(Transcript edited for readability.)

Amidst dusk, I stood alone in a sprawling, chaotic marketplace. Stalls stretched endlessly, selling sleek, high-tech smartphones. The crowd was full of anticipation. I grabbed a device. Its screen lit up, flooding me with flashes and buzzing alerts. Each ping of my phone further itching my curiosity. But it was a hollow thrill, only to be replaced by a curiosity for more.

I found a tent with shifting, shimmering fabrics. The sign above read, "Future Fashion Today." The clothing was hanging in the tent, whirling in the wind, transforming with each gust.

My nose caught a scent. I arrived at a food stall. A blinking flashing sign read "Sleep your way to slim in the all-natural way."

Further down the path, I found myself walking past various portals that appeared to lead to other lands. Signs all around them were promising exotic adventures. But each entrance unveiled a similar scene: crowds of empty faces vying for those oh-so-necessary ideal shots of renowned landmarks.

Everyone was trapped in some unending cycle, chasing an ideal of envisioned joy hollowed out by marketing ploys.

The marketplace faded away. I found myself drifting in space while in front of a massive screen overlooking a massive forest of bamboo.

We live in an age of information overload. And with that, brings the paradox of choice.

We have choice paralysis.

Choice is abound. From streaming options, relationship swiping, and endless new products, we are faced with decision fatigue and hesitation due to the fear of missing out on other alternatives.

Our environments, especially urban ones, are full of distractions providing us with sensory overload.

Social media only amplifies this experience of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). The continuous stream of others' experiences induces restlessness and discontent as our urge to compare ourselves to the filtered lives of others becomes inevitable.

Downtime is diminished, shamed even. In a productivity-focused culture, constant activity leaves little room for reflection.

Do we truly wonder why the diagnosis of anxiety and depression continues to rise? Time for reflection allows us to declutter and understand our inner emotional state, but overstimulation guides us toward distraction, leaving us unexamined, moving with society's external stimuli.

Okay, but let's consider how this overstimulation we experience can lead us to become desensitized...

We are constantly bombarded with intense stimuli, guiding us towards our next click, our next purchase, but maybe more importantly: our next story. We live with an endless news cycle that pushes tragic story after tragic story, inevitably leaving us with lowered experience of the intensity of the emotional pull they should cause.

Just think about how fast the news moves past the latest mass shooting.

The desensitized person's perception loses depth and subtlety. We become numb. And the numbed individual no longer perceives the world with the same nuance.

Are we inevitably facing a diluted experience of reality?

Deleuze and Guattari's concept of assemblages connects well with this I think. Assemblages are these dynamic networks of connections, or interconnections, and interactions that create our societal structures. They come in multiple forms. A city is a form of assemblage, with its buildings, roads, inhabitants, and cultural practices, all contribute to the functioning and identity of the city. A piece of art, be it film, a painting, or a sculpture, is an assemblage of various elements that come together to convey a message or evoke emotions. Our bodies are an assemblage.

And us being in a society, while being a desiring machine, makes our very desire and drives an assemblage, where everything comes together into a structure that guides, dictates, and even oppresses how individuals relate to the world and themselves.

Now, these structures are not static; they are fluid and malleable, constantly reshaping and adapting to our interdependent relations.

But think about our experience of overstimulation and intense external stimuli...

When this stimulation is incessantly thrust upon an individual, the resulting assemblage can become rigid and repetitive.

Our experience becomes predictable. And more easily controlled for that matter.

Imagine the individual bombarded by an unending stream of sensationalized news and graphic content. The connections formed within their mind gradually solidify into a structured assemblage, wherein certain thoughts, emotions, and reactions become closely linked. This assemblage, perpetuated by the unceasing influx of similar content, begins to constrict our range of experiences.

We are then left operating in a loop of controlled and predictable experience.

Why is this a problem though?

These rigid assemblages exert a restrictive influence on our encounters with the world. Our ability to engage with novel and nuanced experiences becomes hampered by the dominance of these predefined connections. Thus, the individual's capacity to encounter a broad spectrum of effects becomes stifled, leading to a narrowed emotional range and, consequently, a desensitized perspective.

If you've been on Tiktok, you can quickly witness a feed of carefully curated yet repetitive content. The almighty algorithm wishes to anchor us into a familiar pattern that prevents us from exploring diverse emotional territories. We like patterns. We are driven towards the familiar, so algorithms are happy to provide us with what is safe, and what is familiar.

The algorithm becomes our restrictive assemblage of experience and drives.

So, we can find desensitization emerging as a consequence of these rigid assemblages, where our spectrum of experience is constrained, and our emotional response dulled.

But what can we do about this?

Maybe we can start by drawing awareness to the assemblages we become aware of that our guiding our own drives as desiring machines. And to alter our assemblages we must seek out different and diverse experiences. Embrace uncertainty! In some sense. By consciously engaging with a broad spectrum of stimuli that can then allow for an emergence of novel connections, we can counteract the pull towards rigid assemblages that leave us in a state of desensitization.

Essentially, embracing the fluidity of assemblages can help restore a sense of vibrancy in our experiences and lead us toward a more enriched, sensitive, and nuanced perspective of the world.

Stay curious.

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