I once had a mind altering experience with some rose colored glasses. Literal ones. I put ’em on one summer day and went tooling about the city with my artsy pals, looking for trouble and Muses to inspire us. After a while I forgot I had them on. After another while, I remembered I had them on and realized I had been still ‘seeing’ colors, (green grass , blue sky) despite the fact that the rose colored glasses I was wearing was making everything, you know, rose colored. I got freaked out, because when I took them off I had no real assurance that everything wasn’t actually blue or purple or fuschia but I was just perceiving everything as different colors because I didn’t know better. Everything in the Universe could be just different shades of fuschia! GAH!

In the end, reality is not as important as how we perceive reality. And that is why I’m an asshole.

I’ve been working on a film script about TikTok/Instagram Influencers and fell into a series of Co-Centric Mental Circles that blinded me to the fuschia-colored reality of my perceptions. I began by watching all I could about the most famous Influencers, especially the scandalous ones. Three hours in, I had a great Blog Post Theme on the whole thing connecting the Influencers with the mud pits at Rennaisance Festivals, school ground fights and the Mob of ancient Rome. It was great, and I was gonna tell you all about it in three part harmony with feeling!

And then, I saw that I had become one of the circles I was condemning. Influencers aren’t just fueled by Likes-N-Views, they are kept alive by the sea of clever condemners like myself, all pointing out how awful it is and finding new and better literary devices to express this awfulness. It is safe to say there are as many videos about Influencers as there are Influencer videos. Which are which? Where is the line? And what is gained by adding another Irma Bombeck/Dave Berry ‘aint’ it crazy’ Column about it all?

“None at all, kid” Says the old guy behind the desk while blowing cigarrette smoke across the pages of the newspaper in his hand.

“Yeah, I know. You never tolerated a cliche or bullshit.”

“Kid, are you kidding a kidder? It’s the newspaper business. All you have to work with are cliches and bullshit. Doesn’t mean there ain’t truth in there. But ya better wear gloves.”

“But you always sounded fresh and real, while lying it out plain…”

“Shut up. Look, I wrote what I saw. I was a flat-above-a-tavern-youth, and didn’t get farther than that.”

“Bullshit. You were world famous.”

“No kidding? I didn’t know that.”

“What would you have written?”

“Written? About what?”

“About this whole influencer thing. What would you have written?”

Mike Royko puts down his paper and looked right at me with a set of eyes that had stared down Richard J Daley. “That’s the wrong damn question. You’re writing it. What do people need to read about it?”

And that’s why I’m an asshole. That question made me understand that I was the problem. Just like you. What do people need to read about it? Nothing. Not another word. You and I don’t need to read anything to help us understand how our addiction to Self Observation is destructive. We know. We simply aren’t in enough pain to do anything about it.

Folks don’t change a comfortable pattern unless they have to, unless it Hurts if they don’t. Most of us, though shocked, chagrinned and dismayed at the world aren’t hurting or suffering from it. Not really. There are people suffering a lot, but they are so busy trying not to suffer that there is little they can do to get at the root of their troubles. If you are reading this, then you are one of those who has the time to get to the root. Maybe you are trying, maybe you think you are trying, Me? I’m trying not to be part of the problem, but that Gen X rationalization has lost it’s power to salve.

I could do more. I don’t. Because I’m comfortable. And it is biologically dumb and evolutionarily backwards to give all that up for some other people I’ve never met.

And now is the time for dumb. Now is the time to go against evolution. Now is the time to reject comfort, refuse prosperity and to reject the easy life based on the suffering of others.

But, I’m an asshole because I’m not doing that. After all, I’m not stupid. I’m comfortable.