The Search For Truth/Freedom; Internet - Joseph Kennedy (read with me TXT) 📗

Our Father who art in Heaven.
Om mani Padme Hum Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akabar.

You've got mail.

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Since the beginning, people have tried to interpret their whole existence through rituals and tradition. Hawthorne Sinclair wanted something different. He wanted to define Life on his terms. He wanted a new start. He wanted the Manson family, sans murderous plots and copious amounts of LSD. He wanted to get out of the mainstream and venture into the unknown, where we truly find ourselves. Beyond the materialistic goals and ideas of what Life should be about. What he wanted was right in front of him.
That glossy screen that showcases the cosmos, as if to say “We don't 'do' the future. We ARE the future.”, also holds the answers to all of life's questions. But with any source of divine Power, there must be a filtration system. Weeding out the bad. Pros/Cons lists. Hawthorne's filter system was called Common Sense, which is sorely lacking in most people. Let me back up.

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Waking up at 5:07am on the dot for 262 (that's two hundred and sixty-two) days in a year can take quite a toll on a man fresh out of art school. At 17 he thought by now he would be living in a small studio apartment in SoHo, selling his work and barely making it to the next rent payment. Never did he think that just twelve months out of formal (that's just what you tell the parents) education, that he would be working in a small cubicle just ten minutes outside his childhood home, where he still lives. Same mother, different father(s), same dog. Same discouragement. Same 'same'.

The only thing that changed was that now he didn' view art as an expression. It was more of a way to uglify the beautiful. For instance, a smile is not just a curved line anymore. No. It takes a collective of twenty-six face muscles to form that signature :). Each muscle shapes the smile.

That's why after a stroke, which paralyzes muscle movement, people's smiles tend to look a bit off. A bit odd. A bit....strokey. This isn't to discredit his pursuit of art. It's just the truth. And that's where our story begins.

It started when It started one morning when Mr. Sinclair woke up to find his mom had found him a new daddy, if only for the night before/morning after. “Hello,” he said, coldly, addressing this too-young man sporting an Ed Hardy bathrobe and his mother's flipflops. “Dicklips.” he added under his breath. What will today bring? If nothing else, the sun is shining. There is hope for.... for something. Something. But what? He decided to shelf this dark thought until later. For now he would start his daily routine: write down everything you hate about yourself in hopes that you can work towards changing them.

“You are a hypochondriac. You starve yourself so much your stomach has
begun eating itself. You are neurotic. You are a narcissist. You would
live life infront of a mirror if you could. CHANGE THIS.”

Hawthorne doesn't quite know why he continues to do this. All it does is dig him deeper into his emotional grave. He gets up to dust off his old fixie, since the snow has just melted. He puts on his faux-vintage Ray Bans and ironic cap, and pedals to work. Oh how he hates himself.
He's sick of Minnesota and it's nothingness. He wants Chicago again. Desire.
Urban Outfitters is owned by corporate suits who think it's amusing to see how young people dying to fit into an “edgy” crowd will wear anything they put out.
American Apparel is the same, only they add a “gay agenda”, or at least that's what my Church tells me.

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Days go by, turn into months, that whole cliché evolution. Anyway, time passes. Things happen, some things don't happen. What matters is the here and now. The present. Right now Hawthorne Sinclair is in a small suburb of Chicago, in a basement with a spindly man named Titanic and an emotionally repressed blond named Mars. They are a collective, gone viral. They operate under the name “Grocery Bag”. They are called Hipster Trash Two point Oh. One point oh was John&Yoko. I guess it's high praise.
“Want what you hate. Embrace your fears. Don't ever give up until you're dead. Even then, rot in the ground to the fullest. Don't fear death because we will live forever. Cool kids can't die.” Titanic says this, and Mars and Hawthorne interject a “Hallelujah!” or “Amen!” or “Preach it!”, much to the dismay of Titanic.
“No,” he says calmly, “No. The whole point is to distance ourselves from the norms of society. I am not Jeremiah Wright. We don't want a religion, we want a movement. A feeling. A... something. Tangible. We want tangibility.” Hawthorne is just eating this all up. This, this, this is what they didn't teach him in art school. They taught him the cold and distant reality of beauty. It takes twenty-six muscles to smile. They didn't teach him how to feel. No, they taught him how to be disconnected.
“First and last order of business tonight is finding truth. We will not rest until we find it. Absolute truth.” It wasn't like Titanic or Mars had anything better to do. Hell, they couldn't even find a job anymore. Not after what happened.
In a shell of a nut-shell, the three of them burnded down the skool so the local chillens couldn't no longer do lernin. They took away the opportunity that they were handed. They couldn't stand watching the next generation be discouraged as they had. The next gen needed to be emotionally relatable. Raw. No formal institution to tell them NO that is NOT the proper way to think. The only difference between ancient times and now is the level of dependability on oneself.
Titanic turned on his brand new iMac and revealed, "I know the truth. Look no further, it is on your fingertips." At that moment, he took out an iPhone. "Say you want to know everything there is to know about the process of sponge making. In the olden golden days, you would plead with your god to enlighten you, please. Now, your fingers hunt down the right letters. S-P-O-N-G-E(space)M-A-K-I-N-G(space)P-R-O-C-E-S-S.

Your work is done. May you be enlightened. Suddenly, pages upon pages are at your disposal, citing refutable sources. The closest thing we have to God is the Internet."

His speech is done. Cue those shocked faces.

"So, T-T-Titanic.. y-you're say-saying the Inter-er-net is actually the C-C-Creator?" Mars asks, rather shyly. You'd think she'd be comfortable around him, especially after they've had sexual relations numerous times. Being naked is the most natural thing, yet we feel hesitant to show off our bodies.

"No, I'm saying that WE are the Creators. We post whatever is on our minds, and the Internet has to accept it. It has to. We tell It what to do. We are the Controllers. Get used to this power because when we show the world exactly what we are capable of, there will be no shortage of power."

This stunning revelation stunned Hawthorne. He had never realized how True it is. People search for God hoping to find Truth, when in reality it is there the entire time. Not only do human beings serve the Internet, the Internet serves human beings.

There was a time when Human Beings thought of other HB's. That time has passed. Everyone is in debt to everyone. Humans are still hell-bent on being happy, not on finding their own path. Please, tell me what it means to be a Human Being.

With this newfound power, Hawthorne decided that the only way to harness it would be to leave everything behind- except his iMac. He packed his vintage Vuitton suitcase. Inside, all of his ironic t-shirts and oversized sweaters and "cool" shoes are placed neatly in piles.

A thousand miles away in scortching Arizona, Hawthorne finds himself in a shabby apartment complex in the heart of Tucson, ironically named the Sahara Apartments. Basically it was a prison cell with a door instead of bars. Basically that's school. Basically that's work. Basically that's life. Basically he wanted Truth. He found it; Internet.

Moral of the story is that people search for Truth in God and religion. Moral of the story is that we have it on our fingertips. On our lips. On our hearts. On our minds. It's called the Web. WorldWideWeb, Internet.

God/Internet can do anything. Internet/God knows all. God/Internet is everywhere. Internet/God is open to all people. God/Internet is God.