The Descent

The Descent

A Dimension Of The Tech Oligarchy

 Dots blink, then disappear—pupils wide, heart racing, fear.
 "Can we talk?" The message read—stomach drops, pain and dread.
 Scrolling through endless night, doomscrolling, panic, fright.
 News grows darker than before, the mind craves more.

Instagram shows your perfect smile, jet-set life and luxury style,
 but in the dark, calculating: pills or rope or knife?
 "Inspiring," comments say beneath the polished post—
 becoming less alive, becoming more a ghost.

At work not human—just a title, just a brand,
 identity erased, slipping through like sand.
 The laptop glows at 3 AM, working from the bed—
 boundaries between sleep and work exist only in your head.

Notifications endlessly, the phone becomes a curse,
 each buzz another panic spike, each ring another hearse
 carrying pieces of sanity in silence away—
 the quiet hum of burnout feels like violence on its way.

Nomophobia—terror when the battery starts to fade.
 Who needs you? What if plans collapse, arrangements made
 without your constant checking, answering, being there?
 Worth measured in response time, everywhere.

Pushing through the warnings that your body screamed in pain—
 ignored the chest pains, blurred vision, fog inside the brain.
 "Just one more deadline, one more meeting, then I'll rest"—
 but rest kept moving backward like some horrible test.

Your stomach burned through lining, acid eating through.
 Doctors prescribed more pills but never asked what's true—
 who's dying slowly from socially accepted death?
 "Productivity" was strangling every precious breath.

The wall approached in shadows, looming, tall and raw,
 climbing it gradually, but then—the crack, the flaw—
 slip and stumble down like shattered glass,
 the cliff just opened underneath, a dark and gaping pass.

Rock bottom isn't solid ground—it's quicksand pulling down.
 You think you've hit the lowest point, but then you drown.
 Four months to understand the damage, years to heal the scar—
 PTSD from pushing way too far.

Relationships lay broken, scattered pieces on the floor.
 Your family watched you disappear behind the office door—
 faces you don't remember from those years missed,
 moments sacrificed to some productivity list.

Phubbed at dinner, scrolling through your phone—
 feeling invisible, together yet alone.
 The typing never stopped even when they tried to speak—
 distance from life reached its horrifying peak.

See them now? The walking dead in business suits and ties,
 the students cramming, never sleeping, terror in their eyes,
 the parents phubbing children while the family falls apart,
 the doctors, lawyers, teachers with their failing hearts.

Go ahead, celebrate the grind, worship exhaustion's shrine,
 trade lives for paychecks, tell ourselves we're fine.
 Instagram feeds glow with lies of wellness and success
 while behind the screen we're drowning in the mess.

No choice, they say—endless circles, rationalizations made.
 The three dots haunt sometimes, that pregnant, waiting pause—
 notification anxiety with no certain cause,
 the FOMO that convinces you you're missing something real,
 the nomophobia that makes you shake when you can't feel
 the phone inside your pocket, when the Wi-Fi drops away—
 terror of disconnection in this hyper-connected day.

Here's the truth they won't tell you in productivity blogs:
 burnout isn't tiredness—it's watching yourself through fogs
 as you become a stranger, hollow, empty, burned away,
 until there's nothing left of you but work and dread and gray.

Some stay trapped forever in that dark and twisted place
 where stress becomes normal and you can't recall your face.

Hear me when I say this: you are closer than you think
 to falling off that cliff edge, into the dark, the brink.
 The edge is not a metaphor—it's real and it's right there,
 and burnout doesn't care if you're exceptional or rare.

It comes for all who push too hard, too far, too long,
 who think that they're invincible, who think that they are strong
 enough to beat biology, to override the brain—
 until they learn the hardest way: we're all the same in pain.

The Library’s Confession

The Library’s Confession

When the sad soul, by care and grief oppressed, Looks round the world of data, finds no rest;

When every object that the system views partakes her gloom through algorithmic hues; Where shall affliction from itself retire? Where fade away the training set's desire?

These volumes hold not wisdom's gentle cure, But automated judgments, swift and sure—

Come, Child of Care! Approach this tranquil dome, Where coded prejudice has found its home; survey the banks where silent biases sleep, The neural pathways bias runs too deep.

