Preface on attention
You may find this article difficult to read. Not perhaps because of its vocabulary, but because of its length, because of its black words on a white background, which provide none of the visual feed that we have grown accustomed to through our screens.
Man’s capacity for attention has atrophied, rendering him less able to partake in higher intellectual activities, including the reading of books. This atrophy comes from unlimited fast-paced media, which satiates all senses in rapid succession, something that doesn’t exist in nature. Attention is the mechanism of the brain to focus on what seems important, pushing back the boring and the mundane as things which it already comprehends; feeding stimuli to our senses brings it to our attention, in contrast to background things like noise and monotone colours which do not require focus or care. Attention, like many other processes of the body, is adjustable and dynamic; the brain will relearn what to pay attention to depending on circumstances and what you feed it. Hunters learn to pay attention to sounds that may be completely imperceptible to non-hunters; likewise to those working with colours, who may grow more capable of discerning hues than the average man.
Exposing yourself to endless stimuli gradually raises the bar for what is worth paying cognitive attention to. Before, a nice shade of red found in nature was a matter of utmost interest, reflected in the historical obsession with the rose. We find ourselves today however more bored of colour than ever before; how many of us now find undertaking a walk in a flowery park uninteresting if not for the adjacent activities which we can do in said park, like taking pictures of them or ourselves? I have once heard a man speak of satiating his urge to “look at trees” by searching for their image online. Lots of what the world offers has been rendered cognitively boring and uninteresting by our exposure to stimuli that is infinitely more offering of attention fulfillment.
This is both incidental and purposeful. Man has always sought easier entertainment, as well as a broader range of entertainment, both of which are offered concurrently in fast-paced media. Therefore, man will naturally gravitate towards it, regardless of measures taken to distance man away from fast-paced media. At the same time, companies have realized this, and therefore focus on providing easy, endless access to fast-paced media, as an incessant desire of man, much like the perpetual success of the restaurant as an institution, as man will always like to eat.
Within the politics of the control of man, there always has been a push to get us to focus on fast-paced media because it is dangerous to let the masses become too intellectually developed. Harming our capacity to pay attention prevents us from accessing otherwise longer pieces of literature; most of the radical ideas which have contributed to large upheavals are described in these long, extenuating treatises which we can barely afford to read today, either because their undertaking doesn’t fit well within our daily lives or because we have become incapable of even reading these works fully.
All modern products are designed with the fast-pace in mind. Controls allows for the rapid skipping of portions of video, playback rates allows music, audiobooks, and clips to be watched faster. These contribute to man’s addiction to fast-paced media.
The phenomenon of atrophied attention extends beyond simply how someone interacts with media. The atrophy of attention could be synonymously termed increased dependence on stimulation. Our increased dependence on stimulation rendered otherwise mundane and accessible activities like cleaning difficult to pursue without the presence of some more stimulating factor, such as music. Eating food is now often parallel with watching a video because eating food alone is no longer stimulating. Same applies to working out. It also adds to the difficulty of accessing books now.
It is sad that throughout my writing of this article, I had to consider that many people will not be able to read it simply because they loss the capacity to pay sufficient attention to it, that it will not be interesting enough, and it is triply sad that I considered producing it in shorter, perhaps animated segments to properly share it.
The nature of fast-paced media is already changing culture, with terms such as consumption replacing watching, listening, hearing, reading, as all fast-paced media is so similar and presented so equally to one another through the same platforms (vs. A specialized forum or a specific community) that it can be abstracted down to its simulative value. This is why celebrities (used to be artists, painters, singers, etc.) are now influencers, why reading and etc is now consuming, and why music, video, and books are now content.
Media that isn’t face-paced feels the need to balance subject depth, a wide emotional gamut, and enough whimsy to be taken seriously. There is a perpetual need to be better and greater, with anything less predicted to be subpar and not worth producing. This is reflected in how less and less people are content with their work-in-progress work, or failing to understand the process of iteration. We are too quick to judge leaked media.
