Surrealism turns 100 today

Surrealism turns 100 today. Born of war, pandemics and Fascism, Surrealism was a reaction against power and aristocracy, bringing art to common man.

I’ve been thinking a lot about dopamine lately; helping my son navigate the insidious effects of an endless scroll through the open sewer of an internet of walled-gardens. He’s not alone of course; everywhere in public, distraction abounds as the infinite scroll marches forward, often right into traffic. That traffic is not paying attention either, they’ve surreptitiously positioned their phones on the steering wheel to get their feed.

Welcome to the Miasma, a pervasive fog of algorithmically-fed, naturally-made drug addiction. The drug is dopamine, and big tech is training you to self-feed at random to maximize your ‘engagement’. They’re playing you like a rat in a Skinner Box.

Only now, the Skinner Box is infinitely portable: on trains, in elevators, at concerts and restaurants and theaters and funerals. The box is demanding. The box knows nothing of the sacred. Your phone. Yes, I’m talking about your malignant little phone.

Well, here we are again, in an age of hyper-concentrated wealth, war, pandemic and the rise of autocratic leaders. This time our communities and morals and intelligentsia and family can be broken much more easily. Voluntarily, even. In an even crueler twist, we can get the victims to pay for their own downfall, displaying it as a status symbol. That’s power.

They’ve broken us from time and place and connection. We’ve been trained to view the world through a glass filter that distorts. We are detached from the present, we have forgotten the now.