Awake

Today, mom was playing badminton with the teen next door. After the game, she told me he’s got potential — but his problem is, he wants the shuttlecock to come to him rather than chase it down. Apparently, every time she sent it flying left or right, he stood there, racquet half-raised, saying, "But it’s not in my reach!" Gen Z? Technically Alpha. But yeah, same vibe! You already knew.

David Brooks' NYT opinion piece about the decline of critical thinking in America, ends on this note: "Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted." It’s sickeningly true, not just for Americans, but for us too. The screen doesn't just replace books or conversation; it replaces discomfort, delay, uncertainty.. the very things that shape independent thought. 

Let that thought linger there.

The other day I was reading (or better said, trying to make sense of) Nick Land’s Fanged Noumena. My mom passed by and, curious, asked what I was reading. I gave it my best shot at explaining Land, but for anyone who’s heard of — or, for worse, read — his essays, you know Land himself can’t explain what he has written! I mean in a good way, of course. After a terrible attempt to explain it in 'simple language', she looked at me, half-joking, half-concerned, and said, "You’re already crazy.. won’t reading this Land guy make you go crazier?"

I told her, "Nope, certainly not.. nothing can make a person go crazy, except real life and its endless perils."

You know, even from a young age I believed, reading diverse authors, watching diverse films and enjoying diverse music, from different geographies and different languages is the most profound way of creating my own perspective. And I lived a life based on that belief. 

But of course, Žižek would say even this belief of mine, this rebellion through culture, is still inside the system. That this is "jouissance", clinging to the very ideologies that structure our lives, even when we think we are outside them. Reading obscure thinkers and watching underground cinema just makes me a better consumer in a more curated niche. I get to feel critical, feel detached, while still participating. That’s the irony: I write this on a device manufactured by global supply chains I’d rather not support. My rebellion is hosted by a blog platform optimized for ad revenue. Even the thoughts I trust most come to me through algorithms designed within systems I critique. As Žižek often puts it, even our disidentification ("I’m not like the others") is how ideology survives. 

Let me explain. What is our most pressing issue at the moment? I pick climate change (since I need to feel good about myself!). You might opt for woke culture or immigrants or Muslims or even everyone's favorite boogeyman China, if you prefer so! I sometimes love the rhetoric around China. When the big brother U.S. envisions A.I., it is for the greater good of humanity. When China comes up with its DeepSeek, it is suddenly a global threat all nations should denounce. The point is — we’re allowed to pick from 'the list'. But try picking surveillance capitalism or billionaires hoarding half the planet’s resources. Or systemic racism. Or religious polarization. Suddenly, the conversation derails. You’re ''being political.'' You’re ''divisive.'' You’re ''going too far.'' It is easier to 'fear the other' than to examine the systems we all live under. Yes... Fear. Disgust. Outrage. Well, history often repeats itself. Goebbels would feel right at home.

George Orwell feared that we would be controlled by what we hated, by the oppressors who would suppress our voice, our agency, and our truth. Aldous Huxley, however, feared that what we loved would be our undoing, our appetites for pleasure, for distraction, for comfort, that would mute us into submission (Neil Postman - Forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death). One is overt suppression; another is willful surrender. Does it mean there is no suppression, in today's world? No. It just means we don't see the chains anymore. In a much more relatable sense: who’s the real fool — Trump, or the people who (twice) handed him power?

The system doesn’t block us from seeing the truth; it gets us to desire these petty conflicts and curated villains. The more we love the crisis, the more we ensure it continues. We can point at and blame China or lament/argue over loss of jobs to immigrants all we want, but, the underlying question is: Why are these the problems we care about, and why is it that whenever we go deeper, we hit a wall? 

Me being a pessimist might conclude: the average person prefers answers a mile wide and only an inch deep. But the idealist in me says something else.

Once, there were rituals that reminded us we belonged to something older than ourselves. Now, the only shared burden is the algorithm, and the only shared meaning is what’s trending. Maybe that’s the real loss — not just of critical thinking or real conversations, but of reverence. Not for Gods or flags or manifestos, but for being. For each other, as humans. My mother doesn’t know Žižek. She doesn’t speak of late capitalism or screen culture. But she notices. She notices when a child wants the shuttlecock to come to him rather than move his body. She notices when someone forgets to say thank you. These things matter. Reverence hides in the small, the easily dismissed. And if we can’t feel that anymore, it’s not just algorithms to blame. It's the part of us that stopped demanding more — from ourselves, not just the world.

In a way, these small acts of noticing, of honoring the human inside us, are the seeds of subversion. Reverence is a kind of resistance. Whether we escaped the system.. doesn't matter. No one truly escapes! What matters is how we use the very tools the system gives us to question, challenge, and sometimes even subvert it. That’s why I try reading Land, even when I don't fully understand, and even when I do understand, but disagree. I want to stay troubled. Because thinking, writing, creating, acting, even in tension or confusion, is a way of refusing comfort. A way of keeping my senses raw. 

What matters is how we stay awake in the system. Not as flawless rebels, but as people who flinch at injustice, but still pause to ask: ''What does it say about me if I walk past this?'' If nothing else, then staying disturbed is the last form of sincerity we’ve got.

                                        

If you’re still curious (and up for some trouble):

David Brooks : Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tariffs.html)

George Monbiot: Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-human-nature-economic-growth)

Maureen Dowd: Trump’s Vicious Sewing Circle (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/opinion/trump-gender-roles-masculinity.html)

Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)