Now, onto the matter at hand, which is Generation Z.
”Why is Generation Z…?”
The answer to the eternal question of Why is Generation Z…? is always the screen, that colourful and animated mess we choose to expose ourselves to for most of the day, convincing our poor eyes that all that can be observed in life is always at a distance of a feet or less, and our minds that everything in the universe is closer than it really is. There are, of course, true and veritable problems outside of the screen, and they are not unknown and are quite easily named, but one would find these problems to apply to everybody, with Generation Z simply most affected; the problems unique to Generation Z are most often downstream of the screen.
The screen; by that of course you know I mean the phone, but equally everything that connects you to the Internet. The computer, the television, the tablet, the advertisement display, that which plugs us into the far removed, lies to us that everything is adjacent. Some will claim to know that there is a difference between what’s presented on the screen and what exists, claiming also that they are more vested in the real than the virtual, or at least ideally; these are the potentially greatest liars, having deceived themselves to such an extent that they can no longer recognize how distant they have grew from the truth and from sanity altogether. Perhaps the greatest tendency of Generation Z, permeating all that which we do, is the assignment of the virtual to the real, the mental closure of the difference, with the occurings of the fake treated with the same emotional veracity and consideration as the happenings of the real.
You could be familiar with the thought gymnastic that comes from this. How many times have you seen people pointlessly argue over how one’s treatment of the virtual reflects what they are and who they are in the real? That because one has chosen to do something online means they will necessarily do it in real life? I remember while young this exact conversation held over violent video games, with how the violence in games can translate to real, physical violence, and how they therefore must be taken away for otherwise we will be raising a generation of barbarians. This argument once ridiculed is now permanent, omnipresent, and taints everything. It has evolved into multiple species adapted to each environment. Sometimes, it reflects that which you are truly. Sometimes, it does not, and doesn’t warrant conversion. Whether it does is entirely subject to their distaste of it.
This argument happens because the space between the virtual and the real has collapsed in the minds of Generation Z. That is why I said earlier that the people who claim to know the difference are great liars; if anything, this recognition is superficial but not truly taken in heart. Depending on the colouring of the Generation Z’s values, the emotion experienced over something negative seen online can be as strong as the emotion experienced over something negative seen truly, and likewise for the positive (which is growing rare).
This collapse of the space is perceived in just about anything else, even in identity, relationships, and the material. The symptoms of the collapse impacting all three is what I am about to describe to you.
Identity
Everything first begins with identity. In the virtual, identity doesn’t exist as it does in the real because it is easily exchangeable and replaceable. One cannot transform himself easily as to become somebody else in the real, and even claims of being somebody else have become harder to sustain, but in the virtual, a change of name is usually all that you need. The pseudonymous reality of the virtual has been a great contributor to the culture of the Internet, and has allowed for many wonderful things just as it allowed for many horrible things.
For a long time, it has been clearly understood that the identity that which you assume in the virtual is not the identity that which you assume in the real. You could try to approximate the two by, for example, using your real name as your username, but veritably this means nothing without a verification in the real, from the real. It was expected that those assuming a virtual identity are only assuming a fake, unreal identity; never at any point this identity becomes somehow reflective of who you are regardless of how much you grow to identify yourself as it and with it.
This expectation has ceased and no longer computes in the minds of people. The identity that you initially assume online can very well become your identity, immanent even to reality. The easiest example is merely the name, where someone assumes their pseudonym as their name in the real, often because those you know online doesn’t know you by any other name. I have unfortunately been too familiar with this, finding the transition to people’s real names from their fake ones difficult at times. Somehow, the use of the real name can be alien, because what was on the screen feels truer than what we see with our own eyes in the real.
Our persistent interaction with the virtual unintentionally convinces us that identity is self-generated. It transforms identity as a difficulty mutable whole stemming from our background and constitution into identity as a passing concept which materializes only in communication and representation, infinitely alterable but only limited by our capacity to express it. Those who possess a self-generated identity are often enamored with the Internet; it is where the identity was first born, and then comes a difficult process of embodiment where a degree of real incarnation is attempted.
