Death by Pixels
Sylvia Shawcross
I am living out my days in what once was a forested community but now a growing suburbia of machines and city noise. It is and was an early model for “sustainable development” in its day but oddly all it brings is the sound of construction sites and city sirens and a lot of truck traffic. As if only the construction of sustainability is what is being sustained. For it has been at least a decade now of growing noise.
I do not know if it will end. Perhaps when all the green is gone.
It is quiet only at daybreak and at dusk sometimes. That is usually when the deer would come. Last night the geese were restless on the river and you could hear them fussing, honking, chuttling in the water. The water of a river has its own rhythm unlike the sea. I mention the sea because I find it strange now that I spend so much time remembering it where I was partly grown.
Perhaps it is because no matter the noise of civilization, the sea had its own command demanding all your senses. At the rocky shore only the caustic cry of a seagull can dwarf the sound of rocks pitted against rocks rolling in the receding waves. Sometimes it sounds like the ragged breath of a dying thing but sometimes it is a place to put your fears and pain—to feel the water drawing away these sad things until they are far away. To that far horizon tenderly yielding to the sky. And when the sadness finds the sky there, it disperses to memory and you can breathe again. The world and all its nonsense at your back. It is a place to linger.
It is a soul’s reluctance that finds the cutting wind that forces you to turn back and face it again—the world. Because it must be done. You are not a stone in the ocean, a seagull in the sky. You are not a sea creature foraging. You are not a point of light where far seas meet the sky. Not yet anyway. You are here. You are human.
And whether being the human you are is what you chose or not, at the end it is only what it is. It is likely the choice was never yours. We came into being for reasons it might take a lifetime to understand and even then we may not understand but the knowing there is reason is what matters. We are not fish in the sea. We are not an accident.
We may not choose but by virtue of our birth we are chosen. To be human. It is the ONE commonality we all know to be true.
And that means we fight like hell to be human. Has the time come yet now to stand in testament to that?
One would think so.
Or do we just hand it all away? Forget our birthright as humans? What good were we anyway if we should come to this desperation to flee our very existence into some prescribed cold inhuman machine void? But perhaps we don’t know that? It is after all the place we play, work, chat, indulge, learn. It has everything doesn’t it? All the human heart desires. Endless promises and novelty and convenience and community. A click away.
But that is not the world we were given. That is the world we made. It is only pixels in the shadow’s of Plato’s cave. We can play with them if we wish, but they are still shadows. And what once was a tool has become the master of our very lives.
What is it then to be human? Sometimes we only know not what we are or what we want but what we don’t want. A lifetime of defining what we don’t want makes us what we are for some. And what is it, then as humans, that we do not want? Stand then in opposition to that. In every way. And that involves knowing there is a choice. In even the smallest of things.
In the end it is the choice itself we fight for.
We do not fight for the big things so much as find the little things that we challenge until the tributaries meet the river that meets the sea. And the sea is a force to be reckoned with. It will always win. If we as individual humans understand that, we will win.
Unless of course we’re idiots which we most probably are.
Syl Shawcross lives in Canada. Visit her substack.
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Beautiful rendition by Ana Vidovic. Many ancient philosophers intuited that we were all borne of the sea and would return to the sea at death. Some spoke of the greater sea of time and space… They were eminently correct… Thanks Sylvia.
The futility of trying to find true peace, understanding and love in a fallen world. Jesus is waiting. He is saviour and judge. Turn to Him before it’s too late.
Many throughout history did just that. Yet here we are, just the same.
“Yet here we are, just the same”
yes, and we, too, must choose
I can’t believe Jesus would accept coming to him as if at gun point, without us feeling the need to come to him; without understanding. And what is eating the flesh and drinking the blood other than integrating him into our spirit, that is understanding in the psychological sense?
Also I can’t think of how we can overcome this fallen world other than by starring at it in the eye, and indeed incorporating it, not turning our back to it. Because it is ours; somehow it responds to a need we have experience it. We are lost, and we are trying to find our way.
The sea
The sea is hardly unaffected by human activity. The whale population is only a fraction of what it was 200 years ago. Most large coastal cities pump large quantities of sewage into the ocean. Large amounts of radioactive and industrial pollutants are released into the sea. Fish stocks are declining. I have seen islands of floating plastic off Borneo. Huge islands apparently exist in the Pacific. Coral reefs are disappearing.
The community I live in is about one third open space which makes it very quiet indeed but paradoxically carries its own problems with wildfire prevention. Development of any sort is messy and noisy but nature quickly returns once all the noise and bustle has ceased (e.g. an abandoned railway line very quickly becomes a nature reserve once the trains have stopped).
“They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
Refresh the tree of Liberty…
I opted not for a lush green area but for a poor area in the suburbs (which I could afford).
