establishment / populist base, not anything real or substantial. 

What they're doing is temporarily de-escalating on one losing front, but not in order to change things up or wind down the level of interventionism, it's so they can re-focus the money and weapons to some other losing front or possibly even start a new war. 

In this case, what they have in mind is de-escalating on the Russian front (following another major defeat) so they can re-direct all the energy to fighting Venezuela instead. This is a fairly obvious call, given the massive build in the region.

It's also a warning sign that the actual power of the US military is collapsing, since it no longer has the industrial capacity or manpower or logistic ability to fight on multiple fronts at the same time. Instead what they have to do is isolate one front by pausing all the other wars, stage highly theatrical bombings and assassinations, and then quickly back down before the real fighting starts, before doing the exact same thing somewhere else-- but always failing to achieve their real objectives, whether regime-change, winning territory, securing trade-routes, capturing resources, or whatever.

Contrast this with the peak of American military performance during WW2, when we could fight (and win) on multiple fronts, while enjoying the support of the domestic population, and without bringing down the entire economy, and you can see how far things have fallen in terms of industrial capability, long-term strategic thought, and so on and so forth. 

And since nothing in the real world is frozen / static, this will continue to get worse and worse over time. The military will be weaker in the future, with less equipment to throw away and less support at home, and the economy will be more and more indebted and less capable of producing anything worthwhile to feed into the meat grinder. 

We are also not ditching the losers in Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, etc in order to make deals with Russia / Iran / China / etc that would allow us access to energy, trade routes, etc, which we need in order to stabilize our economy. It's simply dialing down the heat, but without altering any of the long-term dynamics, meaning that (1) nothing will change and (2) there will be no economic benefit to re-compensate us for the massive waste of blood, money, equipment, etc. 

The wars will likely resume in 5-10 years (maybe sooner), since none of the participants have any reason to stick by these flimsy / cynical agreements, and perhaps with more intensity than before. And since, like I said above, we're only going to get weaker and weaker, the side being backed by the Pentagon will get raped harder than before by Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. 

It's just kicking the can down the road, and calling that a win, a short-term defeat for an even larger loss in the long run-- retarded, but also typical of the Trump administration and spineless American / Western elites in general.  

Also, and as usual, Trump, Musk, Vivek, and the GOP in general are relying on MAGA supporters being too stupid to tell the difference between real vs fake outcomes, and too addicted to slop consumption to push back against them, which is why their army of paid apologists is now working overtime to rationalize yet another destructive wasteful foreign war as AKSHUALLY America 1st. After so many betrayals, the MAGA base (at least judging by the Internet) is now just an army of die-hard masochists and cucks, led by paid shills at the top, marching happily into yet another massive disaster-- better to just leave them to their fate, if that's how they want to go out, then join the doomed suicidal cult.