@Top100Rick I just bought another set of Ping Eye 2, a set of Ping ISI K, and another set of Tommy Armour 845 Silver Scott. I have my eye on some 2009 Callaway project X irons as well. Wait until I can find a set of nice Ben Hogan 1973 Apex!
Activist: "Your cows are putting carbon into the atmosphere."
Farmer: "Where did they get it?"
Activist: "What?"
Farmer: "The carbon. Where did the cow get it before it put it anywhere."
Activist: "From... eating?"
Farmer: "From eating grass. And where did the grass get it."
Activist: "The soil?"
Farmer: "The air. The grass pulled it out of the air last spring. The cow ate the grass. The cow breathed some of it back out. It went back into the air it came from."
Activist: "But it's still going into the atmosphere."
Farmer: "It's going back. There's a difference between a thing going somewhere and a thing going back. You've described a circle and you're frightened of it."
Activist: "Then just don't have the cow."
Farmer: "The grass still dies in autumn. It rots where it falls. The carbon goes back into the air either way, just without anyone getting fed in the middle."
Activist: "It's not that simple."
Farmer: "It's grass, cow, breath, grass. Or it's grass, rot, air, grass. Same circle, fewer dinners. If that's complicated for you I'd stay away from the water cycle. That one's got clouds in it."
I think I know why everything sucks...
...and it's because everything is fake
We are getting fake college degrees that cost 4 years and six figures that teach you fake education and get you fake jobs.
We are eating fake food, with fake ingredients, funded by fake research.
We are scrolling through fake lives, with fake relationships, who take fake, curated vacations to promote brands that make fake products.
We are voting for fake candidates, who run on fake promises, inside a fake system that was never designed to fix anything.
We are raising kids in fake schools that teach fake history, fake science, which quietly produce fake adults who can't think for themselves.
We are watching fake news, about fake crises, produced by fake journalists, for fake outrage.
We are borrowing fake money that was printed from nothing, to fund a fake economy that would collapse in an afternoon if people stopped pretending it was real.
We are buying fake organic food that's just a paid label, and drinking fake juice with two percent juice in it, and putting fake cheese on cheeseburgers that's just "cheese product" on fake burger meat.
We are donating to fake nonprofits where the moeny never makes it to the people and then funding fake foreign aid that buys real weapons to prop up fake governments.
We are going to fake therapy that teaches fake coping skills instead of telling you hard truths.
We are buying fake furniture made of fake wood that's actually compressed sawdust and glue that looks like wood, ships in fourteen boxes with instructions written in a fake language that isn't quite any language, requires tools it doesn't include, takes 4 hours to build, wobbles on day 1, and is totally destroyed in 6 months.
We are downloading fake "free" apps that charge a subscription after three days for AI features that don't work, hidden behind a paywall we didn't see, protected by a privacy policy we didn't read, buried inside Terms of Service written by lawyers specifically so we wouldn't read them, that we agreed to by tapping a button the size of a thumbnail, that gave a company we've never heard of the right to sell our data to companies we'll never hear of, to build a profile on us we'll never see, to influence decisions we'll never know were made.
IT. IS. ALL. FAKE.
And we all yearn for what was once real.
Don't you remember? Did you forget?
There was a time with a simple handshake between men was a contract.
When bread went stale because... well, that's what real bread does!
When kids played outside all day until it was dark, and nobody tracked them.
When a family could live off a single income.
When music was made by people who LIVED something real and you could feel it.
When schools was HARD... and that was the point!
When doctors knew your name and your family, they even came to your house,
When you bought something once... and it was yours forever.
When the chair your grandmother bought once lasted 70 years and she passed it onto your dad.
And now nothing is real, and that's why everything sucks.
“I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many.
I, however ignorant I was, in the last days dared to undertake such a holy and wonderful work—thus imitating somehow those who, as the Lord once foretold, would preach His Gospel for a testimony to all nations before the end of the world. So we have seen it, and so it has been fulfilled: indeed, we are witnesses that the Gospel has been preached unto those parts beyond which there lives nobody.”
-St. Patrick’s Confession
The texture of life has altered and changed, and we can all feel it, even if we can't articulate it.
The relentless drive of technology - technology that none of us asked for, has deeply hurt our souls.
We've lost the ability to be bored. Not the uncomfortable boredom, but the generative kind. We've lost the ability to want things cleanly.
We used to have simple desires, borne through our own life experiences. Things we craved, and worked towards, which gave meaning to our lives.
Now we want what we're told by the algorithm to want, and it changes every fifteen minutes. Our desires are polluted by other peoples curated lives.
We've lost the ability to be where we are. To let things go unwitnessed. To hold things privately, preciously, protectively. We've lost the ability to not know, to be uncertain, about the world, and about our own self-worth.
Nobody asked if we wanted this. Nobody said "these are the consequences of a few people amassing extortionate wealth".
The most important thing to understand is the game you're afraid of losing, is a game that isn't worth winning.
This world we're in now is corrosive to our souls. How many of us are genuinely happier at a deep level now, than we were a decade ago, or two decades ago?
Ask yourself the hard questions. Why do you care about what happens every 15 minutes on the other side of the world? Why do you care if 10 or 100 or 1000 people like your post? Why do you care if the world leaves you behind?
Deep down the answer is "we don't". But we've lost the ability to think, because of the chemical alteration technology has caused within our brains.
Tell yourself to delete your twitter account, and then sit with that anxiety. Sit with the feelings that arise from the idea that 30,000 people who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire won't read your tweets anymore.
And yes - I recognise the irony of posting this. Cobbler mend thy shoes.
I think the only way to fix this is through a genuine shift in principles, not an itemised list.
Recognise that the way you feel isn't a flaw. It's a signal. It's your body, your mind, your soul, telling you that it's sad. It's telling you that the life you've chosen isn't meeting its needs.
Accept that the only way to fix it is to opt out permanently, to be less visible. Grieve it, because you will have lost a core part of you.
Find your people. Be with them in the flesh.
Practice being present. Practice being enough.
Learn to fall in love with yourself again.
All is not lost.