The Missing Link
Hi and Welcome to the A & J PEI Treasures E Jean Simpson Author Blog Post and Podcast. I’m your host, Jean coming to you from the beautiful Province of Prince Edward Island, Canada!! The blog post and podcast is an opinion piece and only reflects this author’s opinion and not that of any other entity. I hold no designations in politics, economics or medicine. I am retired from the mental health field. I am a humanitarian and speak from that viewpoint only. Whether you agree with me or not, at least I hope it makes you think. This week I talk about computers and the missing link. Have we become just another automaton in the online meta-verse? If you want to find out more, then stay tuned…!
There are so many benefits to the internet. At the same time, there are so many costs. First some benefits, you can communicate with a wide variety of people. There is an enormous universe to choose from. Celebrities, want to be celebrities, old guard, new guard, vanguard, coast guard. You can find people from all walks of life. There are people of all colours, shapes, sizes, opinions, and orientations. The variety of opinions and thoughts are staggering. You can learn a great deal. At the same time if someone is sensitive to all the baggage flying around, it can be totally overwhelming. The newsfeed while I was writing this was full of death, disaster and every horror known to mankind. People are dying needlessly. People seem to be dying because they want to get high, to be the next big thing and to be better, best and best yet. It’s like thousands of voices screaming in your head constantly. How do you deal with this? It isn’t even anything new. It’s just more available to people nowadays. You can consume it 24/7. They want you to be a certain religion, a certain group, a certain type. You are the problem if you do not agree. Most of them don’t like themselves, let alone another human being. They are non-stop looking for the next big thing. Religious intolerance, hate for other than self. Can’t even get agreement on live and let live and people are being shot over categories. No one wants to lose, but they want to win at all costs. There is a difference. Save face when all you get in the end is wrinkles. What are you saving it for?
It is little wonder that no one trusts that anyone would be purposefully kind. There must be something wrong with that one they say. It can’t be real. Let’s prove it isn’t real. Years of being the same is not good enough. Every proof is met with eye rolls. They make stories to suit their tastes and don’t want to see what is real. So many years of being the same person, singing the same song yet it is all an act. Some may try to get past the façade whether or not one exists and everyone seems to have one. People all talk about wanting real. Yet, real seems to be ever elusive. Even when there is ‘Real’, no one accepts it. They have Reality TV which is about as real as most profile pictures. At one time, I liked the pictures of people, then realized with AI and everything, I was as safe with the cartoon ones as I was with the real ones. One can’t tell the difference anyway. I tend to follow pictures mostly since they can be faked, but at least there is some reality to them. Flowers exist, trees exist, and locations exist. Though I have seen some animal shorts that make me wonder what is wrong with the animal. Something seems off or sick about the creature.
Now, try to be other than Christian or other than white and be different. There is a move to obliterate…to obfuscate and bring you into the fold or annihilate entirely. Even the larger religions are not safe. We see thousands of years of death, hate and cover ups. So, is real actually real or is it an illusion. Is the world AI created, person created or at all created or is it just in our heads? Who created us, some say creator, but they aren’t believed either. They have to join other ‘accepted’ religions in order to be accepted as real.
The thing in life is that there is actually no truth…nor any solid basic truth except what we can get everyone to accept…therefore truth is immaterial…ergo maybe there is no truth and no reality. The truth of the anti-establishment sorts is not the truth of the supporters of other beliefs. Even when the truth is told no one seems to have any interest in it. So, all stand in their virtual corners and shout to sell their wares on their own street corners. The noise is deafening and no one hears it anyway. Government does what they do with or without input. As bell hooks* is quoted with saying, “All over the world, young males and females, schooled in the art of patriarchal thinking, are building an identity on a foundation that sees the will to do violence as the essential way to assert being.” This is very salient in the online interactions we still see. The attitude that men have to be men and women have to be women and no one else can exist is pushed by mass media. You have to fight to be recognized as human. There is no room for shades of grey and the world seems to darken a little more. It is the hallmark of the Conservative parties. It causes fear of change, suspicion of anything that is ‘different’ and perpetuates intolerances against fellow humans.
Alva Myrdal is quoted with saying, "There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media". The constant exposure to the media is both a gift and a threat to our very existence. I cannot imagine spending so much time on social media as others do. They seem to be attached to the cell phone and it is constantly being clicked, checked with an exhaustive array of violent images. It becomes a concrete jungle with gangsters and conspiracy. It seems something that can be harmful to younger generations, and to be frank, I can’t handle more than a few hours at a time. I get overwhelmed. When we look at the literature, https://www.helpguide.org/articles/me... and this is just one article, it gives a taste of the fact that there is positive but also there are negative effects on the users. Increase in anxiety and depression are actually pointed out to be two things that can go wrong. So, with all this knowledge we are still having our teens come out with higher anxiety and depression, aggressive behavior, one-upmanship seems the rule. They are tied to the media as though they have handcuffs on. There is the need to get ‘even’. ‘Even’ never happens and the cycle continues.
