“Blue Light Socrates”

•

Social media is teaching you to blame.

I watch from across the room-

the soft blue glow baptizing your face,

the gospel of grievance humming through your feed.

It’s p r o g r a m m i n g you,

not to think, but to defend.

Not to feel, but to perform the feeling.

It tells you healing looks like labeling it trauma,

and growth means naming someone else as the cause.

•

We used to quote Socrates.

Now we quote whoever went viral last week.

Our rookie philosophers sell merch,

their wisdom measured in clicks,

their enlightenment behind a paywall.

•

We confuse confidence with truth,

and accept popularity as depth.

And still, we allow it as education-

as if an algorithm could grant wisdom

which used to require silence,

patience,

experience,

and years.

•

Blue light Socrates whispers into impressionable ears:

Your mother made you this way.

Your father was the villain.

Your friends were the poison.

And you believe it,

and become it,

because pain with a villain to blame

is far easier

than pain that just… is.

I want to shake shoulders and say-

No one is coming to save you

from the comfort of your own digested narratives.

•

We scroll like gods creating worlds,

but forget that creation begins within.

We’ve outsourced introspection to these algorithms…

and called it quick enlightenment.

We post our pain,

curate our anger,

then call it connection.

It is anything but.

•

I am not immune.

I’ve scrolled until my own edges blurred,

told myself I was awake

because I could diagnose dysfunction in pixels.

I’ve felt the algorithm tug at my mind

like a quiet but violent riptide

pulling me away

from the safety of shore.

•

I’ve mistaken scrolling for seeking,

mistaken noise for news,

mistaken validation for love.

Our brains do not recognize the difference-

which is why we sprint toward it.

The same reward centers light up,

Yet the reward is empty.

A mirage-

An oasis in an arid desert,

promising water

where only sand dwells.

•

Some small but fierce part of me

keeps my gaze stitched to 3d reality-

the garden soil under my nails,

the heartbeats in the room,

the way silence still hums

when my phone is facedown.

And maybe that’s the only difference-

not immunity,

maybe not even ignorance–

just… remembrance.

Acknowledgement.

A quiet but important shift in focus.

A sacred but delicate tether

between our minds

and the world as she still breathes-

outside the glass.