Voice mail. E-mail. Text.
Mobile phones. Social media. Streaming music.
Streaming video.
The skip button…
Online search. Online news. Online ads.
Online shopping.
Auto renew. Auto purchase. Autopay.
Driverless autos…
Remote office. Remote access.
Remote control…

Lives are ceded to electronic networks, who once posed as servants.
Critical thoughts atrophy, wasted in passive, pupil-fixing enchantment by spectacle,
Programmed by megalithic, corporate elites.
The networks have seized our essence…

Influence, amplified by algorithmic manipulation, assigned designation, arbitrary segregation,
Keeps us estranged, tribal, and weak…
Too unfamiliar with one another to unite, or resist.

*  *  *

May we ditch these imposed, manipulating bonds?

Ignore mass media.
De-tribalize associations. Reject elitism…authority—recognize neighbor identities in circumspect.
Establish contained proximities
Wherein autonomy prevails, because…
Experience is subjective.

Carve proximal circles, under media silence—
Like families of an endless town, clearing driveways after a big snow.

We're buried, beneath a global storm blanket of algorithmically mediated, electronically delivered manipulation—capped by a frozen sheet of tribalism, which seals it in place.

Cleared drives connect, opening paths for all
To travel…

And drift.