Pre-computer age, we had news and newspapers. The world was centralized around our community. We had outdoor time. We had better connection with each other and with others. We always had anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses. These are not new either. Now we have more exposure to it, but less understanding. There was never good understanding of mental illness. There was never good understanding of people being different. Though there seemed more likelihood of someone in the family being somewhat accepting or even extended family and/or friends. There are still the same struggles for people coming out as different. People are still ostracized by religion, racial boundaries, and orientation. People are still hiding in the shadows rather than coming out in the light. They are still judged for being different and it seems categories rule the world. You are either one of the cool people or you are not. I’m decidedly not and have no interest in being so. I just go about and do what I do because some will like it, some will not and unless they block me, I don’t know which are which. This makes things go as smoothly as one can expect. There are still people who don’t understand the difference between reality, altered reality or non-reality. Those who are sensitive to the vicissitudes of the world will always have difficulty navigating the huge variety of individuals. Understanding the needs of others always comes at a cost. It means you feel it all deeply. To put others first is not something new. Some had done it for centuries. Their path is and always will be different. There will be those who stand on the path, those who put obstacles in the path and some will even walk the path. Sometimes I have to shut down for my own mental health.
The only thing left in the end is love. As bell hook* is credited with saying, “I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.” Only the higher power has the ability and right to do force actions. All else is subterfuge. So folks, sorry, you’re stuck with me as I am. Like it, don’t like it. Sometimes I need to make the media voices stop so I can reconnect with the sacred. It is one of the side effects of being different from others. It is impossible to separate the nature path from the universal or the universal from the single. It is all one. Trying to do so alienates from oneself. The solitary path is one that is different and hard to understand. Often when the shut down comes, people feel that they are being abandoned when in fact; it is only a short break to stay sane. We feel everything, we hear everything, and we absorb everything. We, like the darkness, tend to absorb the heat. Even when I was a child, my mother needed short breaks from us. It is normal and natural. No parent can be on continually and not break down. It is not natural. Even the deer in the forest take their babes and leave them in tall grass to go forage. The birds leave the nest for sustenance. This is the way of nature and the path. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope it makes you think. Thanks for listening to my podcast and/or reading my blog post and thanks for your interest in A & J PEI Treasures! Keep watching because we’re always working on something. Thank you!
The podcast that matches this blog post can be found on Anchor FM: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
Blog Posts are available on
WordPress: https://aandjpeitreasures.wordpress.com/ and
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Podcast are available on:
Anchor FM in a variety of formats: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-e-...
Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/e-... name a few
All my e-books can be found on:
Smashwords (my Affiliate link): https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
You can also find us on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EJS08026749
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zp...
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/ej2466
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/e-j-s-151a...
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewAandJP...
There are so many benefits to the internet. At the same time, there are so many costs. First some benefits, you can communicate with a wide variety of people. There is an enormous universe to choose from. Celebrities, want to be celebrities, old guard, new guard, vanguard, coast guard. You can find people from all walks of life. There are people of all colours, shapes, sizes, opinions, and orientations. The variety of opinions and thoughts are staggering. You can learn a great deal. At the same time if someone is sensitive to all the baggage flying around, it can be totally overwhelming. The newsfeed while I was writing this was full of death, disaster and every horror known to mankind. People are dying needlessly. People seem to be dying because they want to get high, to be the next big thing and to be better, best and best yet. It’s like thousands of voices screaming in your head constantly. How do you deal with this? It isn’t even anything new. It’s just more available to people nowadays. You can consume it 24/7. They want you to be a certain religion, a certain group, a certain type. You are the problem if you do not agree. Most of them don’t like themselves, let alone another human being. They are non-stop looking for the next big thing. Religious intolerance, hate for other than self. Can’t even get agreement on live and let live and people are being shot over categories. No one wants to lose, but they want to win at all costs. There is a difference. Save face when all you get in the end is wrinkles. What are you saving it for?
It is little wonder that no one trusts that anyone would be purposefully kind. There must be something wrong with that one they say. It can’t be real. Let’s prove it isn’t real. Years of being the same is not good enough. Every proof is met with eye rolls. They make stories to suit their tastes and don’t want to see what is real. So many years of being the same person, singing the same song yet it is all an act. Some may try to get past the façade whether or not one exists and everyone seems to have one. People all talk about wanting real. Yet, real seems to be ever elusive. Even when there is ‘Real’, no one accepts it. They have Reality TV which is about as real as most profile pictures. At one time, I liked the pictures of people, then realized with AI and everything, I was as safe with the cartoon ones as I was with the real ones. One can’t tell the difference anyway. I tend to follow pictures mostly since they can be faked, but at least there is some reality to them. Flowers exist, trees exist, and locations exist. Though I have seen some animal shorts that make me wonder what is wrong with the animal. Something seems off or sick about the creature.
Now, try to be other than Christian or other than white and be different. There is a move to obliterate…to obfuscate and bring you into the fold or annihilate entirely. Even the larger religions are not safe. We see thousands of years of death, hate and cover ups. So, is real actually real or is it an illusion. Is the world AI created, person created or at all created or is it just in our heads? Who created us, some say creator, but they aren’t believed either. They have to join other ‘accepted’ religions in order to be accepted as real.
