Dead Heroes and Defending Analog
The Change Engine is ever present as we move onward.
“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago”
~ Alan Watts
Several months ago I returned to work for my Alma Mater, and the excitement of reuniting with my mentors and colleagues from graduate school was abundant. Except, reality struck down the fantasy fueled by a bygone era as I realized they’d all retired or moved on.
For the better part of a decade, I’ve been trying to recreate the past. Post-trauma there is stress; and hopefully growth. The naïve delusion is to believe that what we once had, when, where, and with whom we were once happy could ever collide and create that exact state of being again.
This realization occurred to me recently as I felt it more viscerally. The mask of discontentment was only concealing fear. Many of my mentors have passed, in one form or another, out of my life. What’s more, I must admit that I’m afraid of the responsibility and privilege of carrying their torch forward.
The self-doubt becomes palpable when you look back and there’s an empty chair where someone used to sit and you know the only direction to move is further away from it. Swallow hard, grit your teeth, clench your fists, nostrils flare, and take it in before you turn away. Breathe. Move. Onward.
“DEFEND ANALOG is a statement of contempt for the digital age. A feeling of nostalgia for the shutter of a lens, the feel of weighted, satin-finished paper. A click of a mouse can never satisfy what holding the real thing feels like. (ref.)”
We’re left to carry on, as we always were. It never was about them — our anger, our hate, our joy, our success, none of it. Maybe we needed to fill a hole in our lives, find guidance, hope, a transitional object like a fairy god mother or WWJD bracelet.
Yoda said; “You must train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” We’ve all heard “fear leads to anger, anger to hate, and hate to the Dark Side” and “attachment leads to suffering.”
The truth is that existence is traumatic. We’re born into the world kicking, screaming, and covered in someone else’s blood. Attachment is as powerful and meaningful as it is inevitable. Given the social nature of humans, what kind of “enlightenment” comes from despondent nihilism or patronizing cognitive dissonance?
Desperation runs amok in the world today. A decade ago it was expressions of YOLO, now it’s any number of “signaled virtues” vindicated by whoever has the loudest megaphone. How many zealots cling to the ideology of pop icons and “influencers” in the hopes that someone else will explain their life to them rather than experiencing it for themselves.
Being angry is easy and, in many cases, justified. The onus of the present generation is to live in retaliation of that anger; to create a better future in spite of it. Of course, we have no obligation to do so, but if we do not, we concede to repeat and perpetuate the trauma(s) of the past.
The paradox is that while we “get to choose” our fate, we also “have to choose” as there is no such thing as a “non-combatant” in life. Every choice has a consequence, including choices to not choose or to not act.
This doesn’t mean we ought to love or look up to or love our idols any less. It means that we need to recognize the idolatry as separate from reality. As mentioned above, the experiences that shape and influence you say far more about you (what you need, where you hurt, where you’re vulnerable, and what you hope for) than any public-facing figure or their creations.
We need to steady our hands, and humble ourselves that we may not know what is even best for ourselves, let alone the world. Your idols and influences of today may only be so for a “season, a reason, or a lifetime.”
We never get to know in the beginning and we only find out for sure much too late after the fact. That, in no way, belittles the importance of what occurs in the intermediate. What it does mean is that no one gets out of life alive; so make damn sure you made it worth it for someone — not least of all yourself.
Breathe. Move. Onward.