the failed anarchist

I

I don't think I have the ability to change the world. 

None of us do, In the end it's all about surviving.

The dull, monochromatic delivery of words,

so many times repeated. 

The fire of hope and determination,

Once burned in ashy eyes now dead and black. 

Snuffed out like cold charcoal in abandoned fireplaces.

How many times have we heard this? 

That change is impossible, 

That the world is too far gone, 

That all we have left to do is wait for our turn,

To die on a cold, spinning rock we call earth?

II

For this is what the failed anarchist said to me,

As he drank himself away in an old stuffy bar.

This old anarchist past his prime parading,

Streets in black jackets, sits now in bitterness.

For those who feel this way, 

life is better lived disconnected from the world outside. 

News feeds filled with dystopian levels of warnings 

Flooded by continuous waves of scrolling.

His flame burned brightly with new rage,

But lacked the flicker of introspection,

As his old anger towards systems directs outwards,

A flame all but died out, drenched in brandy.

III

And what could I say to him?

Hope was burning bright in our younger selves.

We have yet to have given up,

Yet do we see our own future in him?

“No!” I scream, I reject this idea,

I will not become chained to nostalgia.

Viewing the past with rosy glasses,

Refusing to acknowledge the changes we’ve made.

A black jacket and molotov is not an ethos.

Did he wear the colors, spew the language,

But lack any understanding of his ideals?

For was he even an anarchist at all?

do you have creative freedom?

I

Do you have creative freedom?

This thought stirs in the back of my mind, never-ending. 

Every time that I look at work made in the modern lens

I begin again to see; the surreptitious intention, 

slipped behind every logo which we have been trained to view

as if it was with X-ray vision.

Within this mechanical operation of human life; 

One can only pretend to shout the answer into an abyss, 

filled with the answers of many before them. 

Future generations left to survey like archaeologists,

finding forgotten writing long past.

When we arrive at this point, at the singularity of creativity, 

At what point can we call our work unique?

Is it creative in the first place? Is creativity dead, 

killed by this quiet and everlasting hum of consumerism?

Is it just a tool for modernity and capital?

Told we are unique, the pioneers of the future,

we carelessly let our design ego take over.

A danger in and of itself, ego becomes the designer. 

We pack our field into a meritocratic hierarchy,

we convince ourselves that our work is most important.

So why does it feel meaningless? 

Why create work with eyes glossed over, submitting our talent

to the panopticon? In exchange for only enough to live? 

As if to be an infernal engine perpetually fueled by

preservatives and microplastics in which we consume happily?

II

Do you have creative freedom?

Social Media opens its gaze upon every aspect of our lives, 

with which the panopticon looks upon us,

It extracts our personalities and thoughts with little biases,

struggle or joy crunched into 1s and 0s.

Chained to our phones we march towards the singularity.

Potential unlimited, the young mind is handed the tablet.

Like the battery of this device, the potential drains out,

No longer is the classroom required to create this loop.

Machines create machines out of humans. 

Meanwhile humans work to let those machines create art.

This escapism plays a deep role in the new wave human.

So we dive into devices which hold the library of Babel,

Bred in an endless scroll of nonsense, mixing overstimulation and data, creating perfect potions of idle complacency.

Drowned in an overflow of information, how do we begin to think?

An endless sea of doors is set out in front of us,

But oh! The happiness! The work is already done!

We follow the brightly illuminated line to the door,

That which was already chosen for us.

This is simply how it should be, do not question it!

What is reality? What is right? What is good?

Frightening existentiality creates horrible anxiety, 

anxiety which brings us back to the vicious cycle. 

And so we dance in this loop for eternity,
Forget those painful ideas rather than confront them!

III

And so the child, eyes now dulled, sets off to academia,

yet the root of the word is no longer its purpose.

The assembly line has functioned well until this point,
there is no intention of stopping it now.

When passion is gone, a paycheck replaces it.

And with the pursuit of pay, the landscape changes,

Competitive markets, high value clients, broken designers.