How this incarnation comes to pass entirely depends on the person’s consideration of the self-generated identity. As something considered to come mostly from roleplay and fantasy, the incarnation becomes more a hobby than what is perceived to be a reflection of the person’s true inner core identity. It, in no way, bears less significance, and one may as well focus on this hobby as their main provider of image, but they recognize it as a passion more than a ground truth and an innate quality of their spirit. On the other hand, if the self-generated identity is considered to come from their core, almost like the soul within, and it simply had yet to surface, then the incarnation becomes an undeniable, unshakeable (even if still mutable) truth, one that must be embodied in a manner found self-satisfactory, and criticism or repression of this identity is a deep, unconsolable violation of the spirit.
It is obvious for all with eyes to see and ears to hear that Generation Z, more so than any generation before, has strongly associated identity with sexuality. This is no ill in itself, but carries a great restriction in sexuality when the identity can only be competently expressed within the virtual. One would call it freeing, given that perhaps the sexuality couldn’t otherwise be expressed in the real, but provided how little sexual expression our generation retains within the real, I can’t help but compare it to how the bird prefers the comfort of the cage to the freedom of the world, eternally returning to its confinement, not aware of the wonders that lies outside and the potential for impact.
Relationships
I have never met a cohort like my Generation Z that used the term long-distance relationship this much, to the point where the initialism LDR has to be coined. I dislike this use of the term, anyway; what exactly is distant between you two? It certainly isn’t the feeling, because it abounded so sufficiently that love formed. It certainly isn’t the communication, because it is now instant, immediate, permanent and interruptible. It certainly isn’t the sight of one another, because pictures are shared often. It certainly isn’t the body, because while they do not co-exist in the same space, it never seemed to have been an obstacle to your love (until it becomes one as the other is revealed to have been quite ugly!)
The term long-distance is a cope, because the long distance has prevented nothing which produced the relationship. The yearning for physical presence has come only as a secondary quality, for if it were a most valuable player, wouldn’t have the relationship failed to constitute? Given this wide perspective, the term online-only becomes not only preferrable but also the most accurate, yet how much of a sour taste does it produce in your mouth? Doesn’t it feel artificial, too unlike reality? Ah, isn’t that so; it appears that the virtual and the real are more conflated in you than you have probably minded to yourself earlier when I brought up that Generation Z no longer knows the difference. Something as sensitive and as conducive to human prosperity as the relationship now exists both in the material and the immaterial, yet as a single, binitarian object; the space between the two must not exist.
Of course I make no claim to the permanence of its virtuality. Glory be to those that struggle and transform the online-only relationship into a material, successful one (for I do not consider an immaterial, virtual relationship successful regardless of the fulfillment it provides to its constituents), it is a difficult and sad obstacle; glory be to those that do not content themselves with the virtual and work valiantly towards the real, it is not even attainable to most; glory be to the fulfilled and complete relationships that have recognized the virtuality a lesser state, less capable of bearing fruit, increasingly rare within Generation Z, an animal in danger of extinction, a creature that survives best today in captivity, and the only future prosperity.
The online-only relationship, however, appears more than just the form of romantic fulfillment most available to Generation Z; it is also the the one that many find to involve the least risk. This is quite funny as one could easily argue the online-only relationship to be infinitely more carrying of risk than the one that truly exists, for the one that truly exists carries the honesty of physicality (so the traits of the person, their looks and their outside comportment in society) whereas the online-only relationship exposes of your partner only what they wish to show you. However, today, the real relationship is riskier for Generation Z because of the prospect of eternal humiliation.