The thing in life is that there is actually no truth…nor any solid basic truth except what we can get everyone to accept…therefore truth is immaterial…ergo maybe there is no truth and no reality. The truth of the anti-establishment sorts is not the truth of the supporters of other beliefs. Even when the truth is told no one seems to have any interest in it. So, all stand in their virtual corners and shout to sell their wares on their own street corners. The noise is deafening and no one hears it anyway. Government does what they do with or without input. As bell hooks* is quoted with saying, “All over the world, young males and females, schooled in the art of patriarchal thinking, are building an identity on a foundation that sees the will to do violence as the essential way to assert being.” This is very salient in the online interactions we still see. The attitude that men have to be men and women have to be women and no one else can exist is pushed by mass media. You have to fight to be recognized as human. There is no room for shades of grey and the world seems to darken a little more. It is the hallmark of the Conservative parties. It causes fear of change, suspicion of anything that is ‘different’ and perpetuates intolerances against fellow humans.
Alva Myrdal is quoted with saying, "There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media". The constant exposure to the media is both a gift and a threat to our very existence. I cannot imagine spending so much time on social media as others do. They seem to be attached to the cell phone and it is constantly being clicked, checked with an exhaustive array of violent images. It becomes a concrete jungle with gangsters and conspiracy. It seems something that can be harmful to younger generations, and to be frank, I can’t handle more than a few hours at a time. I get overwhelmed. When we look at the literature, https://www.helpguide.org/articles/me... and this is just one article, it gives a taste of the fact that there is positive but also there are negative effects on the users. Increase in anxiety and depression are actually pointed out to be two things that can go wrong. So, with all this knowledge we are still having our teens come out with higher anxiety and depression, aggressive behavior, one-upmanship seems the rule. They are tied to the media as though they have handcuffs on. There is the need to get ‘even’. ‘Even’ never happens and the cycle continues.
Pre-computer age, we had news and newspapers. The world was centralized around our community. We had outdoor time. We had better connection with each other and with others. We always had anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses. These are not new either. Now we have more exposure to it, but less understanding. There was never good understanding of mental illness. There was never good understanding of people being different. Though there seemed more likelihood of someone in the family being somewhat accepting or even extended family and/or friends. There are still the same struggles for people coming out as different. People are still ostracized by religion, racial boundaries, and orientation. People are still hiding in the shadows rather than coming out in the light. They are still judged for being different and it seems categories rule the world. You are either one of the cool people or you are not. I’m decidedly not and have no interest in being so. I just go about and do what I do because some will like it, some will not and unless they block me, I don’t know which are which. This makes things go as smoothly as one can expect. There are still people who don’t understand the difference between reality, altered reality or non-reality. Those who are sensitive to the vicissitudes of the world will always have difficulty navigating the huge variety of individuals. Understanding the needs of others always comes at a cost. It means you feel it all deeply. To put others first is not something new. Some had done it for centuries. Their path is and always will be different. There will be those who stand on the path, those who put obstacles in the path and some will even walk the path. Sometimes I have to shut down for my own mental health.
The only thing left in the end is love. As bell hook* is credited with saying, “I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.” Only the higher power has the ability and right to do force actions. All else is subterfuge. So folks, sorry, you’re stuck with me as I am. Like it, don’t like it. Sometimes I need to make the media voices stop so I can reconnect with the sacred. It is one of the side effects of being different from others. It is impossible to separate the nature path from the universal or the universal from the single. It is all one. Trying to do so alienates from oneself. The solitary path is one that is different and hard to understand. Often when the shut down comes, people feel that they are being abandoned when in fact; it is only a short break to stay sane. We feel everything, we hear everything, and we absorb everything. We, like the darkness, tend to absorb the heat. Even when I was a child, my mother needed short breaks from us. It is normal and natural. No parent can be on continually and not break down. It is not natural. Even the deer in the forest take their babes and leave them in tall grass to go forage. The birds leave the nest for sustenance. This is the way of nature and the path. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope it makes you think. Thanks for listening to my podcast and/or reading my blog post and thanks for your interest in A & J PEI Treasures! Keep watching because we’re always working on something. Thank you!
The podcast that matches this blog post can be found on Anchor FM: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
Blog Posts are available on
WordPress: https://aandjpeitreasures.wordpress.com/ and
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Podcast are available on:
Anchor FM in a variety of formats: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-e-...
Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/e-... name a few
All my e-books can be found on:
Smashwords (my Affiliate link): https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
You can also find us on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EJS08026749
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5zp...
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/ej2466
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/e-j-s-151a...
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewAandJP...
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A & J PEI Treasures/E Jean Simpson, BEd, BA, MA
A & J PEI Treasures is located on Prince Edward Island, Canada. We are a husband and wife team and our companion animals. There are a number of things that drew us to the Island…one of which was the n
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