The Modern & The Mundane
Welcome to the Modern and the Mundane.
Somehow you’ve stumbled upon this; my inaugural blog post. I’ll level with you now: this blog is pure catharsis. I don’t really know what it’s going to be, how often I’ll post to it but over the last, oh, I don’t really know how long, certain feelings have been building up and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to articulate them and eject them from my brain into something tangible. This is the fruit of that labour. Disclaimer: there may be occasional swear words.
What the fuck is going on?
I remember watching science fiction films as a youngster, full of ‘joie de vivre’. I just couldn’t wait to grow up and experience the future. It would be just like in the movies but better, because I’d be the one flying the cars and I’d be the one befriending the robot companion. Instead, the world is literally drying out turning into some celestial prune, people in England are literally swimming in their own shit and nobody seems to give a fuck. Politicians don’t care and the general public are too busy panicking about something else. Rightfully so. The public should panic. It’s madness out there. We’re all too caught up in it. We’ve been launched at breakneck speeds into the future and our brains and other important internal organs are still back in 1998.
Now, for the sake of maintaining my anonymity, I’m not going to divulge any personal info about myself. I don’t have anything to hide. In fact, I’m hoping that the Modern and the Mundane can blossom into a place where I’m able to be my most authentic and candid self. I will explain in greater depth the reason for writing anonymously later on but anyway, where were we? Oh yes; we were being launched at breakneck speeds. Well, THE FUTURE IS NOW and surprise, surprise: it’s a fucking mess.
Everything is moving faster, and progressing, and evolving, and changing. Information is an onslaught and technology is disappointing and the truth is a lie and they are against us and it’s too late and we’ve got time and…
settle.
Just breaaaathe…
remember when living was supposed to be fun?
Something is missing. I think we’re overstimulated. Capitalism and consumerism has been left unchecked. I’ve always been told change is good and to be welcomed but I don’t realise half the stuff that’s changing anymore. It just does it. There’s no time to appreciate the change. It’s happening so fast now too. By the time we’ve all got to grips with the next big thing, the next, bigger thing is here. We’re distracted and that’s why we’re frustrated. Maybe not everyone but we’re living in a time of real, palpable anger. I feel it. I see it online all the time. I see it in person all the time. People are fucking angry. Part of the reason for writing this blog is because I want a place where I can vent this stream of consciousness drivel. I’ve tried with friends and family and it just sounds so bloody depressing that nobody wants to listen or people just can’t believe I’m this apathetic. Here, people can read if they want, they don’t know me and I can talk about this stuff without seeing people wince. If this is never read by anybody, that’s fine. As I said at the start, it’s catharsis for me.
People are fuming; they’re red with anger but where do we direct that? That is the problem. Media has grown to the point that we’re told what to be angry about. I’m not talking about just the mainstream TV media. The whole manner in which we consume news has changed and the social media companies know that. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit — however virtuous you think their initial premise was; to be ‘safe spaces’ for people to freely express themselves, like any other huge company, they’re beholden to shareholders at the end of the day. Much like the introduction of 24 hours news channels, social media channels now have to continuously pump news onto your feed, and have you looked at the news recently? It’s getting worse all the time. Of course it is. The horrible news stories generate clicks and they have to keep increasing traffic so the stories get worse, and there’s more of them. It gets to a point where there’s too many horrible things happening in the world for me to care about all of them. People are angry but as soon as they get angry, there’s some other horrible thing to be angry about and some other thing to be swept away by in this seemingly endless river of shite. On the flip-side, if it’s not a horrible news story, it’s a banal celebrity piece about the cultural impact of Kim Kardashian borrowing Marilyn Monroe’s dress. When does it end? There’s too much information and there’s not a chance that anyone can sift through it to find anything meaningful. I’ll come back to this later, and I promise, this diatribe against something will end on a positive note. OK, maybe not 100% positive but I’ll settle for melancholy.
