Do you ever feel like the current state of the world has cast you inescapably into a toxic relationship? If you went to see a psychologist and said “I’m in this relationship and I’m watched everywhere I go, my data can be accessed and used against me at any time, I can’t talk about the two ‘G’ words that end in -aza and -enocide for fear of causing offense or of reprisal. Part of the money I earn (my taxes) is relinquished without my permission to the billionaires and corporations that feed the toxicity in the relationship and my intellectual property is copied and reused by Artificial Intelligence which isn’t even intelligent, it is an algorithm that is a predictive text model. It can’t think. It has no logic, it recognises patterns, but I am being conditioned to refer to it as the algorithm as if it is a collective consciousness or a deity I should either serve or worship.”
What would a psychologist say if I told them that? What would the assessment of the other party in the relationship be?
The psychologist would think for a minute, before asking “Does the other party in this relationship demonstrate the following traits such as –
A grandiose sense of self-importance ?” Tick.
“Fantasies about having or deserving? ” Tick.
“A sense of self-superiority?” Tick.
“A need for excessive admiration ?” Tick.
“A sense of entitlement ?” Tick.
“Exploitative behaviour?” Tick.
“A lack of empathy?” Tick.
“Frequent envy?” Tick.
“Arrogance? “Tick.
“Greed? Excessive, excessive greed?” Double tick.
“Does the other party in the relationship demonstrate any of these traits?” the psychologist would ask again.
“Yes, ” I reply. “All of them. What should I do?”
“Run and don’t look back.”
It’s hard to run. It’s hard to remove yourself from a toxic relationship of this magnitude. I feel an emptiness that is a cocktail of frustration, disappointment, anger, loss of aspiration and sadness.
I’m told not to believe the evidence of my own eyes. Daily, as if the powers that be are saying “Why would you believe what you see?” Yet I do. And I will continue to believe it.
Some days I feel the weight of it. The stories that come to light, the dirty, no filthy, deeds, the enormity of the ill-gotten gains – it is hard to bear witness to that. Some days I look in the mirror and I feel like a low resolution image starting to lose pixels. I just can’t keep myself together, my clarity and image quality is being more and more degraded. I imagine myself standing on a hilltop in the wind as pieces of me break off and fly free. Some days I wouldn’t mind that, to be blown away into nothingness.
But I won’t let that happen. It’s a game, isn’t it? This toxic relationship. One party in the game, the party that is a composite of politicians, billionaires and the coporatocracy faithful is all about most and more. More power. The most power. More progress, the most progress. More market share. The most market share. More money. The most money. The other party is me and everyone else fighting for the right to live a life that is meaningful, productive, fair, that lets us feel it is worth getting up in the morning. That is joyful.
Even though I am tempted by the comforting thought of breaking apart in the wind, I don’t really want it to happen.. I can, we can, everyone can, end this toxic relationship. It will not level us, further distort our images or cause processing errors. We can remove the noise and the artifacts and restore ourselves. None of us should stand on the hilltop and wait for the wind to take us. Because resistance isn’t futile.