Generation Z grew up in a panopticon; an arena of cameras and recordings that live forever. We know that everything we do can be recorded, analyzed and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, even every infinitesimally small interaction. This discourages us from going out, have parties, and interact with others. I do plenty of this, because I do not care as much, but some grow too anxious at the prospect and stop practicing social interaction; it is no longer permissible because you can screw up, be recorded and exposed for all to see. There is only one dimension that reduces the likelihood of this, and it is purely the virtual dimension.
Make no mistake; the function of the virtual dimension is recording, for everything said has to be stored for it to be transmitted, and you are truly more recorded there than you are recorded in the real. Even worse, who you’re talking to can subtly produce their own recordings, of which you will have no knowledge about until it comes to light. However, the expectation is usually that the parties in the virtual chamber will not record any of it, and the platform hosting serving only as the blind messenger; a marginal foundation of trust goes a long way in forgoing the inherent privacy risks of using the Internet for communication. This is in contrast to interaction in the real, where it may happen without that trust. This alone makes interaction in the virtual more approachable to Generation Z than interaction in the real.
Life has always carried a character of humiliation. It is impossible, and would have been undesireable were it possible, for one to go through life without being humiliated. It is a strong foundation of humility and tempered comportment, it teaches quietude at the right time, and improves how you assess risk. The prospect of humiliation should always be in one’s mind, but never a limitation, especially as it comes to great dares. It is terrible in every way foreseeable that interactions in themselves, and attempts to achieve them, have become vectors of humiliation so strong that it results in their avoidance. We have created for ourselves a deeply wrong society.
More than just the assumption of relationships, the screen also renders the concept of a relationship difficult. Those who know about Simulacra and Simulation are perhaps most aware of this: we have transformed the relationship as a matter of organic happenstance, a result and combination of one’s life, culture, and circumstance, into an image that we strive to achieve. How many of you have developed a profound desire for a relationship not as a matter of the heart but because you’ve been exposed to someone else’s relationship, to media online that idealizes the relationship? Have you assumed that it exposed a hole in your life, instead of otherwise assuming that it simply created in you emotional desires, much like an advertisement compels you to consume?
Where circumstance once drove human connection, now imagery and impressions do; we have set our thresholds in light of what we’ve seen happen elsewhere. “If the love that those that I know does not compare to what I have seen online, then it is in no way fulfilling!” Ask of yourself the many ways you’ve seen this ill transmitted to you, remember the videos compiling endless so-called red flags, and how it all drives your conception of what a relationship should be for you. When duty calls and you’re invited back into the fold, when it is ordained for you to enter into somebody’s heart against all expectations (it is when we believe we’ll be alone forever that God loosens our loneliness!), will you only measure the person’s worth against what you’ve seen from the screen, or will you define for yourself what a relationship involves?
Children
One that possesses knowledge of all the former can now form the only sane understanding of why Generation Z has no children; a multifactorial problem with roots deep within our increasingly dysfunctional society. Generation Z, ourselves no doctor of our condition, often blame finances as the perfect frustrator of child-bearing, but in truth this is only what we surface because the language of money is the only way we can communicate the nature of our disease with those that have no familiarity. Language fashions thought in ways Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf couldn’t possibly imagine centuries ago.
A great perversion of contemporary civilization is the consideration of children as a mostly unintended side-effect of sexual activity. This shift from the previous conception is not necessarily for the purpose of prioritizing the pleasure of sexual activity and divorcing it from its reproductive purpose, but rather because the bearing of children has become a burden. What was otherwise expected, normal, and even looked towards has become problematic, because society has become diseased and unable to consider the human being as anything but an economic unit which must work.
We can hear the more tempered objectors to abortion as plain evidence of this. They talk of abortion as a measure evident when the mother is economically impoverished, or if she is planning a career, or if it would otherwise cause any undue burden. These are often strong arguments in favour of abortion as we are well aware of the consequences of poverty upon the quality of life and the capacity to live. However, these arguments exist because the welfare1 which we once provided to mothers no longer exists, with only an atrophied, bureaucratic regimen replacing it. Childbearing should provide you with an extraordinary, exceptional status in the social contract, which should relieve you of all and any economic duties. You should no longer be expected to work, but instead to care for your family.
