Most people recognise that the global financial markets have become too complex for us to control, which is why bear markets sneak up on us so unexpectedly. Now, thanks to social media, public conversation has become a similarly complex system that has escaped our control. The result of this exponentially more connected conversation is that thoughts and ideas can no longer be controlled by the people in power. This is one of the reasons why Brexit and Trump came as such a surprise. They are both the result of an unexpected bear market of political ideas.

Are we like sardines packed into a can?

More like bullets in someone else’s gun.

They say orange is the new black…

but I say stress is the new fun.

 

Personal truth has become a fiction,

in this plagiarised day and age,

where our souls are pressed into tablets

and swallowed three times a day.

 

But we’re the makers of this horror film.

This nightmare is of our design.

We craft it into being

with the spending of every dime.

 

Now we’re bought and sold like pork bellies.

We’re pixels on a stock market screen.

But there’s no point complaining…

 

Beneath the clamor of the media

no one can hear you scream.

 

So grab another branded sedative

from the blond with the gleaming smile.

Go ahead – swallow it hook, line, and bullshit,

it’s sure to numb you for a while.

Life is a perpetual journey towards a state of balance. Most of us never get there (and if we do, it is only momentary) but our actions and reactions are nevertheless motivated by this primal and often unconscious desire to achieve harmony.

The things we do in order to achieve this elusive state often elicit strange and unexpected reactions from the world around us, tipping us further into chaos. One of the reasons for this is that our existential quest for balance is actually driven by a single-minded pursuit of pleasure… a pursuit that almost invariably reaches its bounds and triggers some form of pain instead.

Just think of the sun. We bend towards it. We revel in its glow. We do this because it gives us pleasure… but we do it until it burns our skin and only when some of us die from it do we actually acknowledge that it is wrong. But painful and stupid as it may seem, this primal drive for pleasure provides us with a thruster button in our quest for balance.