No more silence.

"There is a war going on for your mind"

-Flobots. 

"When the sun goes out, we'll light the world with tiny glowing screens"

-Watsky

The information age. That's the age of my generation, the age where wars can be fought, economies and currencies ruined, and rumours and lies spread all with the touch of a few buttons. The greatest enemies of our time will be those who know how to through a monkey in the wrench of our code castles, who can look at a computer not as a magic box but as a system, a set of operations. This isn't all bad; we have the capacity to do amazing things with our technology: look at Wikipedia, Kickstarter, Google. Look at the Huffington Post, look at Facebook, look at email, look at Skype. But think about that phone or computer you're reading this on. You are holding in your hand a device that will let you access almost the entirety of human knowledge with just a few taps, yet we use them for cat videos. Not that there's anything wrong with cat videos. (IT'S SO FLUFFY I"M GONNA DIEEEEE) I just think we need to put this into perspective. Now you've probably heard this before...I'm pretty sure I'm quoting someone actually but whatever. It needs to be said again. 

There is a war going on for your mind. Every time you open of your laptop or look at your phone you are sucked into a world of people who want your money our your time or your attention, and you don't even notice. Constantly, constantly there are messages and ads flung at your eyeballs and bouncing around inside your brain, changing you. Wear Gucci. Smell like Robert Patterson. Vote for me. Apply to Kumquat University. We have no more peace, no more silence. Information itself has become a battleground. It throws itself against the walls of your mind, desperate for your notice. It even shapes us without us noticing. Ads and stories of muscled men and shapely women, promises of happiness and success if only you just buy this one thing. We have become quieted by a steady diet of fantasies, fantasies and handcuffs. The young are fed a stream of promises: don't worry, you are young and free, go to the club, go get drunk with your friends, you want to die young, you want to please yourself as much as possible with as little work.

Maybe what we are searching for isn't pleasure, but joy. It is an important distinction, if subtle. Pleasure flits across your brain like a firework, brilliant, bursting bright and then gone. I think the goal is joy, a lasting sense of satisfaction, of peace. A sense that life is going well. I don't really know how to explain it. I believe that life is about cultivating a sense of self, a soul, about cultivating peace. About enriching yourself. I feel at my best not when I'm playing videogames or eating or drinking, these are fleeting pleasures. I feel at my best when I'm on my bike, when I'm spinning poi, when I'm with proper friends, when I have done something in my life to make both my self and the world a little better, when I have done something amazing in the day. I can't properly explain it, there are times when I just know that no matter what may come tomorrow, no matter what came yesterday, at this moment I am where I should be, where I am at my best. 

And our constant connection and interaction with other people bizarrely, I think, blinds us and keeps us from that sense. Science has proven that humans can only really know another 120ish humans, yet I have 312 friends on facebook. I only probably talk to ten regularly, and it's probably only forty or so that know me enough to read this blog. We go through our lives collecting people like tokens and trophies, to convince others and ourselves that we are cool, popular, the one that everyone wants to know. Well I call foul. Friends on facebook only matter if they are actually friends. It's a vicious circle: We are constantly connected to our friends, so we get a fear of being alone, so we collect more "friends", so we are more connected, so we increase our fear of being alone, but at the same time a connection through a computer screen isn't proper friendship (trust me, I live it every day and it hurts, it isn't enough), and so despite it all we end up feeling lonely. But being alone and being lonely aren't the same thing. 

So I have a challenge for you. The next time you have to wait for a bus or a ride or whatever, just wait. No Plants vs Zombies, no Subway Surfer, no music, no Facebook, nothing but you and your thoughts. You might see what I'm talking about. Alone is not always lonely. 

Take some time to enjoy the silence. Give your mind a break from the constant noise it endures. Take a nap. Go sit under a tree, or on the roof. Just be at peace for a while. I can bet you'll go to bed a heck of a lot happier than if you watched tv or tumblrd for your day.