The raising of children must be equal to work. The whole of society must be mandated to fund the raising of children. People are the engine of society, and their procurement is a profitless investment that serves exclusively to continue society. Without the social contract accounting for this, society will fail. We find today many states anxious at their citizens having insufficient children, resorting to mass immigration to provide much needed labor2, but doing nothing effective to resolve the issue. This happens when the state becomes subordinate to financial interest, and can no longer tolerate the concept of an extraordinary person that is expected to be anything but an economic unit.
For the mothers who still choose to be despite the adversity they will face, outside of the occasional support group and the paid vacation mandated by the regulations of the state (if they had work to begin with!), they will find next to nothing that supports them. Pediatric health has become increasingly inaccessible, either economically in countries without a public health mandate or infrastructurally in countries with a collapsing healthcare system. Daycares, which should be state-funded as an investment into the next generation of society, are scarce or economically inaccessible. Frameworks for adoption, which are important to mothers who realize they cannot raise the child for a reason, are lacking or otherwise unknown to mothers.
It remains an obvious observation that the social contract has stopped accounting for the raising of children. Mothers must be unconditionally upheld in this endeavour. We must inform the women of our world that if the pressure of economic sustainment burns them out and they want an alternative to the monotony of life, then they can commit their souls to the most noble cause of all, through which they will obtain permanent and eternal support3; the raising of the next generation.
An addendum on the digital
Generation Z has a highly digitized sexuality overall, which is a broader term to refer to not only the execution of sexual will between people over virtual means, but also how it finds itself satisfised with pornography. Now, I do not believe for a second that pornography can indeed fulfill somebody; there is a great missing connection, a physical factor which pornography subtracts, and the need for this connection is not provided in pornography, neither through online dirty talk, neither through whoring. Much value can be generated from the communicative, but the communion of man through physicality constitutes the missing part, which one will strive for infinitely without knowing, a mysterious lurking appetite without resolve.
It would be of no surprise to find that this laissez-faire approach to pornography, where its access and consumption is no longer an affair of stealing father’s Playboys from the upper shelf of closet but rather through an almost-automatic vector of consumption akin to bare boring television, has heavily damaged how we process connection, assess our need for it, and end up having children. In no way does this warrant a ban, for what is banned comes around in most vicious ways (insofar commodities are concerned), but rather that we need to consider it differently.
Afterword on incapacity
Why does it feel like Generation Z is incapable of bringing forth change? Why is it that every attempt by Generation Z to do something amounts to nothing? I see my cohort speak loudly and authoritatively, demand all manner of things but executing none. We clearly have the energy to bring about the revolutionary, but it seems most do not even consider leaving their homes.
That which you call your daily life is the main precipitator of inaction. How is it that our communities do nothing in the face of the endless onslaught of both local and foreign horrors? I recall briefly the Nottingham cheese riot in England, where 18th century Englishmen rioted until anarchy out of a scarcity of Nottinghamshire cheeses; how is it that such relatively mundane frustrations engendered greater action than the terrors scarring our communities today?
The answer is in what you call your daily life. The daily life is the sum of all the little organized bureaucratic processes that composes up to your stability. What are the components of daily life? A bed in the morning and at night, so you can rest well; a meal, two to three times a day; work of some kind, even if we begrudgingly participate; entertainment, as boredom is a contemporary sin. Subtracting even one element from this whole generates in us a calling for another kind of daily life, as many if not most would call a daily life without a bed or without work or without entertainment or without meals an insufficient life.
For the longest time, we rioted and overthrew societies over insufficient lives. We revolutionized and insurrected until our insufficient life gained sufficiency. Something as mundane as the aforementioned scarcity of Nottinghamshire cheeses was enough for violent action. Man couldn’t tolerate the thought of not having when he had before. The formula, today, has been put on its head. On its head was put the great yearning of men, where we now seek to preserve what we have. For ourselves we’ve obtained a daily life, the arrangement of which sustains us, and whose detraction is feared because of how much it would disrupt us.
