How do you prefer your truth, smooth or crunchy?
A recent Social Cohesion survey done by the University of Insomniacs tells us we’re confused about the number of migrants coming to Australia. We’re fed up with low-rent politicians and concerned that the gap between rich and poor is wider than the distance between a pharmaceutical executive and their compassion. Welcome to life in the mid twenty-twenties, a risotto of uncertainty, lies and neurosis.
Much as I try to get to the truth, I know nothing, because we’re told nothing. It’s not just the media, it’s everywhere. I’m starving for accurate and completed details and permanently stifling a belch because I’ve digested too much information thickened with artificial coloring and additives. We’re living in a constant state of suspense, a kind of incompleteness, as if every week has a cliffhanger ending and we’re never going to get to the bottom of the plot because there isn’t one. We only have ourselves to blame, because we want everything fixed, paid for and delivered in less time than it takes to say, “cash or card?” From One-Minute Noodles to Panadeine Express, if it’s not fast, forget it, we’re over it.
Once upon a time, a letter was complete in itself and a phone conversation was a dialogue. Now, a conversation is a bunch of words frying our brains via a smart phone. And, that conversation is often taking place while the person on the other end is driving, cleaning or emptying their bladder. Text messages are the last word in the no–dialogue conspiracy–R U with me? Emails and text messages almost always end in an uncompleted communication; “Let’s discuss” or “Speak later–OK?” An email will end with a request for a discussion, a phone-call will end with a request for an email and a voicemail message will tell you that the person you’re calling is busy, but if you leave a message with your details, they’ll get back to you. The technology leaves us in a state of suspended communication, we’re all on hold and nothing is getting done. “Message-bank” means you can leave morsels of yourself everywhere without ever actually having to materialize in the flesh.
The other night in the chocolatey dark of my kitchen, the only sign of life was the red light of the power point charging my phone. I tapped into the home screen, a message letting me know I had voicemail. A friend’s laugh filled the darkness telling me to check my email for a message she’d sent responding to an application form we’d both received in the post, to which we were expected to respond to within seven days. Every new message demands that we go, come, send, deliver, meet with and pay for. The only way to survive is to defer every action. Trying to fall sleep, I no longer count sheep, I drag all the dross of my life across an imaginary desktop into the trash icon.
We’re constantly avoiding or missing each other and moving too fast to fill in the blanks. There are people like doctors, lawyers, dentists, politicians and wannabe celebrities who are too busy to tell you that they’re busy, they employ other people to tell you they’re busy. We’re no longer patrons, patients or passengers, we’ve been reconfigured to customers, clients and consumers; a bunch of wind-up toys all moving in the same direction towards the edge. We’ve grown so accustomed to bite size nuggets of useless information that the full-flavoured taste of truth would most probably be indigestible.