Rebels With A Cause!

If there was ever a time to be a subversive bastard...

Oskar Werner as Guy Montag in the 1966 film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

Addiction is spreading like wildfire. 

Alcohol addiction. Sugar Addiction. Comfort Addiction. Marijuana Addiction. Porn Addiction. Gambling Addiction. Pharmaceutical Addiction. Social Media Addiction. Nicotine Addiction. Opioid Addiction. Partisanship Addiction. Processed Food Addiction. Phone Addiction. 

What did I miss?

All blazing straight to the pleasure zones of our brain, mix and match lit, goes ahhhh on the strike, ever more resistant to extinction.

This is culture 2024. This is baseline.

This is the world where access has exploded and where access is gasoline on the flames.

But for today, anyway, I will not focus on blame. 

Let’s not blame the bakers or the iOS bookies or big social or the Chinese, big pharma or big liquor…

Let’s not even blame ourselves.

For today, anyway, I’m not going into how we got here or who’s to blame. Blame changes nothing and just makes us angrier and more likely to join a stupid fascist cult.

Call that scapegoat addiction.

It doesn’t matter who is burning our time and attention, or setting our health and our mind aflame. It’s happening and that's what matters.

Here's what we must do about it now instead of blaming.

We must summon our rebellious streak and let that blaze like meteors!

For some of us this will be easy, because we never quite let that part of our adolescence go, but for some of us with a milder nature or who matured, this might be a little tougher.

Either way, that rebellious streak is still inside all of us, I promise, it might just need a swift kick for those who have fully embraced the learned helplessness construct.

Regardless, it is now time to summon our rebel selves. It is now time to get riled up, to light our own fire, because if we are going to resist this instantly accessible exploding gasoline addiction culture, we are going to have to be subversive bastards.

We are going to have to scoff at commercials and friends and family members, fake health associations, artisanal tequila, enticing point spreads, likes and retweets etc etc etc.

There is no greater cause for rebellion than the litany of culturally embedded addictions cited above burning up our time and attention, our body and mind, our soul and control over the one finite life we ever get on this glorious planet.

If there was ever a cause for rebellion.

We must summon our inner Guy Montag, Winston Smith, D-503…

Rebels With A Cause!