"how I became an automaton".
The problem with how we experience life is that it is filled with oxymorons that go against everything instinctual (and that has served us just fine over the last few thousand millenia or so).
Emotions are scary, intense, aggravating, intrusive, obnoxious, intolerable, - there seems to be a million adjectives and still they only touch the surface. Is there anything as all-prevalent as emotion? And yet is there anything quite so oppressed?
Every medication, every narcotic, every distillery, every form of entertainment, every single ingenuity of mankind is designed to fulfill an emotional need. Gadgets are created to make us happy or amused or more relaxed. Narcotics are designed to create a sense of security or a euphoric sense of disassociation. Space exploration was even designed to make us feel less lonely and facilitate the feeling of power supported by exploration.
And yet every self-help novel or guru, every pharmaceutical, and even pop culture is designed to repress, annihilate, moderate, and pervert our natural responses.
Emotional Intelligence? A transcendent ideal, surely. A Utopian quest, absolutely. But until the average human is using more than a mere iota of their reasoning capabilities it remains an amusing flight of fancy that most don't have the capacity to grieve.
Am I bitter? Who knows. I'm on anti-depressants. That means I am as level and stifled as your average glass of water that has been sitting on your nightstand for a month. Great potential, so misused that something that shouldn't be capable of spoiling still manages to collect dust and a funky taste that makes you want to chew every so slightly on your tongue after consumption.
