So Much Blather

"You can find anything on the internet," she said -- chirpy, happy, full of internet optimism, confident that her take on digital paradise was true.

"Well, actually, you can't," I replied.

Might as well have spit in her espresso for how well that helped the conversation.

But I stand by my reply.

The internet is mostly blather that greases the wheels of the corporate state, keeps money changing hands, keeps people distracted from the real work of trying the wrest wealth, power, and the health of the planet from the greedy few who seem only to want more and more of what they already have. It sells an illusion that life can be consumed from the safety of your seat overlooking a 3-D fabrication designed to seduce and arrest your attention.

Reality is that a growing number of people are lonely, complacent, frustrated, disengaged (mostly), addicted even. The internet tries to fix that with five point plans to get better organized or form a chat room about your favorite TV show. You can't de-tox by taking more poison.

(I'm not going to touch how the internet answers the need for love and contact... You know that already.)

So, no. You can't find some things on the internet.

You're going to have to stand up, push away your screen, go out into what Morpheus of The Matrix called "the desert of the real" and take up some kind of actual challenge, that may or may not go according to some tidy, safe, digitally-mastered plan, in order to find that part of yourself that is waiting for you, to not only locate it, but bring it into the light of real, tangible, scary, maybe even dangerous action to achieve what you know to be right.

Part of growing up is taking a cold, sober, clear, hard look at what is, even when that is not such a pretty picture, and then doing something about it.

Now that is a real find.