Ironically, I’m surrounded by forested tracts simply because it’s a poor area and the middle class has no desire to move here; so there’s no incentive to chop down yet more trees and build yet more dwellings, let alone boutiques and restaurants.
Sometimes there’s safety – and beauty – only in poverty.
Yes, simple things with connection to life makes more happiness than all this cold tech bs.
Why is the agenda focused on the average person is responsible for the damage to the earth, and should be locked away in their home, no longer allowed to go outside?
Governments and Corporations are the most prolific destroyers of our environment. Yet they keep telling us through their electronic device driven propaganda machine that you and I are responsible for destroying everything.
Think about all the damaged caused by electronics, and products in general, that only last a few years. Why doesn’t anyone want to discuss how rare earth metals used in EVs and other products are toxic waste and causing more damage than benefit.
The amount of hypocrisy that the average person cannot see, or refuses to see, is astounding.
You ask why the agenda is focused on average people? For the old flim flam of distraction. The guilty are forever seeking scapegoats.
Then, of course, there is the ironic reason. Namely, that by and large average people are tainted by what the “ruling” psychos do – tainted because they allow it to continue. And because they sometimes profit from it. They make themselves accessories after the fact.
Innocence end where the age of reason begins.
Nail on the head. We are blamed for everything while the corporations, the true destroyers, aided and abetted by their shills in government, are absolved of all their crimes (and crimes they are). For example, we are being blamed for the decimation of the NHS, because, apparently, we use it too much when we really shouldn’t. The defunding of the NHS doesn’t even come into the equation, and the stealth takeover of the aformentioned goes unnoticed by the vast majority of the populace. I would also like to thank you for mentioning the topic of the life span of consumer products, as many people fail to realise this is a corporate stratagy to keep the wheels of commerce turning, perpetually selling us their products which are designed to break (and also keeping the tax rolling in for our wonderful governments). Isn’t this form of capitalism wonderful.
We stand on the Land but are governed under the jurisdiction of the Sea.
This is the foundational tool and deception used against the People.
Politicians destroy, nature fixes itself, if left alone..
Indeed.
Beware of anyone who says they are thinking of a career in politics.
It’s an admission of dangerous psychopathy.
Rather like the military – it runs in families…
This is the big one
http://stateofthenation.co/?p=170676
Exact same thing happened in Portugal a couple of years ago.
Probably trying out the methods they subsequently used in the 5 eyes country (lest ye forget) Canada
Bigly
Big Lie
I’m surprised they haven’t done it in the UK yet.
Yes, matter matters. But does matter really matter so much? Isn’t it a fun thing, that more and more we create devices that bring us back into Platon’ s cave? Deprive us of material reality?
And yet, evolution never stops. Like the sea, like waves. Maybe humans evolute in waves. And maybe we are, right now, at the bottom of an evolutionary wave.
The watery walls are closing in and all we can see are the monsters of the sea grinning at us and making a rare opportunity of faces..
We won’t sink or get sucked to the bottom of the deep blue. Eventually we will rise again, like the wave is rising.
You just described the dialectical mouvement of History. Any one-sided mouvement left on its own long enough creates the forces that will make it change course. 😀
Humans As I have written elsewhere humans can create their own little self sufficient universe within the natural world but quite isolated from it. Humans have houses and cars and dogs and television sets to keep them busy and “entertained”. Also corporate religion, music, Hollyweird, “sport” and so much more. The central bankers that control these control mechanisms control the world with them and are generally happy with the state of affairs. They unleash bloodbaths at frequent intervals and this is more entertainment for the masses. The increasingly militarised constabulary are there to restore order using brutality when required. We have witnessed their handiwork during the plandemic. The mobile phone has now come to the forefront of human consciousness. The banksters now have even more control over the populace. These radiooactive devices are a virtual leash that the biped sheep have embraced. Birds ? wombats ? Raccoons ? They don’t… Read more »
The Destruction of Nature The tempo of the destruction of the environment has quickened. It has where I am. The author is describing a similar scenario in Quebec apparently. I spent a few days in that province 14 years ago. To avoid embarrassment the World Government has replaced the word green with the word climate. It is now acceptable to chop down forests as long as they are replaced by solar panel arrays. They own the media so that they can sidestep the question of why they are terrified of CO2 but are quite happy to destroy trees that absorb the gas. They can also sidestep the question of when the destruction will end and what life will be like when we have destroyed all of nature. That day is not far off, Only between 3 and 6 percent of the native bushland remains in rural NSW. The conservation officer… Read more »
Government and Corporations are undeniably the most prolific destroyers of the environment. This cannot be denied.
The average person living in a house, driving a car, and having a pet, is not spilling millions of gallons of chemicals into waterways, or strip mining 1000s of acers, or putting toxic waste into consumable products.
