Chemistry, Digital Dystopia & Love

Anyone who has taken a hit off of that blockbuster syringe called love, knows that saucy little minx does what she wants. The most prolific artists, musicans, philosophers all the way to 17-year old (okay maybe also 30-year old boys) have crooned, written and pondered its control over man. It’s impossible control to break down, process and comprehend the staggering effects of that thing called love.

Scientists have proven that ‘love’ as we know it, because us humans need to constantly define and label everything, is actually more of a chemical equation along the lines of C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2.

To us non-chemistry majors or kids who were under the bleachers during class, that’s dopamine, serotonine and oxytocin.

Those three troublemakers are the foundation for what you feel when you say you’re in love. If you take too much of the stuff, which inevitably we do, together they cause cause insanity, schizophrenia andextreme paranoia. Sound familiar? That’s like putting Putin, Trump and Ryan in the back of a 1972 VW Volkswagon Beetle and hoping for the best.

So, chemically speaking, love does make you crazy.

In all this crazy, we also now live in a world where technology drives, colors and permeates our interaction with others. Rather we let it control our interaction with others.

From social media channels to the way we consume entertainment or watch TV online, we’re relating to the world behind a digital veil that not only reduces our social interactions with others, but virtually eliminates discourse as a platform for self-disclosure with others. Self-disclosure and c0-rumination (think self-disclosure 2.0) lets us sort out and and emotionally process the stuff that goes on in our little lives. It’s now easier to take a total detour from any uncomfortable interactions by simply using technology or digital media to insulate us.

In the opposite of the truth is stranger than fiction — a sci-fi short film called Re/collection takes a look at how technology could enable a person avoid an unpleasant situation. In the film, a husband wants to alleviate the pain he’s experiencing with his wife from her mental illness. He undergoes a risky procedure in a back-alley shop to trade his memories for new ones.

The short film takes us to the heart of what’s at stake here. How much are we, us mere mortals, willing to trade away in order to keep that blockbuster syringe of love at full capacity? How likely are we to completely trade away a memory to keep that high?

The truth is out there, only we might not want to face it.