No longer is this field viewed upon as art,

“visual marketing,” Aesthetics diluted by accolades.

We copy only that which will only make us more efficient.

Distilled mixture of designer, refined into corporate gain.

Art now twisted, intentions; shifted towards the needs and wants

of a personified company which dictates value.

Designers are not part of this process, instead tools used to

increase gain until they are dried out like natural resources.

Working tirelessly, meaningless careers,

Wearing burnout as a badge of honor,

Teetering on the precipice of happiness and despair.

The world is in motion, so why do we pretend it has stopped?

Maybe we do not see reason in fighting an uphill battle.

Years of cultural conditioning, our shells left empty.

Forcefully giving up hopes and dreams, we are tired.

Perhaps a spark is needed to ignite these fires within,

would that begin to let us start anew?

To be reminded of our uniqueness and ability?

I ask again, do you have creative freedom?

the news feed

I wake up to check the days news.

Biolabs burn and pollute the air, thick pentachromatic smoke rising into the gray still sky.

I scroll.

Floods ravage homes as instinct leads bears to treetops. Families denied food and supplies by authorities in the chaos.

I scroll.

YouTube creators bicker over the drama of a copycat brand of lunchables, making childish songs about one another.

I scroll.

Children are asked about their ambitions, with glinted eyes all of them reply with money and fame.

I scroll.

Another foreign child dies in the arms of their father. Lost to wars and powers they don’t even understand.

I scroll.

Frustration. We live within this system where we are actively watching everything fall apart, the daily news becomes just another little pastime for the scrolling eyes. We are unphased as death, pollution, destruction, and sadness enters our eyes and our brains at unbelievable pace. 

Is it really a wonder that we can’t see the signs?

A society that would rather hide from these truths. It is uncomfortable to realize we are the ones perpetuating this system. We distance ourselves. Find comfort in complacency and blissful ignorance. The truth nests further and further deep into our consciousness until it is essentially lost.

And so instead we forget and we live happily. 

Dystopia more near than distant fiction

becoming the onlooker

Can we, only for a moment, step outside and attempt to view our culture and society as if an onlooker. Before you lies a vision of the world, the values of modernity in which we hold up flash before your eyes at unknowable speed.

Our fantastic metal machines zip by on gray, monotonous roads. The complex web of roadwork leads towards a stunning metropolis.

A vibrant street in the night paints the shadows of hundreds of people walking, a somber lady in a red velvet dress calls a cab.

The stunning shine of a gold wristwatch is seen, only for a moment. The flashes of cameras beckon forth the picture of a newly appointed rising talent.

These are only a select few of the moments you manage to catch in this stream of consciousness. To us who were born into this society we find these things so natural, so necessary in our world. Now, you are confused by all that happens. The world is foreign, you have lost all context for why any of this exists in the first place.

Like a newborn child learning about the world, you look on in amazement and curiosity.

Whiplash. Your vision stirs, A new picture begins to form.

A man at a drive-thru orders a bucket of chicken wings, he is the only one in the car. A child searches the trash can for any semblance or scrap of a meal they can find.

An empty vacation home sits near the beach in silence, the colors of autumn begin to show. A man lays on a bench in the park nearby, cold.

A lifeless drone lays waste to a village, creating a vivid canvas of blood and rubble. The drone operator talks about his wife and kids to a coworker.

When you become the onlooker, gazing upon society without the context and reasoning, what would you feel? Watching over the people, like ants, going forward and backward to the same place every day. Their short lives dedicated to something that looks empty; devoid of meaning.

Would you feel sad?

But you are not the onlooker, you are human. You exist in this system, yet you feel as if you stepped outside of your world and viewed another, one you are not a part of. You watched wars take the lives of innocent children, you watched poverty sweep through many countries after a hurricane, you watched people be denied a place to live and wither away in the streets of a wealthy metropolis, you watched families wonder when their next meal will come, if ever.

When you were the onlooker, you wept.

Now that your learned and lived experiences of society and culture have returned, your tears seem to have dried up.