This is your Brain on Don DeLillo

8:43pmJeff:
i hate people who greet everything new with wide-eye'd terror
like Tracy on the biggest loser

8:44pmMaria:
better to squint?

8:44pmJeff:
no, better to concentrate on blowing yourself up
and hoping to feel wonder, surprise
even though mass-culture has made that impossible
we can find every stimuli possible on television, or On Demand
or the internet
we only seek these new stimuli because we saw them on television, on Demand, or online
and others have described them as ideal
it's all an effort to be part of a crowd
and the crowd is massive
it's every person in the world except for luddites in south america and the dying in africa
it's not even a shared experience
since there is no sharing
but it's the furthest thing from unique
since we now have an "ideal" set of life experiences
and our lives are spent grinding towards the resources necessary to accomplishing them
and if we don't, we are failures