Intrusive.
I just summed up our current problem in one word.
We all feel discontent because every institution in America today has become intrusive. Americans, by nature, are rugged individualists. Which led us to manifest destiny and our conquering of a land and the creation of a nation. Individual men of achievement spread out across the nation, built a homestead for themselves and their families, and thrived. Communities developed, America spread from coast-to-coast, optimism abounded. The country had a “can-do” spirit. Tomorrow was a brighter day.
We are not a nation of people that enjoy the neighbor looking through the window all day, though we will be the first to lend the neighbor a hand with a task that requires two. We will live in a crowded city surrounded by millions but be very selective over who we allow into our own orbit.
We don’t mind paying our taxes but do not want anyone from government poking and prodding into our lives, either public or private. We resent the bartender asking us if we “want another”, because it is no one’s business in the bar whether we’ve already had one or not. No need to inform others that we are having an additional beverage.
Americans can sit alone in a sea of strangers and feel quite content. Absent some need to interact. We are quite comfortable lost in our own thoughts. A real American can readily understand that one can benefit from being surrounded by people, while not being involved with them, the stimulation leading to breakthroughs in thought, advancements in planning, and brightening an outlook.
The problem we have in America today is that at every turn the outside world is intruding, extending into our lives, in ways that are beyond our control. We are no longer able to maintain control over our own lives and even more particularly our own families. Which is extremely disturbing.
Historically Americans have grown up, paired up, and created families. The goal being to raise the children with the shared values of the parents and previous generations, to inculcate the offspring with a foundation of principles, and proper mores. But in this day and age there is a sense of societal encroachment, your own family planning is under attack. From all angles.
One of the worst aspects of this intrusion is that our tax money is taken from us almost surreptitiously, in advance of receipt. We never get to see or hold the funds we’ve earned. “Payroll deduction” removes the fruits of our labor before we can even take ownership. And then government spends these funds that we never obtained in ways antithetical to our wants and needs. They spend our money being intrusive.
You determine an educational path for your young, you develop their world view slowly, methodically, and with purpose. Only to find that at an age you’d deem too young, the school system has advanced certain ideas to them that you would not approve for them to learn so early, or readily, or with the vigorous approval with which the lesson was taught. This exposure by the state to your children too early in their development feels intrusive. As if the state has taken away your parental rights. As if they’ve supplanted the planned development of your own. Absent your approval.
The government has created new rules, new regulations, that require you to attend training sessions at the place of your employment, where you hear and learn about faults you possess with which you disagree, and vehemently. But you feel powerless to voice disapproval. As a white person you’ve been assigned a privilege from the outside, a privilege you don’t feel, cannot identify, and that isn’t reflected in your possessions or net worth. You chafe at being forced to attend these functions but government forces this intrusion into your career life.
You watch helplessly as your community changes dramatically due to the invasion of illegals, and foreigners flown in and parked in your town. Now, driving through familiar streets the advertising is in Spanish, the convenience store is a bodega featuring ethnic products geared toward a new customer, other sections of town become predominantly Haitian, or Somalian, this happens seemingly overnight, and the town in which you grew up, have lived in for years, has been transformed. Which feels intrusive, as you used to shop at the market over there before it became a Taqueria, you used to play in that park before it became a homeless encampment, you used to do odd jobs on weekends for the elderly neighbors in that development, before these new foreign entrants undercut your bids, cost you the jobs, and forced you out of the extra income you used to enjoy as “ extra beer money”.
At every turn some outside force is intruding into your routine, curbing your comfort level, destroying traditions, rearranging the world around you that you’ve always known.
Government policies and spending has blossomed out-of-control, causing inflation that intrudes into your wallet, causes you problems stretching the dollar, and being able to afford the big unexpected expense. Or caused you to put off the big purchase, that “new” used car can wait another model year.
You gave up on the idea of building that “man cave” as the permit process has become far too costly and convoluted, the number of steps and level of paperwork too onerous, the number of government offices to visit for a simple home addition too burdensome. There is a feeling that government is constricting your comfort even within the walls of your own home.
