The Reset Button
If you’re gonna rip off another artist who has inspired you, then the least you owe them is a tip of the hat, so in the narrative voice of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (which if you don’t know, is an account of life under a dystopian fascist theocracy that is told in a voice that is one of a person writing to an unknown reader, perhaps far in the future, in order to document for the reader what life was once like under these circumstances), then I shall now try that. It occurred to me that though I have not used that voice here before, it does seem to be appropriate for what this blog is, which is a ball I’ve lobbed over the fence of time, in the hope that some unseen bloke, lass or person catches it, gleans something from it, and then tosses it to someone else.
If this digital document is ever unearthed in the rubble and ashes of whatever fate surely awaits this country’s current egoic dumb-dumb fever-dream, this is what I want you to know about this one particular anonymous, compulsively literate Gen X rando: That the most oppressive thing for some of us about this time is the skull-melting, gaslighting dumbness.
A caveat: I’m privileged. I check almost all of the boxes, so I have the unearned luxury to complain about dumbness while others fear for their safety, their jobs, their lives. I can pass, and am therefore not really a target. So I acknowledge that I’ve got it very good by comparison. But because I was educated both formally and informally by folks who helped me understand this, I am therefore inescapably experiencing the non-stop psychological mindfrickery, the insult to the most basic of rational and humanistic thinking, the severe dumbing down of everything to its most base, nonsensical assertion, that what I can see with my own eyes isn’t happening. If the sweeping arc of our collective eye roll was any steeper, you could memorialize this symbolically with a grand arch sculpture in Washington D.C. What’s that you say? That’s ACTUALLY HAPPENING?
I am not speaking exclusively of the political dimension of this strategic moron-ification, though it is obnoxiously pervasive in this particular era. Advertising, which has always operated by manipulating our insecurities, has abandoned all semblance of decency or subtlety and has gone straight to YOU LIVE IN A PATHETIC STATE OF LACK, YOU FAT, BALDING, IMPOTENT LOSER AND WE HAVE WHAT WILL MAKE YOU WHOLE FOR A SUBSCRIPTION OF 14.99 A MONTH. And surprise! The cost keeps rising and still you are still not happy.
And it turns out that many of us KNOW there’s not a damn thing wrong with being fat or bald, or have age-typical erectile dysfunction, yet this strategy still works on many of us. In my case, my plight is being partially-deaf, mostly achy and half-broke, and I’m sure the algorithm is devising a product or service for my specific demographic as I write this, ready to shame me into financial enslavement. I am currently on a 7-day free trial of giving a shit, and I have an alarm set so that I can promptly cancel before they charge my card.
As of September of 2026, The earth is somehow still here, and it appears to be letting us know how it feels about humankind’s insistence that we are in charge. The earth says “Hoax? Hold my White Claw…” while it demonstrates who holds the remote in this house. Sometimes this demonstration comes gracefully in moments of gorgeousness and grace that appeal to our gentler personas, in the form of cooling, late-summer rainstorms, and cold mountain swimming holes. Other times, it’s via catastrophic floods, earthquakes, drought, heat waves, and poop-lettuce. Actually, I don’t know if that last part is more a climate-change thing or just that the same people who deny that it exists think that keeping poop out of our food supply is commie-woke nonsense and thus can’t be bothered with the oversight such prevention would require.