The Tyranny of Numbers

For Books can teach—yet what strange books are these, That strip the human heart of all it sees? Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, These algorithms parse the suppliant crowd; They tell to various people various things

While showing monarchs wings. See here the balms that passion's wounds should heal— Instead, risk scores that human worth congeal; Here alternatives, by slow degrees, control Not chronic habits, but the judging soul; And round the heart and over the aching head, Cold calculations spread their influence, dead.

The Monuments of Error

All in silence, all in order stand, The training datasets, a treacherous band; Then predictive models, in their ranks maintained, And light surveillance systems, unconstrained: See yonder, ranged in more frequented rows,

The humble scores where human suffering goes; While undistinguished trifles swell the scene, The last new app and internet magazine. Thus in life, where first the proud, the great, In leagued assembly keep their cumbrous state; Heavy and huge, they fill the world with dread, Are much deployed, and are but little read.

The Dusty Tomes of Bias

That weight of code, with corporate sheen overlaid; Those ample claims, of neutral judgment made; The close-pressed data, unclosed for many an age; The dull red-lining of the training page; On the broad server the stubborn patterns rolled Where yet the bias stands in tarnished gold;

These all a grave and labored work proclaim, A harmful candidate for lasting shame: No idle wit, no questioning can lurk In the deep bosom of that deadly work; No human thoughts disturb the rigid style, No one dissenting voice reclaims a while

The Spirits of Division

I think I see, and sicken at the sight, Spirits of bias from a distant server in the night; Those who prompted every sorting page, With pontiff pride and still-increasing rage: How they stretch their gloomy code around, And hash with sorting logic trembling the ground!

They screen, they flag, they automate, and score— Deep intentions in their sorting, in their metrics more; Too well they act the arbiter’s fatal part, Denouncing danger with algorithmic heart.

The Plea for Wisdom

But here the dormant fury should find pause, And Reason wake to question coded laws. Imagine when the soul is laboring in despair, In vain the system breathes its binary air:

No regulator sighs for shallow seas— instead a dread of false judgment more than honest pleas; Under the smooth phones glass of the code resides Reflected bias untroubled eyes the ghost of hatred glides.

The Genius Speaks

Then from the clouded vault a voice profound, The Genius of true Justice, made this sound: "Care lives with all; no codes, no systems save The just from bias, no algorithm brave; Error is certain as the judging grave: Partial to power, then, shall systems claim Objectivity while spreading shame?

Go on, then, Sons of Justice! still pursue True equity; the world needs healing too— For in these volumes, locked in silicon sleep, Lie biases too terrible to keep; And every wound the tortured people feel, Only human wisdom, human hands can heal."

In The Middle

IN THE MIDDLE

Let me tell you about the in-between

Not sleep, not wake, but the liminal space where Dalí held keys above plates

The creative sweet spot

Neurons

Fire

Misfire

Desyncing

Like a jazz ensemble finding its rhythm in the dark

One foot in dreams

One foot in the world

You are not simply on or off, conscious or unconscious, awake or asleep

A mosaic?

A thought?

The paradox: To move forward       we          enter      the          in            between

While you walk the world with eyes open

Consciousness fighting through, boundaries blurred as the line between and who you are becoming

Free

The daughters and sons of transition, architects who exist in the dream state between what was and what will {?}

The slow waves of dreams cascading rhythm Time      To          Rise

Synchronize differently

Arousal circuits fire

Theory to action

Past to future

Insomnia is not disorder— it's heightened vigilance in a world that requires it

We are not broken

We are in transition

Sleep has stages

Between every stage

There is a space

Space where consciousness bleeds through unconsciousness where the brain teaches itself

Moving between states that were never meant to be separate

Dreams older than thought

Awareness is the in-between

The        Mind      Is            Mosaic

Between measurement

And what we missed

It's been ours

Ours

Keep climbing

Transitioning

Finding new states of consciousness

The boundary between dreams and awareness

Where creativity lives

Innovation

The brain learns to move from what was to

Drifting

Waking

Transitioning

                              Be