To the "Do-Nothings"

It is small group of whom I'm acquainted with to which I speak--there is a whole world of unknowns that I speak to more directly. We have been in the midst of an age where handshakes have been forgone, where hugs are cliche'. Physical presence has become secondary to what we can type to each other. Do not be fooled! The body is just as much present to the computer as we used to be to each other on the street. However, it would be lunacy to equate the two. Have I come to a time in which I high-five a screen? My hand has never felt so cold. We mistake our typing for interaction all too easily. We see our posts and believe "I have come in touch with the world!" What a marvelous age we live in: inertia is the new movement! What need do I have to meet my companions on the street? I can speak with their digital representative from the comfort of my own home. Comfort? What a boring notion this has turned out to be, to have one's spot all figured out. Never would I have thought of youth so eager to become calculable. What ever happened to the spontaneity of the heart? Where are the passionate souls, those in whom each of its three parts is eager to will creative acts; to dance in illusions? We have grown out of our dancing phase and turn to stare at matters as they appear before us, and what our eyes seemed glued to is avatars. Much in how we come to label and command an object, we have turned to do the same to each other as the new form of "friendship"--the post serves just as good as any to indicate what a person is. While we can meet each other in person, this task is far too disruptive, so we make up for our absence by typing our thoughts and disposition. It is in this sense that a lack is a presence. We inform each other what it is that intrigues one, what has caught my fancy for today. These messages are tiny enough not to discomfort us; there is nothing in the post that commits us to our passions. What we offer each other in return is a post reading "x was here." And where would that be? Where is the world of the post? We say it resides in a digital landscape, and this much I can agree with, but what a spiteful sense of irony to refer to such a place as a "landscape". Our chairs have never felt so loved, for the landscape is nowhere past the seat of our rooms. We are fooled to believe that we touch each other through this terrain--this is what it is to hug someone in comfort, in places so far removed from each other that it should no longer come as mystery as to how Lucifer could reach into the hearts of men from worlds beyond. Are not these souls fooled to think they have been touched by the devil--are we not fools?

A wise lunatic once said "Where one can no longer love, there one should pass by!" We do well to take this advice, but not so well that we are unaware of having taken it. We remain ghosts to each other, and much like the ghost in our rooms, we pass each other by without the slightest hesitation. The people we encounter in the digital landscape are not people at all--to whom is my speech directed when aimed at a picture? We have not the time, nor the passion to meet each other face to face, but we cannot let it pass that we have discarded friendship. Something must be done to recover our lost companions. This answer appears simple to the coward--let me type to them, as though there were any guarantee that my text is actually reaching an audience (especially the audience of which one thinks). It can be argued that this predicament is no different than the letter writing of old, that one has no reason to believe that one's letter will reach it's destination, nor is one inclined to suppose that a letter in return is from the original party. In this I seek not to establish a hierarchy of practice, rather to assert a notion of effort. For while the skepticism spans across the board, the letter writer, regardless of the lack of rational positivity, still puts in the effort. It is in this sense that one provides fuel to hope. Letter writing does not confine itself to realm of comfort that the post provides, instead it turns its heels and walks a longer path of methodical discourse, editing, corrective measures, all such efforts are rendered absurd by the lack of rational confidence contained within the situation of a message to meet its party. This then is not to pass someone by in the slightest, this is to confront a wall and shout with all your might so that if there is that special someone on the other side, they may chance to hear you. This risk is love. It is in this sense that we seek each other out if we must remain at great physical distance, consumed by the capitalist demand of our age. Do not mistake this post-messaging as the same thing. It is through this digital landscape that we pass each other by. We take that there is someone on the other side of the wall for granted, and by doing so we rest comfortably back into our seats, back in front of our computers. There's no need to shout, no need to afford great effort--the post reaches the world, and what do you know, the world posts back! Ghosts! We have come to know ghosts! While people are on the street, there are those who speak to the screen as though it speaks back. Comfort is for the "do-nothings", those of us who reside in type and suppose oneself to be active in a world of people. It is in this way that we pass by--a noble value, but from which it should be clear who it is that one does not love.

Do not be mistaken to think that what I write to you is a simple post. With this I give you my effort. In this I shout and scream--who is on the other side?