We read Philip K. Dick and felt smart, nonconformist, maybe even a little prophetic. Watching Blade Runner with Vangelis’ soundtrack and thought it was beautiful, poetic, mesmerizing.
It is, of course. But it was also a warning.
And here we are now, in 2025. No flying cars yet (though they’re working on it), but cities where people don’t talk to each other anymore, electronic eyes everywhere, algorithms that know more about us than we do. Hyperconnection leaves us drained; speed eats us alive; loneliness has become a new kind of poverty—strange, elusive, not only economic, but spiritual, relational, cognitive.
A poverty of good time, of presence, of meaning.
Somehow, we’ve stumbled into a reality that overlaps eerily with what literature and film imagined as dystopia thirty years ago. Only there was no sound, no alarm, no siren marking the crossing. We slipped into it. One scroll at a time. A software update here. An “Accept cookies” click there.
So now what? How do we stay human in all this? I don’t have any final answers, but I do know that our hands remember things the mind has forgotten. That a needle and thread can be tools of reconnection — not just to a scrap of fabric, but to a different rhythm, a truer time, to a part of ourselves that has never stopped breathing quietly, even if we forgot it was there.
Embroidery, drawing, sculpting, sewing, gardening, kneading, building—whatever the craft—are all forms of silent resistance. Of taking a stand. Not loud, not heroic, but stubborn. Almost defiant. A beautiful way to exercise our birthright freedom.
And then, every so often, to write. Even just a few lines. Even just to pin down a moment that would otherwise vanish in the endless stream. A note scribbled on the edge of reality. Maybe that’s the truly punk gesture today: slowing down. Refusing to become an extension of the machine. Refusing to give in to cynicism. Continuing to search for small openings. Small fires.
Maybe if you’re here, reading this right now, you’re already searching. Maybe we can find them together—while the world out there hits reset.
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