The values of a system differ from the values of an individual in that an individual may end up possessing beliefs for the values of the system, that they want to create, that are in direct contradiction with ways in which they show up.

An individual who has direct experience of the loopholes in a system best stands to fix those loopholes. Someone who has walked in line with the system and led a “good life” through that has neither visibility into what needs to be fixed nor incentive to fix what needs to be fixed. This is the kind of TV presenter who mocks the 30 minute delay of Trump's interview with Elon on X by happily exclaiming “how TV just works”. That's because TV just works for him and his cushy life.

Someone who doesn't take risks looks at the failures of a risk taker and mocks them, oblivious to the shoulders of giant risk–takers that their cushy life is built upon.

A mediocre software engineer is not the one who will raise the alarms early because they sense that the website is heading towards a crash. Because an act of raising alarm in your area of responsibility necessitates more work for you in the follow–up. A mediocre city administrator would prefer to deny the possibility of something extreme happening in a city by using the “lack of credible reports” argument instead of investigating the few uncredible reports that might have come through to him.

—

Once you have tasted real freedom, there is no going back.

Those who live oppressed by imaginary abstractions that they have constructed with the aid of consumerist messaging, can't spot freedom even if it was right under their nose.

Freedom is always right under your nose.

One whiff of its intoxicating scent can shatter layers and layers of conditioned ways of being. Conditioned ways of being that mask your true essence. Hide it from you and from others.

One whiff of Freedom. Instantaneously you are set free.

Free of needing to please others. Free of needing to fit in. Free of obligations. Free of–I don't even know what else.

Once free, it is difficult to remember a life lived constrained. There is a sense of “Wait, really did I live like that? Huh yeah I vaguely recollect that. I feel some compassion for my past self and grateful for where I am now and wish nothing but full freedom for everyone I cross paths with.”

—

I believe that there is many in America who are born free. I don't think they grok the extent of privilege that they're born with.

A couple of years ago I was in Cairo.

I took the subway to visit the Coptic Christian neighborhood. On the train, I pulled out my camera to record my environs. A couple of locals angrily gesticulated at me asking me to put my phone away. Apparently, since the Arab Spring, people are suspicious of folks who record videos in public.

I saw a YouTube video about South Sudan recently which demonstrated the same. North Korea is notoriously known for prohibiting video capture of its people and how they live and also strives hard to keep its people disconnected from how the rest of the world lives.

I vaguely remember that the Soviets used fake videos showcasing the abundance of their grocery stores as propaganda to demonstrate that Communism worked while the reality was starkly different.

What a privilege it is to live in a society where it is commonplace to take videos in a public setting.

That allows videos of horrendous acts like the murder of George Floyd to surface. That allows videos of Rudy Giuliani attempting to hit on a woman pretending to be 16, to be featured in a movie with a theatrical release.

What a true privilege and how difficult it is to get from where South Sudan is today to this state of being.

I don't think many can fathom how complex such a transition is for a society. Sure it leads to annoyances like everyone being on their front facing cameras at every fucking concert you go to, but such annoyances are minor in the grand scheme of things.

This is the circumstance of the birth of the Digital Creator, colloquially known as the Influencer. This particular form of livelihood would not have been born in any place other than the freest of them all–note here the relative adjective usage–the USA.

The Digital Creator is born because the consumer in humans yearns for non-performative authenticity.

Non-performative? “The fuck are you talking about, Vighnesh”, you exclaim. “Influencers are performative as fuck.”

Yes they are and they lack skill in performance. As contrasted say with a Hollywood actor in a big budget movie or a Kamala Harris in a presidential debate.

And in this absence of skill in their performativeness, shines a thin sliver of authenticity that parches the thirst of the same in the viewer.

A moment of aliveness breaking through the façade of performance that we are slathered in as a global society.

In seeing that, in seeing the absence of this skill, I, as a doomscrolling zombied consumer, become momentarily alive again. This is why it can be so addictive to scroll through social media.

Alive, as in connected to your inborn awareness that you're free.

That you always have optionality at all times.

That your creativity can forge a life for you that is more alive than the ephemeral aliveness that witnessing any piece of art can bring you or that ephemeral aliveness of sexual ecstasy.

Free.

Truly free.