Rapture

September 2026

I've felt this irresistible urge to wake and reach for my phone, my oblong as Kazeo Ishiguro calls them. I like his reduction of this smart technology to just an inert shape.

My grandson mimics his mother, already swiping and putting it to his ear, despite her caution with his access. It feels like I should set a better example for his developing mind.

I know they're addictive these oblongs, tantalising with their algorithmic smorgasbord of juicy morsels. Once I thought plugging myself into the global brain would be an enlightening strategy. Now it's clear there are worrying downsides. An addiction to a succession of the largely irrelevant, that erodes attention and my capacity to dive more deeply into what really matters. And saps my capacity to be present to the real world around me. I need to look elsewhere for my dopamine-hits and to plug into the collective human consciousness.

Yet I wake with the oblong purring beside me.

It's past time to wake from this addiction.

I leave my oblong downstairs to contemplate the quiet of the night.

I'm reading more, taking greater care with where I look, what I choose.

And today I came across this quote from Joseph Campbell, professor of literature and the american thinker and writer on comparative religion and mythology. And to top that off, George Lucas credited Campbell's work as influencing his Star Wars saga!

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're seeking. I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. Myth helps you put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is."

Joseph Campbell

Perhaps it's all this talk of AI and imminent apocalypse, but I'm leaning into the rapture of just being alive!