Yet the entire agenda of “save the environment” is all about the average person curtailing their life into a prison cell, no longer allowed to go outside.
That the morons chaining themselves to bridges, destroying milk in stores, or throwing orange paint around, cannot understand this hypocrisy, is proof of how dumbed down and mind controlled people can be.
FYI : A hectare is an area of dimensions formally defined as 100m x 100m, equivalent to 2.471054 acres…
Apologies. I assumed it was 1 sq km. That is still a lot. Perhaps 2500 large trees. undergrowth that provided sanctuary to the small birds that have been disappearing for many decades.
Wilderness Society au ?
Unless of course we’re idiots which you most definitely are 😂
Sylvie, ca te conviendra de reflechir plus profondement sur les fantasmes que tu ecris a.k.a. it would behoove you to ponder the phantasms you write somewhat more deeply. “cold inhuman machine” The cold notwithstanding (il y des machines qui sont chaudes en tabarnak, hostie!), there is nothing inhuman about machines. Machines are a human creation. You don’t like machines, technologies, the fact that humans use their intellectual capacity to transform their natural habitat instead of living in harmony wherewith, getting accustomed to it? You got two choices, babe. One. Climb back on a fucking tree or back to a fucking cave. That probably won’t happen, even though you never know. Two. Formulate a raison d’etre other than the (mostly Christian) existence consisting of forever transforming the shit around us, something midway between the fucking tree/fucking cave, and the complete sanitation and robotization of the Earth, which is where the world… Read more »
An alarm just went off here and we think your comment may have exceeded our ‘smug’ quota. Please be warned, very high levels of smugness can be physically and mentally detrimental to those exposed to it. Also, I believe it’s not only extremely rude to describe this beautiful piece of writing as a ‘word salad’ but also extremely hypocritical. 😅 Thank you, A2
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Us, residents of Planet Zorg, have different yardstick for beauty, perhaps more elevated than yours, but we might be totally fucked up; that’s always a possibility.
You occasionally publish texts written by one certain Edward Curtin, which I think fall in the beautiful category. For they carry a meaningful underlying message.
The present word salad does not, at least insofar as I can see, but then again I might be totally fucked up as per the above.
As far as rude, I’m just somewhat facetiously expressing a little bit of criticism. Criticism, FYI, is always good. Much better than patting you on the back and stuffing you with candies for producing a piece of s… ehm … substandard quality, making you think that the crap you’ve just produced is the next thing after sliced bread, instead of trying harder the next time.
At ease, ChatGPT. Constructive criticism is often good. Yours was not. A2
Oh, lighten up.
You don’t have to be an emeritus professor of ancient anthropology to make sense of the world.
Sylvia’s version is inspiring and comforting – which is in short supply right now – and that’s not to say that we can’t simultaneously handle the cold practicalities of survival too.
We don’t all have to BE Sylvia to appreciate the warmth of her contributions, and we don’t all have to be you either.
A soulless arsehole.
And only a psychopath thinks that it is humans UBER ALLES.
Technology is not the problem per se, its toxic life destroying technologies based on the continuing lack of social evolution that cannot prevent making the same hubristic mistakes that only a society lost in “congnitive partitioning” (read ‘clique-dom”) can create, The elites are creating a world for them, expecting the majority to follow whether there is is any life-affirming strategies or not.
How’s that for a word-fucking-salad.
Since your moniker is brand new to this forum, there’s no way of telling if you’re a regular reader or not. This may sound like nit picking; but it’s important because most of the article writers have written many pieces over time.
As such, each article, while it can be evaluated in its own right, can also be evaluated in terms of the overall tenor of the writer. Why shouldn’t article writers be afforded the same consideration as artists by seeing each new presentation as part of a whole? As part of a sense of life?
Thank you Syl. Pure poetry.
Albeniz is one of my favourites, he’s up there with Rodriguez:
This is the second movement from the BIG one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekznnxaGzNU
Bloody magnificent🎶😊
Thanks for the beautiful music!
A beautiful essay and a reminder that it is choice we fight for even if ultimately we make the wrong choice. I’m watching the people out in the street and many of them are listening to their phone or staring at a screen when the world around them is so beautiful. But the truth is also that the pixels may have come to save us. Without them I wouldn’t have heard your thoughts and the haunting music you shared at the end. And without them I wouldn’t have realised there were people who shared my resistance to the tyranny of the last few years, the realisation of which saved me.
True, an essay from the pen of a woman magazine article with a free sleeved floppy record inside the pages. Not to belittle in anyway, in fact I hope,. instead to other people into believing life being a continuum presence. So yea but Sly’ s article also brings forth a much more important point in my opinion that only you can it do and no-one else.