Diseases of Civilization: Welcome to My Own

If any of you are familar with Derrick Jensen's work, you will know that he often times refer to his Cohrn's disease as a "disease of civilization."  That pharse "disease of civilization" has given me a lot to think about. 

Currently right now I'm suffering from my own "diseases of civilization." Instead of doing my biology homework or heading to bed, I instead type this out and wiggle in my seat. I am unable to sit still or even calm down. I constantly cannot concrate on one task, often getting lost in my music, or a movie, or something around me. Or just the need to get up.

Science has no idea what goes on with this.  Some say its an issue with my frontal lobes while there's a theory its some left over gene that we had as a hunter-gather society.

Whatever the cause of it, I cannot go to bed. I cannot activate my work. I cannot go to bed.

I have ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. People say it doesn't exist but they obviously haven't met me. I live an organic vegan lifestyle and I don't really drink caffinated products so its not my diet that causes me to fidget and hyperactivety. Its not laziness that causes me to not be able to finish things or start tasks. 

Its a disease. 

Its a disease that I cannot read fast or spell. I had the read level of a high schooler by the time I was in fourth grade yet the spelling skills of a second grader. It took me a month to read a book that would take others a week. 

Right now, while I'm typing this, I'm having trouble coming up with words to fill the sentences up. I'm constantly seeing the red underline, clicking on it and getting frustrated at how it wasn't the word I meant to type.

I have the disease of Dyeslixa.

This disease was brought about by civilization. It isn't nature to read. Its narutal to speak but it isn't natural to read. Reading and writing was something deveopled by civilization and is in fact a marker of what makes a civilization advanced or not.

Because it isn't narutal to read the words on a page. Some people for whatever reason learn how to read with a different part of the brain than where one normally learns how to read.

Letters fuse together while I'm reading. I sometimes will look at a word that I know the defination by heart but because I never came across with it in reading, will not recongize it. I often get frustrated while writing because even though its a passion of mine, its so diffcult to do. Its diffcult to constantly have bad spelling and misplaced grammar.

While these diseases are not killing me, it makes it diffcult for me to live. The construct of learning in an enviroment where everyone must be alike was very diffcult for me. Its still diffcult for me. Its diffcult for me to have friends go through books around me and discuss them at the drop of a hat while I'm still on chapter two. Its diffcult for me to pay attention in class. Its diffcult for me to keep up a blog that I want to keep up and share my thoughts.

It makes it diffcult to live within this cage known as civilization.

This is why they are my diseases of civilization.

edit: if you're wondering why some of the stuff is mispelled, its because I actually wanted it to be like that.

Wired Generation

I've mentioned something to my friend and I feel like I should write about it here.

My generation and the generation after are wired generations. Nearly everyone of my peers has attached to their hands a cellphone. Nearly everyone of my peers has in their backpacks a laptop computer. Nearly everyone has on them an ipod/another mp3 player device. We all remember the time of CD players and VCRs while the kids coming up know nothing of these things. Some of us don't even remember using payphones. Now we have a phone that gives a message in text "I <3 u. Coming to dinner?"

When my friends are hanging out together, we have the TV on and we're on our computers typing away. My boyfriend constantly is playing the game "Age of Wonders" while on his stomach, I'm resting my head playing Sonic the Hedgehog. My roommate and I will chat on AIM while in the same room. I write an email to my friend touring Europe about Transmetropolitan . I've barely seen him and yet I've sent to him cupcakes and when I'm in trouble, I've asked for advice.
My best friend is texting me from Georgia. I consider her my best friend and for four years, known her. I went to see her graduate from high school, which in this culture, is a big event. Yet I've only been with her a total of two times as a human.
Another good friend of mine is battling internet addiction. I've only met her once in my life yet I'm worried about what she's going through right now.

One day, recently, I was texting my boyfriend to meet us at dinner. I looked over and saw a man on his smart phone texting away followed by a girl, thumbs pressed on a tiny keypad, typing away. Both had laptop bags around their shoulders and one was listening to an mp3 player. I turned to my roommate and went "..You know, I wonder how fucked we'd be if an electromagnetic pulse were to go off right now." She turned to me and laughed, "Oh we'd be pretty fucked."
We then talked about how some people might not survive, how we would but might experience withdrawal from the technology not being there.

Can we survive?

I'm typing this blog entry right now on the computer while waiting for something to load on Youtube. I have my music blasting through the speakers while my Last FM posts it on my profile [which according to it, I really like Fall Out Boy's cover of "Beat It" last week, playing it 33 times]. I look outside at the beautiful fall day and I go "meh. Its just too cold." Then get back to typing.

How fucked up am I to ignore a good day for technology? Sadly, we do this everyday.
We're all being controlled by machines and not even noticing its impact on our lives.
Instead of playing video games, why don't I just cuddle my boyfriend? Instead of watching the TV, why don't we get out Apples to Apples? Instead of communicating my friends via text and email, why don't I make plans to visit them? Or ask them to come visit me? None of us think to go and do these things because technology is just so convenient and there to entertain us. And now its almost to the point we've forgotten how to interact.

This is scary to really think about and you know? We don't.

Ignorance is bliss.

Presidential Election

Instead of going on about how the candidates are just similar and I'm not endorsing anybody, I'm just going to sum everything up with the following comic scan:



Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I'm scared.

Scan from the graphic novel Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

"How can you believe civilization will fall completely when civilizations fall all the time and nothing happens?"

"How can you believe civilization will fall completely when civilizations fall all the time and nothing happens?"

I get this question a lot.

I have given this question actual thought. It is an interesting question, but I will have to say that the question itself poses a problem.

That problem is the definition of civilization. How do we view it?

I got into an argument a year ago just because we had two different views of what civilization is.

So here is my definition before going further with this question.
Civilization is what we live in and what we have always lived in since we learned how to farm a surplus to feed the cities.

Now, the question is: "How can you believe civilization will fall completely when civilizations fall all the time and nothing happens?"

Simple. We haven't seen civilization fall.

How can I say that after so many "civilization falls?" Simple: they were merely falls of culture. Did civilization itself collapse? No. It kept going. People kept living in the cities while farmers brought in their food, but the culture was different.

Nobody has ever said Chinese civilization fell yet if you look at the cycle of how dynasties are formed and compare them to the " civilization falls," they're the same thing. Another culture comes in and dominates the other.

In order for a civilization to collapse completely, you would have to see the technology and farming ripped up from under them. But what really happens? Foreigners come in, take over the land and either kill the dominate culture that was there or assimilate them into their culture. They still use the city and farm lands that are available in that region so how can it be called a "civilization collapse."

We have never seen a civilization collapse; only cultures collapsing. We've never seen a time without farming to produce a surplus to feed a unit. We've never seen a time without technology or

We've only seen what happens when a culture gets dominated by another culture. That is the culture that gets dominated is reduce to either nothing or is assimilated into a completely different culture.

Simply put: There is a difference between an empire falling and a civilization falling. Human civilization has yet to fall and we have yet to see the impact it will cause on a global scale. Especially now since all of civilized life is connected. This should be pretty apparent in the fact that the global markets have not been doing well as of lately. All civilized people [who live in a European culture, so if the US is bumped down to number 2 while Europe is pushed to number 1 the dominate culture will not change] depend on the same outsourced farm land and factories to survive. What will happen when technology is gone and we no longer have farm land?

Only time will tell really, but I don't think we'd be ready for a mass Firefly evacuation of the Earth when it does happen.