hits

These screens have become the portals through which countless poisons enter the mind, mostly in the form of information or entertainment. Almost all of it ultimately brings about distraction, confusion and suffering.

The screens can also provide access to antidotes, but these are only needed in the first place because of the cumulative effects of the screentime.

Life outside the screens is comparatively simple. I confront and contend with what happens in the moment and things turn out how they will, usually quite simply and peacefully. The contents of the screens, on the other hand, are so stimulating and complex, and they exist outside of real-time. It's all composed of past, fabricated future and fantasy. It all enhances illusory perceptions of reality. Nothing is contended with directly. All interactions occur in disjointed vacuums.

But the stimulation of the screens is addictive, and I've acclimated to it. The screens provide a (seemingly, but not really) safe avenue through which to avoid reality while indulging in more appealing and heightened fantasies. I can remain unmanifest and indestructible while I browse and click and get my hits. I can keep putting off life with all its hassles and risks.

It's a deception though. The screens stimulate but don't satisfy. They divide and destroy. They cut me off from myself, others and life. Not the virtual imitations of us and life, but our real selves and real life. It took some time to notice how distinct these really are from each other. The people and worlds in the screens are not the same as in reality.

But they can have a huge impact on how we think and feel in reality. About ourselves, each other, and life as a whole. Whatever ways they make us think and feel though, whether immediately pleasant or unpleasant, it's deceptive and divisive either way. It isn't real. It's more illusion, more poison.