It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site. There’s an odd dissonance in sitting before a computer, hands remaining idle atop the keyboard while the mind races unabated. And yet, I think to myself, everyone talks about "AR" and all these emerging technologies without realizing these very technologies have been entrenched in our lives for quite some time.

You see, I have a palpable distaste for this world. I dislike worldly things, despite having lived a very worldly life. And a lot of my hatred of this world stems from the fact that people don’t live in reality. They inhabit an alternate reality.

This phenomenon is perhaps most starkly illustrated through the mobile device – the smartphone, in other words. Have you ever noticed how instinctively your fingers find their destinations on the screen? They know exactly where to go to access whatever you want to access? That before you can even put it into words you’re already where you "want" to be?

How you can’t seem to focus after engaging yourself with this alternate reality – your consciousness slipped into a different plane, notifications pinging like digital sirens? Life is edited. It’s largely dumbed down. In this digitally mediated reality, life itself seems reduced and simplified, but on the other hand it’s easily manipulated and controlled.

In this realm, we’re not the sovereigns, but rather inhabitants. We think we wield this reality, that we can shift and shape it to our very own will… On your phone, your profile, everything revolves around the individual, the self. And we wonder how society is so prideful in the first place. We’re forced to use the Internet. You’re not free. You’re a slave, whether you’d like to admit it or not. Freedom, in this context, becomes illusory.

But is this not the societal construct to which we’ve all subscribed to? The outcome of a sports match disrupts one’s emotional equilibrium. A friend’s impeccably staged and photographed vacation casts a shadow over our own lives, rendering them dim in comparison. Amid fleeting highs, inevitably the lows deepen, revealing a societal penchant for idolatry—a profound spiritual bankruptcy that fuels our collective existence. Humanity’s downfall is idol worship. And we live in a society that thrives off of humanity’s most profound spiritual deficit.

- R. Santhanam