The more distracted, the less lived

There’s a Guns n Roses song, Don’t Damn Me, from the 90’s, before the internet and mobile phones. It has a line in the lyrics that says “The trash collected by the eyes and dumped into the brain” and it couldn’t be more apt 30 years later on the anniversary of its release.

It’s insane how we’ve become a culture of distractions to distract us from the pain of the realisation of the banality of our lives.

And it’s taken the form of every human action, not just entertainment and social media.

Food – used as a distraction Sex- yep. Even relationships. People are getting into relationships purely to stem the boredom they feel of being a boring person. 

The descent into a society that creates nothing and consumes everything is sliding us back into the dark ages of witch hunts were cancel culture has throngs of followers who don’t actually believe what they’re chanting but are too scared to speak up in case the crowd turns their hysteria on them.

Try this. Don’t turn on a distraction. Not food, not TV, not a phone, and wait. Just sit and wait, till the boredom kicks in and then go beyond it, keep waiting, and suddenly you’ll find yourself doing things, thinking things, getting busy and most of all, creating instead of consuming. 

The brain is made to create. We’re just anesthetizing it with the drugs of distraction to dull our senses from the harsh truth of reality.But it’s meaningless. You’re just living through someone else’s actions to try and steal for yourself a tiny semblance of what they have to feel what it feels like to be alive.

Axl said it best…

‘A vicarious existence is a fucking waste of time’