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Allergic to Humanity

I use social media.  I don't like it, but I use it for work. I share my art, writing, music, and conlanging.  I try to limit my exposure to what other people are saying but I do see.  I see posts from others.  Sometimes they're entertaining so I browse.  It's like lingering in an irradiated zone to look for something pretty.

There are simply too many people on social media.  It's baffling, dangerous territory.  I see a lot of news and I ignore it as much as I can.  Signs of what's happening in the world I don't want to live in.  The news is invariably accompanied by commentary.  Whether I agree or disagree with any particular opinion is irrelevant.  Opinions flash and then vanish.  Incidents fade, even tragedy.  Even horror.  But there is a great implicit pressure that I invest in outrage.  I don't have the necessary energy.

Many are alarmed, angry, and so passionate.  I can't identify with their passion for transient things.  And I see everything as transient - gossamer thin.  Barely there in the shadow of time.  Waiting to be erased.  Or to be forgotten.  Oblivion is inevitable.

Whatever happens, good or bad in whatever extreme, becomes nothing.  So I don't feel bound to the world.  Airy as it is, how could I?  There will always be another war, another tyrant, another atrocity.  There will always be hope and there will always be fear.  Whatever we point to as evidence that things need to change is also evidence that change is slow, frail, and unreliable in the world of human concerns, when it happens at all.  Whatever we call the greatest historical moments of our lives will fall like rain and run away as they always have.  Because in the world beyond human concerns, our greatest horror means absolutely nothing.  And that's where I want to live.

So I can't spend too long on social media - mankind's new nuclear ground zero - reading fantasies of human importance.  Too much of that is toxic to me.  I might be allergic to humanity.

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