“Wake up Neo… The Matrix has you.”
For the time being, this site will function as my personal notebook that is open to public discourse. I have two goals by doing so:
- It will help me to develop a better and more regular writing habit
- It will serve as an organized directory of my thoughts, interests and ideas that I may or may not improve on later
Consequently, I’m not aiming to be perfect, exhaustive or academically accurate on this website. The pieces that I’m sharing here will simply reflect my opinions, thoughts and observations that could be subject to criticism, debate, or even change, just like any other opinion.
With that being said, it is no secret that I hope to have an impact on the culture and the world around me. In that regard, I hope for the best but I’m not living in a dream world: if I happen to inspire a single soul to consider issues of media, culture and the world around us, it was worth it.
Now, I tend to think I’m a rather integrative and respectful person. At the same time, I have to realize that my views on a number of issues may fall outside the mainstream opinion, at least at present. That is not to say I consider myself some kind of outsider: I believe there are many of us who agree on more than we disagree; it’s just that some voices are more exaggerated in our communication channels than others, resulting in a harmful hegemony of thought and expression.
By 2020, public discourse on current affairs, politics, entertainment and basically everything else is shaped and dominated by the interest of tech companies, neoliberal ventures, identity politics, ideological tribalism and so on. The freedom of respectful expression, the possibility of accessing information, and the universality of human experience has never been as endangered as today.
Surprisingly, the strongest attacks on our fundamental values do not come from totalitarian governments or ideologies as many have thought throughout the 20th century. Instead, we need to turn our eyes towards surveillance capitalist tech monopolies, the countless ways of exploitation through endless corporate greed, and the manipulation of thought in the interest of the few instead of the many.
The list of symptoms is long and complicated while remedies are few and inadequate. The first step towards recovery is being able to distinguish the problems from the noise and to turn our attention to the real causes behind our issues. And that’s precisely what I would like to do.
“You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”