To gain a better rate on energy you’ve had to allow the provider to intrude into your own home, and to measure usage, and to track the thermostat. To gain the really best rate you had to allow them to control your usage, and intrude on your comfort level should they face an outage, or shortages. The power company now has the ability to warm your home during the Summer months absent your approval, or to lower the temperature in the Winter, forcing you into a sweater, right there inside your own home. The power company now dictates your comfort, because you lack sufficient funds to ignore the savings offered that allows them to intrude into your own home.
The insurance company now intrudes into your errands, local trips, and even your travel car trips. Once again, to save a few dollars you’ve allowed them to place a device in your car that monitors at all times. You’ve allowed a “Big Brother” to intrude into your automobile, and watch how you brake, accelerate, maintain lane correctly, and whether or not you are staying within speed limits. They know if you roll through a stop sign, or go through multiple yellow changing lights. They see that you enter the freeway and immediately race to the fast lane, exceeding the speed limit for the duration of your long trip.
Worse, they can map out all your travel, from everyday of your life. They’ve intruded into your life to the extent they know everywhere you go, when you go, and when they purchase a link to the credit agencies they can then know why you go, and what you do. Strangers at the insurance company can now tell you that after dropping the kids off at private school each morning at approximately 8:19AM on most morning you stop at the same Starbucks, but on Tuesdays you go to the Panera, and you must be meeting someone because there is a bill only every other day as if you are alternating payment with the person you meet. And from the totals and items, it is clear that you meet only one person. The insurance company knows this. They also note that every Thursday night you go to the same bar. They know how much your tab is, and how many drinks you’ve had. And they see that you had that many drinks, and then got into the automobile they insured and drove it home.
They know these things, they’ve been able to intrude into your personal life because you needed a twenty-eight dollar discount on your auto insurance. And because tech companies created a web of information that allows your insurer to link to credit agencies that will share with the insurance firms all your purchase information, line item by line item. They don’t only know how many miles you drive a year, they know every stop, the size of every trip, where the auto goes, makes stops, and how fast or slow it gets there.
Insurance companies don’t stop with their intrusion into your life with just a device attached to your auto. No. They also provide health insurance. And they are plugged into the same data bases being created to track you through credit cards, and bank accounts.
They may not be able to intrude on your medical records due to HIPAA laws, but they have access to all your Publix receipts, they can view your consumption habits, they can see how much alcohol you purchase, how many snack items you buy, and they can factor all of that lifestyle information into your life insurance quote. Or the quote they give you for medical insurance. High risk means higher premiums. “We don’t see any mixers being purchased, you must drink your 90 proof vodka straight over rocks”. The actuarial tables show that takes three years, six months off the average life.
The outside world is intruding into what you thought was your personal business. They know things about you, things you may not want anyone to know. They even know about that Snickers bar you buy at every gas fill-up, or visit to the CVS or Publix, the same Snickers bar where you throw the wrapper away carefully before walking into the house, and you never leave lying around in the car, so the wife doesn’t know you are eating candy bars all week that she doesn’t know about. But the credit card companies know you enjoy a Snickers, they sold that information to others, which is why all those pop-up ads on your computer are candy related. They know more about you than your wife. You don’t want her to know, she is always nagging you about your weight.
You log into the computer, the tech companies are tracking every keystroke. They know every website you visit. And the shared “cookies” allow companies to spread your preferences, even your proclivities. Companies that you’ve never interacted with are now intruding into your interests. Some outside “other” you’ve never wanted to interact with knows you enjoy watching Joe Rogan videos, and checking scores on ESPN. They’ve even created algorithms designed to allow them to exploit your preferences.
Companies you don’t know about, companies that you are unaware exist, are now targeting you, preying on your personality, attempting to induce you toward action. for their profit and gain. Which is all transparent to you, all you wanted to do was to see what convertibles were available on the open market. You didn’t mean to expose your line-of-credit to multiple firms “out there”, or to show them your personal preference in automobiles.
