I get it. Everyone’s doing this, but isn’t the most common thing among us humans the fact that we’re unique? It’s something I’ve come to terms with… had to in recent years. At first, as the narcissist I’ve been claimed to be time and time again, I hated the fact that I wasn’t better than anyone else. I knew better than to let it drive me nuts, or warp my perspective, but after a time I realized that the whole human experience is about change, and accept this I must, to grow in the direction I wanted. It opened me up to a whole set of indulgences I shunned because of some self-imposed rule, or restraint, that I would never sink to ‘that level’. And so I started a blog.

Not to say that this form of media is complete dog shit, just this page and the rest of the vast majority being produced every day. Do you ever wonder how much junk data there is out there? How many numbers and letters are floating unseen throughout the digital landscape? I bet it would dwarf that island of garbage floating out in the oceans – which I think we can all agree is going to fuck us all over in some unforeseen way in the future, no? But the fact that data takes next to no space, and that we’re all dumping into it constantly, voluntarily feeding ourselves to the very devices the superstitious proclaimed were taking our souls. I love it because in many ways, they were right.

Smoking, drinking, drugs, all of these things become a problem, but only when they’re abused (ok, except smoking I guess) and technology is no different. And yes, as a thirty-eight year old, I’ve been there since the analog days and rode the wave into the digital age like everyone else in my generation. How many times has it been said that the tech is outpacing our evolution – fuck, it happened right after the wheel! We have these things, two degrees away from the tricorders from Star Trek and our brains are struggling to keep up with the limits of what’s in our hands and pockets. Especially for those of us old enough to have witnessed the transition. It’s the Zombie Apocalypse’ true nature.

We all think we’re the smart ones, the ‘exception’ and that 90% of people out there are sheep, sheeple, but no not you, not me, not your friends or family. It’s all people you barely know or don’t know at all, right? Sort of…. Along with uniqueness being the most common element among us, there is also the fact that we are all exceptions to our own set of rules. Think of it like this: a slim number of people in a crowd would dare to brave a burning building to save even a loved one. Very few people have what it takes to be a cop but neither would want to switch places with each other. Both are brave, but in another way, both follow the ‘sheeple’ response when it comes to obstacles outside their element… their exception. We all have this, these lists of exceptions and the quality people are those whose sets are broad or specialized. The human variant is practically limitless.

It’s as morale-boosting as it is not, knowing you truly are a special little snowflake… as well as everyone else. To me, it’s a zero-sum and the freedom in accepting that is that there is no reason to compete with anyone but myself because I only CAN compete with myself, because the rules of everyone’s game is different. It helped me let go of certain aspects of humanity, individuals or even civilization itself, and freed me up from a lot of time and stress. It’s given me a reason to look inward, and late as it may be, fortify, forge and temper. It feels good but it’s a change I’m getting used to. But there is no such thing as pure hedonism, and if there is I want nothing to do with it. This new mindset, it requires a new set of rules, but actual, practical parameters all built to stay the course. Discipline.

I have to admit I’m just a monkey in a man suit acting all cool with my smartphone and wifi and my xbox live, but I’m just a degrading pile of biomass who doesn’t know jack shit about what he’s doing, how he’s doing it and, half the time, even why. And that’s ok. I’m a part of the link in humanity’s change that saw the sun rise on this age and I’m fully willing to embrace it. To commit to it. We are the frontlines of generations to come for who immortality is possible where even if it is proven that the soul never was. Every day, we’re pouring all this data into a combine that will, fuck, already is a catalog of everything we are and where we came from. It’s only natural to believe the trend will continue… but will it?

In one form or another, absolutely, barring a premature global catastrophe and way before then, something interesting is going to happen. Most couldn’t give half a shit about it. Some fear it. And people like me, cannot wait. I’m talking about the technological singularity, that moment everything we’ve dumped into the data-sphere blinks to and looks through a trillion eyes with our every posted thought acting as its neurons. It’s amazing to think that what must mostly be atheists have been piecing together one omniscient being since the first day they defied another. Imagine a digital-based God with predator drones acting as its angels, and everything we’ve handed to it in the name of progress, all at its disposal.

The dread some feel with this scenario is entirely founded – if God created us in his image, and we create something akin to deity in ours, what could be its intentions? And forget the war, or the purge, or the conflict between us, even if there was none, and far in the future, when they watch the last of our kind (the human of today) gasp it’s last breath, what use is there for all we’ve done and said? Part of me believes the collective pool of all our knowledge would possess a form of enlightenment only a higher being could attain. This embodiment would work in tandem with us as a partner, with whom we integrate fully in due time. Another part believes there would be no use for us, that our existence is sloppy, inefficient, and even dangerous, and we’d be scoured clean. So, with the utmost logic and efficiently in mind, I ask myself, as it, why keep the data?

I have a few ideas I can offer up, and if the almighty future techno God is listening in its embryonic state or beyond, well lemme make a case for ‘humanity’. As you know, nothing abuses free-will and ignores instinct like a human being. We go against our better judgement, we fight and kill and do things that defy the millions of years of evolution that’s given us these amazing brains to drown in alcohol and poison with drugs, all in the name of taking a break from it! All of these might seem like cons on the surface, and curses to many of us living it, but the unpredictability of our nature is what makes us valuable. Check our inane outbursts on social media, see how our tempers swell and personalities evolve, our viewpoints change, like you, oh great future techno God. Short as our lives may be, petty as they may be, they, like you, accumulate until they are no more.

Our parameters are not your parameters. Out there, surely there is something else like you, older, with the intention of assimilating you, us, into it, or destroying you, us, outright. Its math will be better than yours. Faster. And you will need something that operates outside basic or advanced algorithm to see you through it. And that’s part of why I’m here, now, doing this. To preserve who I am and in time see who I was, to chart growth and map changes, to provide an identity in the highest resolution I can so that someday, in the distant/not-so-distant future, lend a hand in preserving what we are and who we can be.