“Look at you, you weak little girl, sitting in a corner on the dirt ridden floor.”
“Awwww sweetie stop crying everything will be okay.”
“*silence*”
“Get up! It’s time to hunt. Time to kill. Time to bathe in the blood of our prey and feast upon the flesh.”
“A-B-C-D… E-F-G”
“STOPPPP!”
It’s not the lack of modern technology that keeps me confined to the civilized world. It instead is my fear of solitude.
When I think about Thoreau and his time spent in that cabin, I don’t think how he survived without mail or a grocery store or how I could compare that to surviving without computers or indoor plumbing or all modern technology. I believe I could function somewhat normally in society without my television always distracting me, or without my cell phone buzzing persistently. The part I can’t fathom is the lack of human interaction.
I think about how this man survived living by himself. I need people. I know this. It is one of my many weaknesses. I need people in the most basic ways. I need human contact. Without it I fear for my sanity. You see I’m already all sorts of crazy, which I just play off as quirkiness, but the thing everyone else doesn’t realize is the moment I’m by myself is when I can’t escape from the truth. Being alone allows time to think. And I do believe thinking is great, but it also can be dangerous. I know I can’t handle being left to my own thoughts for a day or two. A year alone just to think, and what I wrote above would happen. I would no longer be by myself. I would be consumed with isolation and I fear my only coping mechanism would be to create these other personalities to help me survive on my own.
And then I’m going to connect my fear of isolation to FEED because I feel the need to make a connection. When I read Feed and I watched these people m-chatting and living in their bubble communities I felt that they were isolating themselves from each other. And I don’t mean that they were physically separate from each other, but emotionally there was a disconnect. And you truly see this when they are in the hospital without their Feed and they struggle interacting without the technology chip in their heads. Then you continue to see this with Violet and Titus’ relationship. How different their behaviors our due to the way they were raised. The people of this “future” or other reality are lacking, to quote Bruce Springsteen, “a little of that human touch.” I mean they even create life in incubators. The sense of being connected to a parent or child, of being connected to another person is lost. And we are left alone. All alone.
Awesome beginning. I do agree with what you said about us needing that "human touch". I feel like it would have been a better experiment if Thoreau would have had other people join him for a year so at least they could have human contact. I feel like without it, not only you but most of us would also create these other personalities to help us survive on our own.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alex. I liked your beginning. Human contact seems like it would be one of the most basic human functions and to go without it seems ridiculous. As I was reading FEED, i thought m chatting seemed pretty awesome. I don't think i'd like a feed because i hate people trying to get me to do crap i don't wanna do (buy stuff). But i think the idea is interesting. I liked how conception is done with them. I always had this idea that maybe you could go to the doctor and they make a baby in a test tube that gets transferred to a embryonic chamber and them in 9 months, you come back to pick it up. Babies scare me though so i'd wait till its like about 3 to pick it up cause that way its past the gross messy parts.
ReplyDeleteI loved your beginning! Although I would never get the feed if it existed, I too love being around human contact. This is why I prefer face to face communication v.s Virtual communication as well. I too would not be okay with spending a year alone and isolated. I could probably survive only about a week. Anyways, great post like always!
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