You feel as if the outside world is intruding into your personal life somehow, because it is. They’ve intruded into every aspect of your life. You are being “worked”, “pushed”, “prodded” in ways you don’t recognize, ways you don’t realize, and it has become pervasive. You cannot escape the influence, it has become ubiquitous.
The biggest and fastest growing side of tech right now is in information capture, sharing, and accumulation. Creating a “picture” of your existence, a measure and evaluation, that external companies and organizations can use to exploit you. Me.
You feel a burden from this intrusion because they are working full-time to influence your behavior, to influence your family away from your own control, and toward their own.
The algorithms they’ve created are nothing less than genius, they’ve managed to create an addictive quality to their exploitation. You feel a pull to log-on, a pull to pick up the phone, a desire to open that app.
When engaged you feel a constant prompting to act.
These outside influences are intruding right into our brains, manipulating, seizing control, forcing us to act upon our natural impulses.
From government, to commerce, to education, to employment, the intrusion is all-encompassing.
Which is why as a people, as a nation, we all feel a constant exhaustion never felt before. We feel an invisible burden never before imagined. We feel taxed emotionally from the moment we awake, until we retire in the evening and go to bed.
Worse, so do our loved ones. A glance at the wife while viewing the new show you are streaming together yields a vision of her, phone in hand, scrolling an app for new shoes at the same time she has one eye on the show in question.
And the children, they are even more tech savvy than the parents, they are plugged into these devices practically full-time. They have been fully captured, immersed completely, and are now mind-melded and owned by these outside forces preying upon their personality profile. Their every weakness being constantly exploited. Their every desire being fed a pathway toward fulfillment.
The youth of America today is receiving a constant brain massage from technology, which is not some benevolent force, not some tool for easing their workload, but for exploiting their wants and needs. A constant bombardment of stimulant, prodding, and prodding, and pushing them toward an action that may not be in their own best interest.
Our children are exhausted as well. They deal with this all day, everyday, the phone always at the ready, multiple apps with an algorithm created as a Siren’s Call asking them to engage, or re-engage, over, and over, and over.
Every institution surrounding us in this day and age is intruding into our lives, in mostly unwanted ways.
Is it any wonder we as a nation are on edge? Is it any wonder that we all feel some unnatural exhaustion?
Over-reach.
The other key word today.
Government is guilty, tech is guilty, companies are guilty, we are surrounded by a world that is guilty of over-reaching into our lives for their own selfish purpose.
And intrusion feels like a violation.
Which causes anger. No one wants to be violated.
Which explains the anger that accompanies the exhaustion we all feel and face.
Worse, we can’t unplug. Government refuses to shrink, the tech companies are building even greater data bases with information about us, all information, even information we thought was private. So the tech companies refuse to shrink as well.
Public education has an agenda of advancement, to give out lunch, to expand into a free breakfast, and even to add after school care.
You can no longer leave the job at work, they intrude on personal time with e-mails and contact at home. The devices they provide will never shut off, work is no longer 9 to 5, it is 24/7 on call.
We are all being consumed by outside forces on a full-time basis.
And you’ve decided to deal with it by giving yourself the simple pleasure of leaving the gas pump on, while it is filling the tank, entering the 7/11, and buying yourself a Snickers bar to fill that empty void you are feeling, that sense of foreboding that the outside world is being far too intrusive.
And you eat it as the numbers on the pump go up, and up, and you make sure you throw the wrapper away as you push closed the gas cap and door. So the wife doesn’t suspect you are eating sweets, and snacking.
And as you feel that small sense of satisfaction and sugar high from the Snickers, you pull away just a bit more content, completely unaware that somewhere, in a server farm far away, in a town you’ve never visited, a machine is sharing your Snickers preference, gas purchase, speed of exit, and location with the world.
So it is understandable that by the time you get past the next traffic light, that Snickers is no longer satisfying. The empty feeling you can’t identify or explain of being intruded upon has returned.
That brief sugar high yielding to a sense of anger and exhaustion.