Now, back to my anonymity. Like I said, nothing to hide. I just want to avoid a situation where somebody I know IRL reads this and goes, “wowza, I didn’t know you felt like this”. In fact, I’ll tell you a deeply personal story now that is largely responsible for shaping me into what I am now and then following that story, I’ll round out this initial entry and try to explain the Modern and the Mundane.
In 2016, my best friend died of terminal cancer. He was 22.
He’d been complaining of stomach aches and indigestion type symptoms. He didn’t think much of it but a few months later, he was out for dinner with a friend who commented on how he looked quite thin. He admitted he hadn’t been eating a lot due to the stomach trouble so decided to get it checked out. He went into his GP, they ran some tests, referred him to hospital and the hospital found he had tumours in his stomach, liver and appendix. It was too late to do anything, he was moved to a hospice and he died a month later. By the time the doctors found the cancer, there was nothing anyone could have done. It all happened so fast. He was diagnosed and then dead in a month. The diagnosis was the next big thing, and before I had time to process any of it, the next bigger thing came along and he passed away.
I grieved, of course. I remember getting the message from a friend that he’d slipped away in his sleep, in typical modern fashion via Facebook Messenger, it read: ‘OMG he’s died in his sleep :’(’. Classic. I still don’t think, as a society, that we know how to cope with death. I certainly didn’t. I was 22 and this was the first time that my brain had really been tasked with processing something like this. I remember at the funeral, thinking ‘I just need to hold it together until the end’. I was fine; I watched them carry his coffin in to ‘Flight of the Valkyries’, and then sat and listened as people got up and talked about him and his life. I managed to keep it together thus far. It was none of the sentimental anecdotes or heartfelt tributes to my best friend that got me; it was the bit where the person running the funeral did the whole, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, bit. I lost it. My bottom lip went first and then the tears were falling onto my jeans. I felt a hand on my knee from someone sat next to me, who I hadn’t spoken to in about 7 years. That bit got me.
It wasn’t until years later that that started to make sense to me. I was in shock. My brain didn’t know what to feel at any given moment. I couldn’t process his death. I didn’t really know what it was. Death.
All these beautiful eulogies to my dear friend got no rise from me, no reaction. It wasn’t until the ‘ashes to ashes’, that my brain clicked and went, “you’re at a funeral for your best friend, see? This is the funeral thing they do”. Everything I knew about funerals and death was that little verse they do. I’d seen it in TV shows and movies and that was the strongest association I had with death previously, and it was at the moment that it all sunk in and I was overcome with emotion. My brain did the math and my face showed the working. The year that followed was a bit of a blur. I was grieving, I was distant, I went back to work too quickly, I started to try and distract myself, I never really dealt with anything. Eventually my brain started to go on autopilot. I would later find out that this is typical of people going through what I was going through. The brain sorts of shuts things out as a way to protect itself. It couldn’t process those emotions properly and until you do, it’s very easy to become distant and disassociate so it doesn’t have to deal with it again. If you don’t care about anything, you don’t have to deal with anything. That was exactly how that year felt. This turned into a really dark depression and the couple of years that followed involved three attempts on my life, two visits to a psychiatric hospital, some therapy, some counselling, some medication and lots of reflection. I treated people around me like shit, made terrible relationship decisions, drank, took drugs; it was a mess. The loss of someone close to you fundamentally changes who you are as a person. It certainly changed me, for better or worse, however, the significance is where I’ve gone from there and that’s the essence of what I wanted to try and encapsulate in this post.
I’m not better.
I don’t know if I will get better. This up and down depression might be something I deal with forever. It really does affect everything. If you’ve ever had persistent mental health problems for years, you know what it’s like. If you haven’t, imagine having indigestion for three years; it’s like that. It’s there, it’s uncomfortable, it affects things you can do. Sometimes, for an hour or so you maybe forget about it and get used to it, but then other times it comes flooding back and you go, “urgh, I feel awful”. I also have IBS so I know that’s a good metaphor.
