The calluses on my brain itch. They are starting to make me a callous person, I think. The hard bumps of the brain I call calluses are the defenses I’ve developed to cope with the absurdities of life.
We humans do so many things that make no sense, the calluses are necessary just to get by without becoming one of the crazies in the world: all those hell-bent for- leather on shooting, raping, and pillaging each other.
The itchy parts are the core of the problem, because I’m convinced they are caused by the strange personalities of people itching to become one of the leaders. I admit, I too have fallen prey now and then to this malady.
Things habitually get so crazy in the world that I think all of us occasionally figure we might be able to help fix them. It’s pretty much a dream though, I’m beginning to figure. Fixing the human race is a pretty near impossible job.
However, there may be a solution. I’m convinced that the mania for “Apps” is the problem. What it comes down to is this: Apps cannot replace thinking. Thinking is what human brains do best that Apps can’t replace.
All Apps can do is so limited, they may make a task seem easy, but all they really accomplish is motivate the brain to stop thinking. They do this to ease the pain of all the craziness really strange thinking by humans is causing.
Does that sound like pessimism? I don’t mean it to be. All I’m trying to get across is the point that more thinking by all of us is needed to help eliminate, or at least minimize, the craziness.
You, see, the craft of writing down thoughts in black words on white computer screens lets you see how intensely difficult thinking is. The pictures we see inside our heads seem to make sense to us.
But when you attempt to turn those picture thoughts into words – well, that’s where the trouble starts. It’s so hard to do most people don’t even give it a try. I have friends who don’t even like to talk words, let alone write them.
They prefer to buy some new App to solve whatever need they are working on, to master what we all used to master with real thinking. There’s an App to open the front door, one for the back door, one to remind you the car’s almost out of gas.
I think it’s all of us who are almost out of gas. It’s like we’ve got these brains so numbed by Apps, they – the brains – just don’t run on all cylinders anymore. They’ve accepted technology over thinking and, so, have burned all their creative fuel up.
And when that happens, the cells of the brain go dry and start to itch. Got it? Not thinking makes brains feel like they need to be scratched by thinking. And we get confused and wonder what’s going on inside us.
This is all a theory, of course. I can’t prove it. But it’s a premise worth investigating, I believe. I’m going to test it by making a 2018 resolution not to buy another App until I’ve just thought all year about whatever fills my brain..
Or, if a year is too long, to think about it overnight before I try to write anything again. I hope you will agree to do the same before you read stuff like this written by me or anyone addicted to writing.
If this sounds sort of silly to you, try to understand I’m saying this to block my tendency to develop the callous calluses. I really think we’ve all developed this way of building safe walls around ourselves, and we need to open up our thinking.
Not just thinking, but real humans talking and reaffirming that we all are very different from each other – not just group-huddling, mind-numbed digits bullied by a bunch of technocratically-stoned zombies pretending to be humans.
Do you understand what I’m saying? Am I alone out here? Speak up. My sanity depends on it.
