I know it is a highly competitive topic to discuss. Some experts in distraction excel when they are mere children and go on to spent a lifetime honing their skills. But the spectacular presence of screens has taken the inability to focus and work toward goals to a new, unforeseen level.

Focus was never my problem. I was born with what I called my Obessive fairy over my shoulder. My brother who arrived on earth when I was four years eight months old once said to me that I was never a child. And to be fair I do remember lining my teddy bears up in chairs in front of an easel blackboard. They were wonderful students and sat glassy eyed as I told them information that would be necessary for them going forward in their plush existences.

Books held my attention for most of my life. I had a path straight forward in my reading landscape. The book I am reading now I put at the head of my bed so I could grab it automatically as soon as I get into bed. And next to that book would be a pile in intentional order of where I plan to go next in my imagination. As I got older, I purposefully selected long books because the sense of grief and emptiness that came when the book ended was so upsetting to me. There was always a feeling of death when I closed the back cover.

I would lay outside on the lawn and read. I would recline on a rock next to the summer swimming hole and read. I would sit in long car trips and read.

And then we purchased a TV and I began watching a series of Shakespearean plays. I watched ballet and opera. Returning to my books immediately after the show was my pattern.

Gradually, I fell in thrall to the screens. It began with my desk computer and migrated to the laptop. When I travelled, I had the iPad.

I began to watch newsreportage on a screen and migrated from biographies held in my hands with their hard covers and promises of weeks of accompanying a person on his or her life.

Take steps to http://pamelaannschoolofdance.com/aid-2942 order cialis online heal your physical illness.4. Honestly speaking, I never know viagra sildenafil canada that I’ll be completely sexually different man. There are large numbers of men who are too preoccupied with making careers and jobs for them to neglect the sexual life. go to the pharmacy store discount for cialis no prescription cialis This herb has a proven pain relieving as well as anti inflammatory effects. Today, I have four laptops (some not working) two iPads, a cell phone and everywhere they all connect to Netflix. Between the screens, between the seduction of the blue flickering lights of Netflix is still a slice of time.

My habits of watching passively while others are pasting memes and quotes and quips is massive. At the end of some days, I ask, “What happened to time?”

It was spent. But it was spent foolishly. And like a person who tries to carry water in two cupped hands… it just spills through my fingers.

The five year old person, the sixteen year old person who be shocked and appalled at how much time flows through my life with nothing to show for it.

But, I argue back, “Everyone does it.” We are all lulled into numb staring and somehow feel that something was accomplished.

I observe myself. I reset my short term goals. I start again. Screen addiction is a deeply ingrained habit. I will start with baby steps. And let us see where that goes.

Wish me luck.

We are in tricksville. The lies are truth. The truth is fake. The authority is corrupt.

We are offered rotten fruit stinking of decay as the pulpy juices drip between the fingers of the system Titans. A sense of background anxiety is so pervasive that the Atlantic’s January/February cover screeches “Why Are We So Angry?” in white letters imitating handwriting on a blood orange flame of a cover.

It is a time that is underscored by the presence of hesitation. It is a time that is structured by suspicion. Fight or flight juices are pumping through the body politic. Economic foreshadowing is leering over scholarly articles.

What investment is safe? What action is without impunity? What future is building?

What we do know is that we have been in a fun house of gimmicks. So much of what Western Culture and particularly North American Culture has assumed was a reality is now revealed to be a trick, a device, an attraction meant to pull away our eyes from the underlying truth that we have been betrayed.

And in order to lull the public, there are increasingly more attractive ploys, stunts, contrivances, distractions, strategies. The schtick is laid on thick.

Consumption was supposed to be the cure for the sickness of consumption. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s knew exactly what was real. I remember the new, bigger car. I remember the first black and white TV I watched at the store near my house. We bought one and were the first in our neighbourhood to create an altar for images telling us how the world operated. We were now entrained by the entertainment. A new refrigerator was slid into the kitchen. We were enthralled.

The United States was unchallenged. It was powerful and no other nation had moved so quickly into technology, trade and theatre. America was exceptional. The images told us to consume and that all growth was an investment in the future.

And then other nations appeared on the scene. The American gang was not the only one on the block any longer. In 1986 globalization put the nicely balanced concept of stimulated consumption into a tail spin. The competition could pay low wages. Countries that had not awakened to the new industrial revolution of technology were now learning rapidly and in some cases surpassing the USA.

Some of us learned about the multi-levels of corruption that were the pillars of the avaricious network of politics, corporations and the military. Others would not believe there were rats in the walls until the bulldozer started to open up the structure. Even today, there are those who deny the presence of the razzmatazz reality that kept us trapped.

And now the earth has been insulted into violence. Weather system are destroying towns, coastal areas. The air is thick with poisonous particulates in cities across the globe for weeks on end.

“Anger is one of the densest forms of communication,” says The Atlantic article. “It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion….. It (anger) has become less episodic and more persistent, a constant drumbeat in our lives.”

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And so we demonize one another. We see the source of all of our fear in others. Even those who started out as left-leaning liberals bent on compassion screech out their condemnation of others who do not align with their perceptions.

Why does this happen? Because it is a world in which Gimmickery is God. We are conditioned to first believe in the “theatre” of information and then to distrust any and all information.

There is no release of catharsis. There is no calvary trumpet telling us we are saved. Diatribes of molten anger spew in social media. We were promised the golden ring. We were promised the gifts of exceptionalism. We have been grifted by the system.

Some react by reaching out for more gimmicks. Some buy into consumption as a soothing ritual. Some continue to gain weight as they fill the sense of emptiness within. Netflix binge watching can put off contact with an individual’s particular circumstances for days on end.

The chichi, razzmatazz, theatre, loss-leader schemes don’t work anymore.

We are waking up. And we start to realize that the only way out of this dystopia of chaos is to take responsibility for our own actions.

Now is the time to observe the self and ask: What am I feeling? What am I afraid of? How do I choose to treat others?

Yes, the system has failed but that failure was always built into it. It is not new. We are just at a conjunction of forces that will not allow us to trance our way through our lives. It is too late for that.

And so we begin by taking responsibility for our own actions. We face the reality of a dying earth. We learn that growth is not good in and of itself and that it is no longer a possibility. The Gimmicky is a trap.

It is up to us to free ourselves, each of us, alone in our own lives.