When you’ve lived with depression, especially with suicidal tendencies, for a while, it really does become a part of who you are. Therapists will tell you that depression is not a personality trait and to not consider it a part of you, but in a way it is regardless. It affects how you behave, it affects what you say and it affects what you feel. The first step of any CBT program I’ve done, is always awareness. Being aware of what your depression is, and what it isn’t, is key to living with it. It isn’t truth, it is an illness, it isn’t logical, it is seriously fucking hard to deal with on a daily basis. I’ve had a lot of time to work through my emotions and my depression, and can honestly say I’m feeling better. Sure, I still have days where everything is shite and I don’t see much point but generally, I’m okay and I’m trying to stay engaged, and FINALLY, this brings us back to the whole point of the Modern and the Mundane.
This modern society we live in, is one of extremes. My friends fucking hate when I say this, but there’s no nuance anymore, anywhere. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. There are no centrists anymore. You’re either a socialist or a communist, you’re far-right or you’re far-left, you’re an ally or you’re an enemy. I’m not saying anything revelatory, here. Social media is responsible largely for our fairly recent inability to have a meaningful discussion. Maybe it was always this way but now, with discussion being immediately possible with anyone on the planet, the quantity has increased but quality has not. It’s the same with cancel culture; it leaves no room for any meaningful unpacking of the issues it chooses to tackle. Rather than discuss the issues, we just shut the person up, send them packing and never hear from them again. What did they do? They’re cancelled so we don’t talk about it anymore. There have been times when I mentioned R Kelly and people I was with have said, ‘Nope. We don’t talk about him anymore’. How are we, as a society, supposed to learn anything this way? I’ve always been someone who likes to talk about things, I like making conversation and I like learning new things. My school report cards always said so, but, this modern talk is stifling. These self proclaimed experts on both sides of the political divide spout their opinions and supposed sources and then I ask about it; what do they tell you? “Just go online, man. The evidence is there. You just have to look for it”.
Oh, I’m sorry. Next time I want to have a conversation with you, I’ll just Ask Jeeves instead. Remember him?
The problem for me is that with social media and the internet spewing out so much information constantly, we’re dealing with these sweeping, societal issues on platforms that weren’t designed for it. These social networks were designed to include you, your circle of friends and maybe some pages you’re interested in. People share their opinions, however extreme they may be, amongst a community of like-minded individuals first. That bubbles away. It builds and builds to the point that someone in that circle connects with someone outside of the initial circle and BOOM. What was previously a fringe movement or a little social group has now exposed their views to a whole new circle of people, each with their own circles. You can see how these things grow and just like we discussed earlier, social media pushes the most extreme things. Good or bad, if they’re getting engagement, however controversial it may be, you’re going to see it. The algorithm sends this stuff to people most likely to engage first, so the first time you hear about this horrendous thing someone said, it’ll be a retweet with someone saying, “THIS IS DISGUSTING. #CANCEL’INSERTPERSON’”. That’s the extremes you deal with on social media all the time. They’re trying to form your opinion. These companies aren’t just tactful with the information they show you. They also consider the lens through which you will see it. That’s how these extreme opinions and divides are formed. It’s just marketing; clever targeting. Making you think that they are the enemy.
