First Blog Post EVAR XDDD (donot steel)

[link—standalone]

Hello! I’m finally posting on my blog after creating it over a year ago. Not sure why I’ve become interested in it now. It’s probably because my life is a bit more stable now, at least externally. Internally, I continue to be mostly disordered. I can’t recall a single moment in my life where I felt truly organized. As such, this first post will just be a scattershot of various thoughts, feelings, impressions, and hopefully, a landmark on my journey to becoming a more structured person.

Firstly, it’s quite clear to me why I’m so disorderly; technology plays a large part. I was among the first children to be introduced to the world of portable screen entertainment. I can hardly remember most of my childhood after I received my first handheld console at the age of six. Mostly everything from the screenless life of that period has become a blur. This could be unique to me, however, since it seems many other people remember their childhoods. What makes something memorable, I wonder? Initially, it would seem that something extraordinary imprints itself on your memory and nothing else, but of the few things I do remember, some of them seem totally mundane. I remember, during childhood car rides, seeing certain buildings that are no longer standing. I remember being in a room of the church I grew up in which was no longer there by the time it seemed to have implanted itself in my mind as a nostalgic memory. Now that I think of it, a lot of the more mundane childhood memories I have involve buildings, structures, and spaces. There must be something of an architect in me, thought I don’t have the talent of drawing.

Back on the topic of technology, much has been said about it. We know certain technologies have detrimental effects on developing minds. This has been well observed. I find it pointless to even expound upon that. It feels tiresome to bring up points that have already been brought up and are well attested. I saw a video today by Fr. Josiah Trenham on gun control, and he brought up some classic points on how guns are not the source of the violence problem, but people’s unrestricted passions. This is true, but with certain technologies, it seems they themselves are actually the problem. Thinking back on the times I’ve held a gun, I’ve never felt any particular desire to end somebody’s life, but immediately upon sitting down at the computer, I’m transported into an entire world of distraction and disorder, often without my noticing it. People have called weapons of war “killing machines,” and that is a fair appraisal of what they are for; but they are not machines to invoke the desire of killing, just as stoves aren’t machines to invoke the desire of eating. Modern technologies, however, are desire machines. This may be a point I’m stealing from someone else, but I can’t recall who. Almost every point is stolen anyway, it often feels like nearly everything has been said. Regardless, the Pandora’s Box of electronic entertainment is something we obviously are not equipped to handle. There is an order of magnitude more problems generated by a machine that induces the desire for something compared to a machine that just facilitates some action. Desire itself is such a subtle action that it hardly passes for one. Especially in the mind of modern man which perceives every thought as springing from his own psyche, and himself as a passive listener, and sometimes even, doer of those suggestions.

I’ve observed the behavior of young children lately, and so have many others, to be like animals. I believe that the degradation is something like this: Millennials are children, Gen Z are babies, Gen Alpha are animals. If you observe the worship of Millennials, it is typically directed towards nostalgic media franchises from their youth. The show “Arrested Development,” a sitcom which first aired in 2003, contains adult characters who exhibit the immature selfishness of children; its title is fitting. Such a term is also fitting for the Millennial generation who are often, as many have observed, perfectly content with shoving complex political analysis into the tiny box of Saturday morning cartoon narratives. What else could be expected from such a coddled generation with the totally oblivious baby boomers as parents and grandparents? Gen Z fared worse, being raised in a way I described at the beginning of this post. Technology has become the teat that we suckle on for sustenance. We are inseparably attached to our phones. I personally have gotten rid of my smartphone, and I’ve experienced much personal growth from abandoning it. Whenever a group of young people feel themselves to be in a period of awkward silence or just any sort of boredom, the smartphone comes out of the pocket. Whenever there is any anxiety, they rush to the computer to ease their suffering. This is like an infant rushing to his mother when any slightly unfamiliar thing happens, to be nursed and consoled. It’s an absolutely sickening thing when objects are treated as persons of authority. We all have, after thousands of years of Christianity, developed a sickened reaction to idolatry; even this is now going away. With Gen Alpha coming up in age, they are like total animals. Many cannot read, they scream profanities, are unsupervised, throw objects at people, and are exposed to the most base ideas before they learn how to tie their own shoes. They protect their metal mothers even more stridently than do their older siblings, acting like wild dogs protecting their source of food.

It’s quite telling that this animalization of mankind is accompanied with the proliferation of media including anthropomorphic characters. The disgusting trend of sexualization of minors that was borne out of the anime trend in late 2000s (and still continues) has now given way to an even more absurd development of the increasingly popular sexualization of imaginary anthropomorphic characters. The power of modern technology over the minds of human beings, however, is like that of a soul to a body. When we believe enough that we are sick, we can become sick. In like manner, there are scores of young people on Tiktok who act as animals, wearing fox tails and imitating cries and mannerisms of beasts. It is often asked whether life imitates art or art imitates life. This is an improperly posed question. The work of the Pageau brothers, mostly drawing from Christian Patristic sources, has shown that the relationship between spirit (forms and ideas which inspire art) and matter (the sensible portions of the piece of art media) is as follows: spirit is the organizing principle of matter, and matter gives body to a spirit, thus instantiating it in the physical space. This is the fundamental operation of all things in a fractal manner. With these desire machines having been made our gods, (for what is a god if not what you constantly pay attention to and form yourself around) we are the matter to whatever spirit or spirits are emanating forth from these machines. As servants, our lives, will imitate their artifice, and their intentions are manifested as degradation of the human form from wizened adult down into dumb animal.

I have a lot more to say on this subject, probably, but I’ve exhausted my thoughts for now. I had other things on my mind which I’d like to write about in the future, namely, the Holy Cross, the Tamaulipan Thornscrub and the ecospiritual, and music as a weapon. It looks like despite being utterly incoherent internally, I managed to squeeze out something legible and fairly concise instead of the scattershot I imagined this would be. This must be what was on my mind the most today. Thank you all for reading, it won’t always be this serious and essay-like. I think whatever comes out will come out. Maybe I should be more structured like, one essay a week and various thoughts every few days in the interim. I’ll adjust to what works for me and then stick with that pattern more diligently. Have a good day or evening or night, whenever you read this! God bless.

P.S. Lately, I think my site is kinda ugly. I’m gonna fix it before the end of the year.