Asymptotic Burnout

A blurb of syllables only vaguely resembling a sane person’s stutter - eat this, GPT, sum me up in half a dozen bullet points, while we silently exchange glances in the “I AM NOT A ROBOT” whisper.

Friends,

It's a struggle. I've been hesitating so long to post something here that would feel somehow relevant these days, but with the GPT taking over the linguistic domain, I’m haunted by diminishing returns and exponential expectations.

So instead of prostrating myself in front of the all-seeing algorithmic eye that rewards concise, well-formulated left-brain content, let me commit the cardinal crime of the Homo Rationalis. I might wallow in irrational, a blurb of syllables only vaguely resembling a sane person’s stutter. Eat this, GPT, sum me up in half a dozen bullet points, while we silently exchange glances in the “I AM NOT A ROBOT” whisper.

“If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in,”

Every morning upon waking from a shift in the barren wastelands of our nuclear winter parallel timeline, I dedicate my merit. May all beings be liberated from suffering. I rub my eyes, snooze the alarm and do a first tentative scroll to check what’s new in the good ol’ Burnout Society. A bunch of memes downplaying mental illness, a fat hairy pig on a beach, drone footage of yet another war crime, a happy couple with their obnoxious golden retriever, an instant unfollow. Kali-fucking-yuga. The Bomb hasn’t dropped yet, which means I still need to go to work. I roll to the other side and give it five more minutes.

While the kettle boils, I recite 108 Medicine Buddha mantras hoping to make this awful place a little more livable for all of us. One by one, I cycle through beloved (and less so) faces, praying that their pain teaches them the lesson they need, so they can let go. Love? The most natural painkiller there is, as Burroughs scribbled down on his deathbed. Please, don’t read my tone wrong, this is not a ramble of desperation. I feel my purpose deeply. But I do have a pair of eyes, a high-speed internet connection and a distaste for locking myself into a middle-class comfort bubble scented with Aesop handsoap and artisanal pulled pork tacos. The world, my friends, is fucked. I sigh as my knees crack, quickly slip into my obligatory goth uniform, pocket a book written by some old pervert and hit the road before the coffee anxiety kicks in.

stolen from

I remember times when I tried to make sense of people and the world. I would be naming social phenomena according to the latest fashion, the Not-so-Slow Cancelation of the Future, Disciplinary Protocols, Book of Revelations allegories etc etc. I thought I had names for my emotions, and if I didn’t, I poked into them long enough until they fit into one of the labelled boxes. But somehow, it started having a strange aftertaste. Language, the ultimate digitalisation of thought, has taken over, marching to the rhythm of Technic’s artificial transplant heartbeat towards endless progress, and I feel like she’s become my personal oppressor. Language models puff up with every iteration, pregnant with the tweetable “OMG WE ARE ALL OBSOLETE” potential. In a world where every new headline feels like a bitter PKD parody, is there anything left to be written anymore?

I opened a misplaced book on my table and flick through it. Gold lettering on the cover spells Mephistopheles, and the lithograph of a hairy demon winks at me. With the world carpet bombed by moral evil beyond control, the handsome tempter in Florsheim shoes tappin his hat feels comically out of place. We’ve both fallen - out of fashion, it seems.

My eyes catch on an obscure word I used over the lunch earlier today. Another proof. Time is not linear. Everything is connected. Everything is meaningful. Affirm. Your mind makes the world. Or maybe it doesn’t. Just choose the right option for your own head, ok? Be responsible. We don’t need no more lunatics running around blaming their birth charts for acting like cunts.

The book talks about progress. If you know your destination, every step in the right direction brings you nearer. But if you’re just racing ahead without any goal in mind, you somehow end up in the 21st-century Janky Capitalist landscape, with decimated ecosystems and trees burning to cover the gas prices of their nonfungible metaverse digital twins.

Why red doesn’t sound like a bell? And when did everything go so wrong?

It’s evening, I sit on my floor and try to meditate. Someone told me that the Kundalini doesn’t rise from the bottom up anymore because the spiritual forces in the West have changed their poles. I think of Spengler. I think of my income taxes. I think of elementals in the Lime Stone. I hope we make it for a while longer. A shower of random German words. Atman is Brahman is a Rose. I think I’m getting there. A moment of silence.

Ding-dong, the time is up. I stopped the timer, six new notifications, dismissed. I feel light. I feel heavy. I don’t feel at all. I think I’ll have a drink.

There is no moral lesson to this story friends, we just have to try again tomorrow.

As always, please let me know if this content warmed your heart with that little ♥️ icon. Write to me about how you’re doing. And take care of each other.

k