Now, the real crux of it for me, is the person in the middle. I’m not unique. I’ve learnt to get through each day of my life by living a somewhat detached existence. Like I said at the beginning, some see that as apathetic whereas I see it as healthy. I don’t want to get swept up in taking sides. I really want to form my own opinions and I want to care about the things I choose to care about but because these platforms are only amplifying the loudest voices. Who’s listening to the people in the middle? I’ve had so many frustrating conversations with people recently who, when I told them I just felt so disenfranchised and demoralised with politics that I didn’t even see the point in voting, that I just need to be better informed. Being informed isn’t enough anymore. There are supposedly loads of people better informed than me, according to Twitter, and they’re not making a single bit of difference. I talked to my Mum about the strikes happening everywhere but since I didn’t have the cold, hard statistics to back up what I was saying, she dismissed me and said “maybe do some research first”. When every piece of info we read online, can be manipulated and data is a commodity, maybe we have to fall back on how we feel; our gut. If you asked me for the statistics that show that the Tories are running the UK into the ground, I wouldn’t know where to look, but that doesn’t change the fact that every time I see a Tory on the television, I swear I can see them moving underneath their skin suits. Am I wrong? Possibly but that feeling of deep discomfort I feel, and I am sure I am not the only one, is important. If the last seven years have taught me anything, throughout all the shit I’ve been dealing with, how you feel matters. I’m talking about instincts. If something feels wrong, it is. You don’t need data to back that up. We always tell people to go with their gut. Why can’t voting be the same? The apathy for me comes from being told I need to be politically engaged, but what they mean by that is you need to know every party’s policies and their politicians inside out. Otherwise you’re ill informed. There’s so much information. Who are these people that have the luxury of being able to do that research? You show me one of them, and I’ll show you a liar.
The modern and the mundane is the idea that we need to combat this society of extremes by making changes to how we value things. We can’t value information anymore. It’s not a reliable resource anymore. I can understand the frustration a lot of people felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. I felt it too. These experts who came out and told us what to do and how to be safe, and then these other people coming out and telling us that vaccine wasn’t safe, masks don’t work. Now, that everyone has access to information, it’s value has gone down inherently. You can’t believe anything anyone says anymore. Rather than being objective with everything, maybe we need to be subjective. We need to hear how people feel. We need to find a way to connect with the silent majority and ignore this extreme vocal minority. We need to value emotion, compassion and beauty once again. Whatever happens to the world, whether we burn it to a crisp or we leave it and form some sort of utopia in the stars, one thing is for sure. We can’t do it alone. We need to work together and I don’t know what that looks like. I just know that I’ve been told too many times that I’m not informed enough, I don’t care enough, I don’t value enough, I don’t earn enough, I’m not attractive enough, I’m not loud enough, I’m not active enough, I’m not engaged enough. Maybe not, but I feel things and I’m passionate. Maybe I am all of those things you said, but I’m choosing to be them. Imagine you’re walking down a corridor and you stop at a door. You open the door, peer into the room and you see an armchair. The entire room is covered in shit. The walls are smeared in it, it’s dripping from the ceiling, the stench is ungodly. Even if you’re uncomfortable, you’re not going to sit in that seat. You’re going to carry on and find somewhere else that doesn’t make you want to be sick.
That’s how I feel. It’s optimistic nihilism. What we have now is shit. I don’t have the energy to deal with these extreme societal issues via social media. That doesn’t make a me a bad person. It’s just how I process things. The news is too extreme for me and is not a platform designed to influence change. Our current political systems are outdated and not designed to influence change. The way we talk to each other, our social media networks are too polarising and are not platforms designed to influence change.
The only thing that can and does change is how we feel. Let’s focus on that.
“I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.” Tana French, supposedly
There’s inherent value in everything. I felt like I wanted to die for a long time and I had to find that value in my life. It makes me want to make changes and that’s where my anger comes from; being told I don’t have x, y, or z to do it. I used to compare myself to others a lot and it made my depression a lot worse. Eventually, you can realise that there’s always going to be someone more knowledgeable, funnier, more creative or more truthful than you. It doesn’t invalidate how you feel. It doesn’t mean anything about your value as an individual. Just by being here on this planet, you have value. You may think you live a boring life or that you’re never going to amount to much, but there’s beauty in the mundane. I assure you, you might not see it, but I do. Whoever you are, wherever you fall on whatever spectrum, I value you. The modern is a means to appreciate the mundane. Reconnect with self. Feel how you feel.
Everything is broken but that’s OK.
It’s the start of building something new.
It’s not about what values you have in society.
It’s about a society that values you.
