Distractions
I’ve circled this topic before, in more than one blog: distractions. Sometimes it was in the context of driving. Sometimes consumerism. I even brushed up against it in my Christmas post. I’ve written about alcohol as a societal crutch, a way to escape, a distraction from reality.
But let’s not kid ourselves. We are fucking distracted. All the time.
Goddamned phones. Social media. Computers. Endless streaming. Twenty-four-hour TV. And because we’re so distracted, we’ve built entire secondary industries just to compensate for it: lane-departure warnings, blind-spot monitors, collision sensors. Systems designed to save us from ourselves because we can’t be bothered to look up and pay attention.
Think about that for a second. We have industries wrapped around distraction industries, all working together to keep us comfortably blind.
And then come the politicians. And the pundits. And the talking heads. Their entire job is to keep us distracted from reality while they line their own pockets. Keep us fighting over stupid shit that never changes while corruption quietly metastasizes behind the curtain.
Distraction.
We now live in a world with a nonstop news cycle where everything is sensationalized, everything is urgent, everything is outrage, and none of it actually fixes a goddamned thing.
Meanwhile, we’ve normalized laziness. You don’t have to leave your house. You don’t have to cook. You don’t even have to pause the game. Tap your phone, and chicken wings show up at your door. Tap again, and Amazon delivers whatever shiny bullshit you didn’t know you needed twelve seconds ago.
Everyone uses it. And then half the country turns around and curses the system that made it possible, because hating America is fashionable now. Colleges teach kids to despise capitalism, the one economic system that actually complements individual freedom, without bothering to explain what replaces it, or who ends up holding the power when markets disappear.
I fucking hate that we hate ourselves. I fucking hate that we’re this distracted. And I fucking hate how easily we’re manipulated because of it.
Which leads me to the only question that keeps rattling around in my head: Does biker culture foster freedom, or do motorcycles simply attract people who already crave it?
Because honestly, that’s the only way out I can see. Ditch the smart cars. Ditch the bubble-wrapped existence. Swing a leg over a loud, unapologetic, American-made V-twin. Feel the road. Feel the weather. Feel consequences. Maybe then people would start thinking again instead of worrying about next week’s episode of whatever the fuck.
I don’t know.
But I know distraction is killing us, quietly, comfortably, and on schedule.
