We live in a world where almost all the knowledge of human history, with only fragments lost, now fits into our pockets. It should be one of humanity’s most remarkable feats. Instead, it has made us lazy and complacent. Algorithms don’t just deliver information; they decide what is worth our attention. They trap us in echo chambers where opinions pose as truth, and anyone who dares question the script is quickly cast as “other”: bigot, fascist, whatever-phobe. In this world, truth isn’t about what is; it’s about what trends.
But the truth is this: we never meet the world directly. We live in interpretation, in our perception of what is real. Husserl argued that reality reaches us only through phenomena, as they appear. Heidegger pressed further: we are not neutral observers of the world but thrown into it, already interpreting. Sartre said it most plainly: existence precedes essence. We first find ourselves here, then decide what meaning to give it.
That’s not just philosophy, it’s everyday life. The way you scroll, the way you work, the way you decide who you are.
Reality is not a fixed script. It is filtered, interpreted, and lived. The stories we inherit, the roles we perform, and the systems that demand our attention all shape the lens through which we perceive what is true. We cannot escape the lens. But we are not prisoners of it, either. To reclaim your life is to take responsibility for the lens. To see the distortion, and to decide, deliberately, what you will give your power to.
The trade wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t a collapse or rebellion, but a slow leak. The sacred didn’t vanish; it was traded: presence for motion, silence for a screen, ritual for spectacle. We called it progress because it was new, because everyone else seemed fine, because pausing to ask if we were okay felt strange.
Most people don’t notice the hunger itself. They see the symptoms.
Restlessness.
The scroll reflex at red lights.
A room full of people and the sharp loneliness spreading like fog.
Sleep that doesn’t restore. Work that doesn’t fulfill. Lives that feel busy but thin, constantly moving but rarely alive.
Meanwhile, entire industries – political, corporate, algorithmic – exist to feed that hunger just enough to keep us running. Not satisfied. Just busy. If you’re constantly stimulated, you never stop long enough to feel what the noise is costing you. You won’t ask the dangerous questions.
Questions like:
• What if the things we were told to chase aren’t actually living?
• What if strength isn’t the mask, but the courage to take it off?
• What if grief, love, and silence aren’t obstacles, but the only doors to what’s real?
We are starving in a marketplace full of food. As a therapist, I sit with people who are exhausted, anxious, disconnected, and convinced that something is wrong with them. They aren’t broken. They’re living in a system where everything loud pushes out everything alive. Distraction numbs pain. But it numbs everything else, too. When the inevitable losses come, and they always do, an unpracticed soul shatters. Not because they’re defective, but because we taught them speed instead of grief, performance instead of presence, outrage instead of courage.
The cost is heavier than most people notice because it doesn’t hit all at once. It creeps. We trade attention for distraction until silence feels unbearable. We trade connection for performance until we feel unknown even in crowded rooms. We trade ritual for spectacle until grief rots beneath the surface and explodes sideways as rage or conspiracy.
This is the bill coming due.
The world won’t slow down. The algorithms won’t stop. The noise may never fade. But we don’t have to live hollow lives. Surviving awake is hard. Surviving hollow is harder.
So choose your hard, or it will be chosen for you
Burn The Script 