The Reasons to Write

There are a lot of reasons to write. 

Sometimes its important to write a thought down. It makes it more concrete. It doesn't just become a memory that fades and mixes in with all the other ideas that contribute to the thoughtstream you experience. It doesn't just become a sentence uttered either to oneself or to one or more individual listeners. Things you say are interpreted differently by different people, but sometimes in conversation you can't find the words to finish your thought, or you lose your train of thought or you are interrupted and the point was missed. When writing, you can take as long as you want to make your point, in whichever way you choose. 

Writing enables the sharing of ideas much more simply and quickly than a message passed via word of mouth. Before the advent of writing, protohumans no doubt found ways to send messages using their environment. Whether for marking one's territory with totems crafted from nature, or sending a threat to a adversarial tribe, we most likely left messages to be found and understood by blatant imagery. Besides vocalization, we had had to figure out a way to send the message of our choosing to the audience of our choosing.

Fast forward 50,000 years, and we've created advanced networks that allow us to be found and connected to with a few taps of a keyboard. We have an obsession with being always available to be reached, because we have an anxiety that someone will need us and we won't be reachable. The mobile 'smartphone' is the current pinnacle of development designed to fulfill this need. Always on. Always connected. 

Call didn't go through? Try me on iMessage. FB Messenger. Snapchat. Instagram. Twitter. Email. All the major mobile software brands offer some way to get in touch with people when you need them and be gotten in touch with when they need you. Because we all want to feel needed. And we all need others.

But what have we created, exactly? Why are we giving corporations access to our most intimate and mundane conversations? In the name of security, of course. We need secure borders and secure networks and secure passwords because oh god the barbarians are right outside our borders and damn if they aren't trying to get in. 

When a hacker penetrates a corporate or government network, maybe they're searching for sensitive data to sell, or use for blackmail, or some other personal gain. But hackers also hack for the challenge, as they see encryption as a puzzle to be pieced together, or a riddle to be defeated. Others are trolling while still others think, we are simply making public what you think needs to be private, because you've made public what we think should be private.

State Department cables, emails from heads-of-state, military comms, personal information, trillions and trillions of bits of information in endless, ever-growing datawells. There is insight to be gained, by studying this data, we are told. There is money to be made. Power to be usurped. Knowledge is power and if you let us have the knowledge we'll give you the Power, they offer. We accept, is our response. 

But we already have the knowledge. We don't need to make a deal. We don't need to compromise with the devil. It is our data that they have taken and used against us. I want to reject this theft, but I can't yet communicate what I feel must be shared without using the bought-and-paid-for channels of communication they offer. So that's a Catch-22.

God, if you're listening, what do you think of all this? Are you concerned at all about what you've wrought? Did you have a hand in this? Sure, you made us, but was it one of those, put the ingredients together and sit back and watch the show, or are you still shaping existence? I have a hunch it's the former. God is insanely curious about His invention. It's by far the most fascinating thing He's ever done; conjure up something from nothing. He is mesmerized by the comedy and drama and tragedy of it all. Vast galaxies smashing into each other over millions of years with a loud crashing boom and God falls over laughing at the madness of it all. God interacts with Time the way we interact with a bowl of water. We swirl it, we dip our fingers into it, we let it drip down our hands and we wash away the dirt with it. We drink it deeply when we are thirsty. God is always thirsty for more time. Let it flow through his lips and slide cold down his gullet and fill Him up with the endless river on which we float, lazy.