Gratification Lizards
Do not lift your head from the feast of sweet instaneous pleasures!
It would be socially unacceptable to behave the way we do toward our phones to anything else in existence. Think about that subconscious movement to open Instagram after you just closed it, the head bending down low toward the screen, shoulders drooping with the eyes wide and stirring fervently as the feed refreshes again. Or the subconscious holding of the magic rectangle itself like a toddler with a favorite stuffed animal, into every room with us, onto the toilet with us, into the bed with us…
I’ll check my phone after sex. I’ll check my phone when my eyes open in the morning and push that half-remembered dream into oblivion. We can check our phones while we’re talking to other people — if you were to stare at the ground, or at your feet, or at the table while someone was talking to you, you’d be a weirdo. But to stare at your phone — outside of your parent’s dinner table or a work setting, this is now essentially acceptable.
I want to come back to that subconscious click of the app, right after closing the app… what if it was a swig from the bottle? Too dramatic? What if it was a compulsion like tapping your leg three times? What if it was repeating the last sentence you said? Take whatever example suits you, the point is, it’s either an addictive behavior or a compulsive behavior, and yet we don’t consider it a sign or a symptom of an issue. It’s just normal.
We’re behaving like big hungry lizards around a rotting carcass perfectly ripe with thick fly cover, all animal instincts and darting eyes and rapid turns of aggression when we perceive our neighbors entering into our imagined bubbles of personal dining space… Big hungry lizards turned ravenous on bloodlust with no thought to our collective outward appearance, or collective experience, or collective anything. It’s just run in and grab the goods because it feels good, no thought to anything else. No thought to the rotten stench in the air or blood drops flying in all directions. It’s straight to the meat of the thing because we want it and what else matters?
It’s incredibly ugly, and incredibly gratifying. It’s a horrific scene from the outside, but on the inside, when you’re one of the lizards — instant gratification, baby. It’s the name of the game. Nothing else matters besides that next bite and the sweet pleasure that it brings. Scarf it down and feel the void immediately, and so you must grab another without hesitation. WITHOUT HESITATION. Do not stop and think and risk becoming an outsider, alarmed and appalled by the bloodfrenzy! Do not lift your head from the feast of sweet instantaneous pleasures! When the void slips in between bites, dive back in without hesitation, and in this way you can avoid coming up for air and the lack of sureness this can bring. Instant gratification is a wonderful thing as long as it never stops long enough to leave space for the void, for feeling the void.
