The Shame of Living in the Present

Let me begin with an example;

Imagine driving to an empty parking lot in your car, and driving in circles for hours.

Nothing else.

Just turn the wheel to the right, press the gas a bit, and proceed in a loop, over and over.

For hours.

Photo by Aaron Thomas on Unsplash

The car: a marvel of technical machinery, steel precision cut to the thousandth of an inch, brilliantly balanced to transfer the energy of gasoline into the energy of locomotion.

The tires: the result of tree excretions processed into rubber reinforced with steel belts smelted from the earth, combined in a design improved by generations of engineers, to provide comfortable and secure connection for your car to the asphalt.

The asphalt made of stone mined from the Earth by gigantic machines also made of steel and rubber. Also gathered from the Earth and its produce from the trees and stones and mountains by the back-breaking labor of our ancestors.

Ancestors, some whose genes died out though their labor lives on, for thousands of years pushing things forward to today; the peak of human civilization and development!

And here you are:

Driving in circles.

(No, I’m not talking about the example anymore.)

Wearing out the asphalt. Grinding down your tires. Burning up the gasoline. Straining the steel of your engine block.

Exothermic. Entropic. Wasting.

Sending energy off into the ether; never to be reclaimed.

Energy without fruit.

Disregarding the Zettajoules of energy in the form of blood and sweat and tears and life and death and toil burned in the furnace of civilization as fuel in order to place you where you sit today; The sum of humanity.

Atlassian energy expressed to preserve and maintain the civilization that enables you to binge watch Netflix, have endless fruitless sex, and waste away the moments that make up your dull day.

It is an act of monstrous selfishness.

Disgustingly extravagant.

Staggering and unforgivable.

Devilish. Evil.

 

Will you sacrifice to the entropy or to the increase?

To the future, or to yourself?

 

Stop masturbating.

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