Disconnect

Sep. 8, 2023

Music, Mathematics and The Matrix

Earphones are like parasites. Parasites that crawl up your ear to disconnect you from the reality to hook you up to the fake world of digital entertainment stimulating your senses shielding you from the truth you are trying to run away from. Remember that old Moserbear advertisement ?

Don't like to think too much
It makes me think too much
It keeps my mind on my mind
Don't want to see too much
It makes me see too much
Sometimes I'd rather be blind

Music itself is a very powerful thing. You see something bad you can close your eyes, you smell something you can hold your breath but if you hear something you didn’t want to, you cannot close your ears. Hearing like other senses cannot be cut off. Perhaps this is why music was considered blasphemous for a really long while across many cultures. Music can simulate feelings, like to take a drug one must consent, to smell a compound one must consent, but music doesn’t need any. From sadness to euphoria, music can take one to many places. And that’s why know what you’re listening to. Music is a powerful tool and it should be handled with care.

All the things that they're saying and doing  
When they pass me by it just fills me up with noise  
It overloads me  
I wanna disconnect myself  
Pull my brain stem out and unplug myself  
I want nothing right now, I want to pull it out

Most of us cannot focus for much long, we often find ourselves to be the goldfish that frantically taps on icons waiting for something to grab its attention. What grabs it in about eight seconds hits jackpot. Paralysis hits the body as the only limb or say part of a limb that is left in motion is the thumb. Continuously scrolling through endless videos that take up our entire screens, and sometimes videos inside videos (Seen those gameplays with voiceovers ?). Videos with music. (Music that is usually not there for any reason other than to keep your attention. If you've ever studied with music in the background you've used this trick too, keeping your focus there in the moments your mind wandered.) Videos of people doing things to make you feel like you've accomplished something yourself. Consuming this, you. Completely surrendered.

Yeah, I want to pull it out, yeah  
I wanna break it all down, hey, I wanna pull it out  
Yeah, yeah, disconnect myself, disconnect myself  
I wanna see it go down, yeah, disconnect myself

My mathematics 101 professor would often remark in his idealism, that while learning a student must surrender himself completely to the teacher, mindfully, soulfully, bodily in every way possible. To his morality this was spiritual, this was how he had learnt. To our perverted minds this was funny.

A thousand miles an hour going nowhere fast  
Clinging to the details of your past  
Talking 'bout your damage and you're wasting my time  

Wanna be the king of pain? Stand in line  
All the numbers and the colors and the facts  
Backed by the rumors and the figures and the stats  
I think I'm gonna download my mind

While he did show some narcissism, of which he was well aware (and deserving) he was perhaps one of the best professors I have ever encountered all my years of learning till yet. The best way to study from a teacher like him was to surrender. To devote all your attention to the man in front of you and his whiteboard. Unfortunately, our minds were not only perverted but also attention deficit. The only things our minds could surrender themselves to was the escapism of media. The exchange of knowledge with a person of his level was simply not possible.

Too damn bad if at the end of the day the only thoughts  
In your brain are all the things that they say, what a waste  
Too damn bad if at the end of the line you got no idea of  
What's on your own mind  
You got no one to blame but yourself  
Too much to know, too much to see  
If I mean something to you but it's nothing to me  
It's just another ad for someone's version of how they think   you should be

Of course, the difference between the pupils' and the professor's focus wasn't the only reason. Most of us couldn't even sit there for so long and listen to what the man said. Not one of the pupils could say that they grasped all of the lecture at the end. It was and still is impossible for most of us to engage ourselves in deep work, in a state of unbroken focus. Let it be lectures or self study, most people today cannot focus for the long hours most of these tasks need. Most struggle to cope up with basic tasks that require sitting down someplace and really getting at it without a constant vice keeping them together like music. A song that plays in the background to keep them still every time their goldfish brain distracts itself.

---

Dead Kennedys - Drug Me - YouTube
Rollins Band - Disconnect - YouTube

Videos:
How the Internet Makes You Impotent - Parasocial Agency and Consumerism - YouTube
Touch Grass: How the Internet Distorts Time - YouTube
Parasocial Agency ft. MemeAnalysis - YouTube

this is really a forced post i dont have anything to say im just writing cause i wanna perhaps i lack the deep work i need to put in to write something real.

under constant updating, posting due to lack of patience.