Op-ed

by: Jack

Lost


The world is smaller today than at any time in recorded history. And it's getting smaller. Social networking has created a platform upon which we can see the segmented decimals of a person's life thousands of miles yet only seconds away. The nuance and intricacies of a personality reduced to lists and trivia, easily consumed in a handy profile format.

The world is getting smaller, and we know more about each other than ever before. From your favourite band, to what you had for breakfast, to how you currently feel about work... or more frequently that "Jack is bored :("

This can only be a good thing, surely: the rise of the global community, the birth of a new world order. Millions of people connecting the world over, sharing their thoughts and dreams, their daily trials and successes. A world and history's worth of knowledge is at our very fingertips, and for this we congratulate ourselves as living in the most enlightened age of Man.
The world is small, and we are giants, a global village living side by side and thousands of miles away at the very same time.

But this Utopian vision is overcast by a banal modernity in which the human condition has been placated. We are become the lotus eaters, the opiate masses, contented and wasting away in a paradise built of apathy. The vast halls of data at our disposal sit untouched. Hell, it's there, we know it's there, why do we need to look at it? Homogeneous media feeds our depleted psyche, as homogeneous fast-food destroyed the palates of the last few generations.

We grew fat, and now we grow stupid. Our venal desires catered for, the next great challenge has been met. This is what's good, we're told, and so we watch and listen, entranced, comforted by the idea that somewhere, some benevolent uncle knows best, that the reservoirs of empowerment are accessible to all, and that because of this access we are empowered. The door is open, yet still we stand at the threshold, bedazzled by the pretty lights, with all our many friends at our side.

The world is small, and the nations of the world are integrating and borders mean less. Yet in this newly emerging global empire, enclaves are developing, tribes and nations spread geographically and bound ideologically. MySpacers and Facebookers, Googlers and Mocrosoftians, Youtubers and Yahoos. To be sure, there are multinationals, subjects of WoW and Google alike, those who claim dual Twitterhood and MySpace citizenship.

The world is small, we know more about each other than ever before, have vast libraries of information a keystroke away, and "Jack is bored :("
But, amongst the scattered tribes of celebrophiles and Lotophagi, the apathetic populace of this new world, there are those who see beyond the door, beyond the flimsy light-show. They are anxious in their skins, grating against the herd society. They are not contented by the superficial facade of proscription. Disparate nomads in the emergent landscape, they search for more meaning than what happened at lunch today, to be entertained by more than a rerun of a remake of a regurgitated plot-line.

They are hungry. They want to learn and create and share and experience. They are outnumbered by the flock and lost in the overwhelming sea of cow-eyed children. In this interconnected new world order, these are the ones who are disconnected.

Not content to be fed, this lost tribe wants to feed itself. To find itself. To be more. This is a citizenry unhappy with the status quo, because the status quo is enfeebled and lame. The fire that lights the hearts and minds of these people rage furiously against the bored and unbothered.

They are other, they are free. In this quasi-Utopian realm of fenced-in freedoms, these are the people who look to the soiled corners of the dream, beyond the boundaries, where the oppressed and tragic lie bleeding, caps in hand, begging for their birthright and their lives. They will not ignore the ones who were left behind, because they take it upon themselves to know. They recognise the prison of convenient ignorance, where the prisoners have taken the key and hidden it, where "Jack is bored :(" is the cri de guerre of an unfought war.

The roaming citizens of the lost tribe will not sit idle and dumb, will not allow mediocrity to rule them. They will not stand beholden to the whim of fashionable cults based on comforting lies.
In this tribe, Jack is not bored. Jack is lost. Jack is free.