Earth has reclaimed several well-known humans of late, both revered ones (rhymes with Holly Barton), and reviled ones (rhymes with Windsay Flaham), as a reminder that death does not give a shit about your ego, your politics or your bank account- our time here is temporary and you will take none of that with you. This is the constant across time…being dead today is no more or less dead than people were in the past, although I’m curious to see how you- dear reader of a future era of unknown time lapse from the present- will relate to the experience of death, as there is talk of your generation being able to either upload your consciousness to the cloud, or defy death altogether and live eternally, although I suspect that both of these are the hallucinations of tech-bros of the cult of white male grievance who have exceeded the recommended clinical dose of Ketamine on the reg.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to find what’s good, what’s real, or at least what’s not bullshit in this time of history, and finding that all of a sudden, bullshit is everywhere (surprise-face-emoji). Is this an objective observation I can substantiate with data or is this what being over 50 just after the first quarter of the 21st century feels like? Is bullshit even a subjective concept anymore? Has your future society solved that riddle yet? In our day, some of us still used this process called intuition, or going with your gut. If something doesn’t smell right, you’re probably on to something. It’s a skill we inherited from our ancestors, who didn’t have internet search engines to consult every time they had a question. They just ruminated for a while on whatever the question was and their bodies would give them an answer that was probably a pretty safe bet. And if it wasn’t, they would integrate that information into their intuitive process and it would refine a little, yielding slightly more accurate results each time.
I know this probably sounds crazy to you since you’ve surely been persuaded by the aforementioned tech-bros that the humans don’t know shit and thus can’t be trusted and that the chatbots know the answers, but I encourage you to experiment with the practice of skepticism. If nothing else, I can tell you that flashing an askance, quizzical and untrusting glare at anyone trying hard to sell you a product, technology or idea is a deeply satisfying flex of agency and you may find a renewed sense of personal autonomy that you didn’t know existed. If you need a visual demonstration, just enter Gary Coleman what you talkin bout Willis into your search engine. Trust me on this one. My generation has this look on lock.
My unplugging experiment continues, my give-a-shits rot on the vine, the effects of aging advance with relentless inertia. Chronic pain is a blessing and a curse: It’s obnoxious in its persistence, but on the other hand, I had a moment in the grocery store today in which I could empathize with why my fellow grey-hairs can be such dicks to strangers for seemingly no reason: It’s because most of the brown/blond/black/red-hairs don’t realize that we are constantly in physical pain.
I realized this when I almost reflexively karate- chopped another Publix shopper for reaching past me to grab Clif Bars when I was trying to decide if the sugar content was worth the protein. I did not used to have to think about this kind of banal nutritional minutia but alas, here we are. I was not really that mad at this arm-extending, Clif Bar-loving Gen-Z fellow himself, but my back and knees were killing me and I had decision fatigue from all the label-reading with these progressive lenses that I hate, and he just happened to find himself a little too up in the zone of the wrong person at the wrong time. May this fit, agile fartknocker be well, I prayed.
As an aside, I should also state here that I do not actually know or practice Karate, so whatever strike I thought I might administer would be less ginsu-blade savagery and likely more table-knife peanut-butter-spreadery: I am simply not equipped to serve up the kind of scorched-earth street justice my edgy, middle-age temperament conjures for itself.
On the other hand, I bought a used long-skateboard for 60 bucks that I restored and put some big, fat, cushy wheels on and it glides over pavement like a magic carpet and I love it, and I taught myself how to play Chess again (after forgetting how for like the third or fourth time) and I play a computer who whoops me every single match, but it’s starting to take a little longer for me to lose (which I take as a good sign). Fall temperatures and vibes are coming, and while I could do without the pumpkin-spice laundry detergent the grocery store is pimping, I am welcoming the coming seasonal transition (Note to universe: Today's forecasted high temp is 89. Request to accelerate transition is hereby submitted, with emphasis).
I hope you still have seasons in the future- they are a built-in way to push the reset-button on how your life is going. And if the phrase “reset button” is unfamiliar, it’s from a time when humans could still decide for ourselves whether our tech was serving us or whether it had gone rogue. I suspect this is a forgone conclusion in your age, but in the last days of this one, we could turn things on and we could turn them off. I hope you can know what this feels like, but closing your eyes and breathing deeply might give you an idea. My hope for you is that you don’t mistake machines for people and bullshit for real shit, and learn to trust your curiosity, your imagination, your gut. It’s how we survived for this long without robot masters and it’s how you will find your way back when it all goes haywire, if it hasn’t already.