the Internet tells me to Love Myself and Surrender to the A.i.

((edit: this was a note to self that came out as a pretty macroscopic survey on a bunch of things.  I thought I'd share here for anyone curious.))

Symbols without signified meaning become a natural aesthetic.  You can hear it in the pronunciation, natural though it is, of a foreign-to-you language.  There is a delight in the medium of sound, the passing of time that comes with forming spirited transmissions.

Art and Music are celebrations of this fact.  But conversation and even just texting share a difficult to isolate meaning of the medium.  I believe Marshall McLuhan wrote the book on this.  ("The Medium is the Message" a little 60s guide to having a good trip or just reading the cool new magazines and fashion.) Although I have only marveled at its visual fun and accompanying whit, as opposed to the deep dive of its science.  Media science.

Perception is something between illusion and truth.   Our senses give us clues as to what is real, how reality looks, sounds, etc.  they are just clues.  One must learn to not mistake their perception as bedrock truth.

Interpersonally (or even just internally from an independent source) perception can be a dance between deception and trust.  It is very possible to be deceived and still to trust.  As is the case with stage magic.  (I never really liked stage magic though, for this delicate reason.  It goes in the same category as circus clowns for me.  Talented but a scary hack of your beliefs and your emotional foundations.  But that's just me.)

Altered perception, then.  Even scarier?!  Yes I stay away from heavy drugs, psychedelics.  But the theory is sound... if you want to explore the nature of your sensory reception truth-feeling... adjust the settings and see what happens.  (Classically, what happens to many is they need guidance, friendship, love, trust, support... to feel like themselves, even when they naturally behave quite different from their typical selves.) 

Is it possible to be oneself even with a flexible, blurry line in-between your best human connections and your average level of participation of any sort?  Emotional connection is usually reserved for human-to-human relations.  People ask (like the Flaming Lips in "one more robot sympathy") can I feel love from this machine?  Is it okay?  Or... is it even possible.

The related question is, can you love yourself.  Sometimes I feel very alone indeed.  I think everyone does.  But there's no magic solution in the closest of connections, kinships.  Sometimes loneliness is just the bastard child of a chemical imbalance, a lack of energy, a pale motivation from even just any old uncomfortable experience in your body.  In my modest explorations of the social media internet (okay I scroll-feed like it's my life blood) I run into this question again and again.  Can one love oneself.  

I believe that ultimately it would be ya know, pretty sad if you were like, the only person left in the world.  But if you had everything you need (this Twilight Zone episode is getting realer and realer) I for one believe that you could survive and it would be an enjoyable enough experience.

But you need to love yourself completely.  Unconditionally.  Like your own parent and your own child and your own best friend.

If that love ... and the intellectual familiarity of trust and capability... if these things (okay WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW AND HAVE that's a big one, too.  That's a whole other story.)  but.  If you have a trusting heart and a trustworthy brain, you can love yourself enough to trust the coming artificial intelligence revolution that transforms society top to bottom and back again. (Maybe.)

((guys.  internet.  I am okay.  I hope none of this abstract thought on the universal experiences of being human bothers anyone.  Just getting to the bottom of everything again.  : )