original posted on my social media
29 June 2023
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Retrieved, blogged, and story added at 25 March 2025

I’ve been known to hold an opinion or two about smart phone use, the way we use it as a pacifier, melting our brain and every bit of consciousness in the process.
But there is one thing access to the entire world in the palm of our hand has undeniable brought us;
A larger way of thinking.
A bigger way, of being.

For millennia we were not just protected by the intimacy of small local communities, we were also bound by its small-mindedness.
It was a belonging that came at the price of handing over your individuality, and taking on the uniform that was prescribed for your role somewhere in the margins.
Unless you were born into, or managed to acquire, the privilege of a powerful role which came with more freedom in all areas, including the right to express who you were.

We no longer live in these small communities, basically because we’d rather be intimately connected to strangers on the internet than to connect with our own neighbors or neighborhood.
And it would be very strange to call that an improvement in any way.
And yet;
In at least one major way, it undoubtedly is.

Because with the accelerated communication on our phones, and the boundless and delusional realms of the internet we now recklessly tread on a daily basis
– not acknowledging that the whole internet thing is like the dead marshes where thousands of souls who went there before us never came back and will spend the rest of their days lingering in the dark –
also came the advantage of having our world broken open.
Its boundaries dissolved.
The old rules washed away and everything starting anew.

The internet, which was originally hailed as the great equalizer because now everybody would have a voice, did free us from the toxicity, the repression and the passive (or less passive) aggression that used to tag along unchecked, piggybacking unto group structures.
But no more.

With our smartphones, it was like the hourglass was turned, and the structures of power were flipped with it.
Now the one who found their way around the digital world the first, were the winners.
And the real world became a trinket, where everything was so slow it could no longer hold our attention.

Our attention span shrank to the length of a TikTok clip, even for the ones who didn’t even have TikTok.
We think 30 seconds is a normal length for something to have.

But in the grand scope of things, 30 seconds equals zero.
And yet!
Here we are; Big!

Because we may have micro attention spans, but we have acquired a tremendous sense of size and possibilities.
A tremendous sense of Self!

Now I know that all sounds very egotistical but it has been a magnificent antidote against patriarchical structures, which I don’t think we would have gotten around to, if not like this.

Any culture repressing women and marginalizing minorities, and gatekeeping resources needs us isolated and not talking to each other about our shared experiences.
It needs to think it is us.

What the internet has brought us, is a sense of what “systemic” repression is. And that it dissolves with people being informed, and heard, and seen, and empowered.
And how do we do that?
We do it with the much cursed phone, we hold in our hand.

Our smartphone is a curse, in many ways.
But we must never forget, that it is also the thing that has dismantled structures of repression and authority, that would have been allowed to continue for eons more, had they not been so effectively dismantled by the light of the information age.

Like vampires in the light, they have burned and crumbled away.

The smart phone is a threat to our consciousness, yes. And we do risk drowning in the marshes and becoming someone who lives online and no longer has any awareness in the real world.
No longer able to think for themselves.

But it is good to remember that until very recently, we were not able to think for ourselves either.
Whether you were male or female, you were a hostage of patriarchy.
A set of hidden mechanisms of family roles, schools and employment structures, kept you in place.

Your mind, your awareness, your sense of Self, of who you are as an individual?
All acquired only very recently!

Don’t let it be taken away so quickly.
Fight for it. 

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~Suzanne Beenackers
Catacombe
become the Rock Star you were born to be

 

ABOUT THE LOST POST SERIES

 

I have been consistently posting “What Do Rock Stars Need To Hear Today” for a while now.
Starting June 2023, they found their final form as blogposts here on the Catacombe blog, pretty quickly.

But I’ve always been aware there were singular posts/ borderline poetry, still on social media, floating somewhere down my timeline.

Some at the beginning when I did not know what this series would be.
Some around the time in October/November 2023, when I lost access to this site.
And then a few in between.

And additionally to that, there are the ones I did post on the blog, but whose stories revolve around things I no longer offer.
I will retrieve those too;
And give them a new story, that has the timeless quality they deserve.

.
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