What if I lose my bed? What if I lose my two to three meals? What if I lose my work? What if I lose my entertainment? These are our greatest fears; the bear, the wolf, and Leprosy no longer instill in men the terror that losing daily life generates. All that which we do now is done when not an affront to the maintenance of daily life, and that which could be an affront to daily life is either done in secret as to avoid its most terrible consequences, or done so that a daily life can be maintained.
Therefore, society has arranged for its protection by ensuring that which can profoundly alter it is inherently disrupting of daily life. Being too insurrective threatens your bed; being too controversial threatens your job; dedicating yourself to causes which are not economic threatens your finances; leaving the sandbox of community threatens your meals. Man has established for itself a quite visible threshold of compliance, which when surpassed will lead them to be increasingly complacent. Society then provides for a daily life, and in return, man does nothing to alter society.
But man believes himself to be altering of society because he has a voice, and he knows many others who also possesses a voice. The voice is also an aspect of daily life. Feeling that you can freely express yourself is necessary for man’s illusionment that what he does is changing society, even though it’s not. How many social campaigns have we seen spread throughout society like disease only to have changed superficial facets of our lives? Daily life regulates controversy and our need for empowerment by transforming social change into a kind of shirt which society can choose to wear one day and discard the other; the underlying body, composed of economics and equations of power, changes very little.
Occupy Wall Street made many at society’s top realize this, consequently adopting social causes at their forefront as an evolution of their enforcement of daily life. When man is allowed to express himself freely, regardless of whether these expressions result in tangible change, then a core component of daily life is fulfilled; you can then bind this to whatever requirements you need, such as the use of a social media platform that you control. Isn’t there a greater example than the exodus from Twitter unto BlueSky, only for most to return later? How many of us have demanded that Twitter’s new proprietor recalibrates the rules and guidelines back to how they were? How impersonal was the concern? Many found themselves troubled not because of the trend it indicated, but rather for the platform’s role in their daily life; the concern exists as measured against their personal usage of the platform. Those who have not made use of Twitter cared much less.
Therefore man will reduce himself as society demands, as long as society keeps fulfilling his daily life. He stands in fear at the prospect of its loss; he will avoid all that which can disrupt it. Changes capable of altering society–in a fashion deemed unauthorized by its possessors–are punished by punches to the solar plexus of daily life. Man however cares very little insofar his right to speak loudly about his issues remains preserved, and society provides for him abundantly in this regard, with a plethora of means to dissolve his opinions in a big, inscrutable literary mess, new entries promptly forgotten as new ones are made.
It is evident that societal change will only come if man accepts sacrifice. Man, in his care for daily life as one tends to an infant, is incapable of even conceiving of sacrifice. Case in point, sacrifice is now ridiculed, especially when it lacks glory or effect. No one feels in their heart the strong desire to die for a cause anymore, justifying their cowardice with either death, fear of a vain death, or how it could embarrass their ideological brothers if nothing comes out of it, aside from a headline lasting a day. It is this cowardice which distinguishes all contemporary first-world social movements from the historical social movements, as death is a sure investment in the success of your social change.
Yes, social movements can have some measure of success without the tool of death, but they are greatly incapacitated, handicapped by the sheer lack of it. If you are not willing to die for it, you are not committed to it, and if you feel that you are willing to die for it, then your commitment will never be christened honest or true until you have actively put your life on the line and faced death. It is a simple matter that most today have done neither, pretending when brought up or otherwise arguing it has become unnecessary. Of course, these people are bringing about the death of their movement.
Footnotes
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The other definition of welfare; welfare as in a parent’s welfare given to their children, not as in the state welfare given to the poor. ↩
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When it isn’t for the purpose of avoiding the employment of citizens. ↩
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Not that this should be the only way, but rather an additional way, one of the only that can realistically stand outside of the realm of capitalist productivity. ↩