The Collapse of the Interior World
The dismantling of who we are
The Stripped Cathedral
Imagine a cathedral. Not in ruin, but actively dismantled. Gilded altars pried apart not for heresy, but for practicality. Stained glass, depicting saints and sorrows, shattered not by mobs, but by the quiet, efficient hands of utility. The vaulted ceilings, designed to echo with silence and prayer, now exposed to the harsh sky, their ribs picked clean for the copper wiring within. The sacred space, built to house the ineffable, reduced to raw material. This is the metaphor for our inner world.
Once, we were architects of vast, private cathedrals within. We cultivated interiority – a rich, unseen landscape of private thought, secret fears, silent joys wrestled with in the quiet hours. This was the space where the unformed became formed, where raw experience fermented into meaning, where the self conversed with itself without an audience. It was messy, sacred, and wholly our own.
Now, we stand in the stripped nave, holding lengths of salvaged copper.
The Externalization Engine
The journal, that intimate confidant bound in leather or cheap cardboard, where ink bled secrets and clumsy attempts at self-understanding, has largely vanished. In its place: the tweet, the status update, the fleeting story. The act of reflection, once a solitary communion, is outsourced. We no longer wrestle privately with a complex feeling; we broadcast its silhouette and await the validating chime of notifications. "Having a rough day," we announce, not to understand the roughness, but to receive the digital balm of emoji hugs and "You ok?" comments that demand only the shallowest of responses: "Thx, hanging in!"
Secrets, those heavy jewels carried close to the chest, lose their weight and power when polished into anecdotes for group chats. The raw vulnerability of a private fear, when offered as content, becomes a performance. We curate our anguish, our doubt, our minor triumphs, sanding down the rough edges to fit the platform’s mold. The profound act of holding something private, letting it resonate within the cathedral walls, is replaced by the immediate, often hollow, reward of external acknowledgment.
The Thinning Soul
What happens to the soul when its substance is constantly extruded outward? It thins. It stretches, gossamer-like, across a dozen platforms, tethered to a thousand fleeting interactions. There is no center thick with unspoken depth, only a periphery buzzing with reaction.
This constant externalization is an act of self-demolition. We dismantle the intricate altars of private contemplation to wire our consciousness directly into the feedback loop. We mistake the reaction to our externalized self for the substance of the self. The soul, starved of the rich, dark soil of unobserved being, becomes spectral. We are less a presence and more a projection, less a cathedral and more a hastily erected billboard displaying curated fragments.
Preserving the Ruins (A Call to Resistance)
The urge to externalize is the modern siren song. It promises connection, validation, escape from the terrifying quiet of our own company. Resist.
Reclaim the Journal: Let there be words that no one else will ever see. Not for posterity, not for content, but for the sheer act of witnessing yourself without an intermediary. Let the ink be clumsy, the thoughts unfinished, the fears unvarnished. This is the copper wire you don't strip; it powers the inner sanctuary.
Cultivate Secret Joys: Find something beautiful, funny, or deeply moving… and keep it to yourself. Let it resonate within your walls without the pressure to package it, hashtag it, or share it. A joy held privately gains a unique density.
Sit in the Unshared Silence: When the urge to tweet the sunset hits, don't. Just watch it. Let the colours wash over you and sink into the unphotographed depths of your being. Let the complex, unprocessed feeling linger without immediately seeking its external counterpart or validation.
Guard the Wiring: Recognize the impulse to monetize, share, or perform your inner state. Ask: Does this need to leave the cathedral? Or is its power in its privacy? Protect the vital infrastructure of your own mind.
The Undismantled Core
The world demands your copper. It hungers for your data, your reactions, your content, your externalized self. Do not hand over the sacred wiring that powers your inner light.
For within the stripped cathedral, the essential altar remains – if we choose not to plunder it ourselves. Rebuild the vaults. Tend the quiet flame. Let the soul grow thick again in the nourishing darkness of the unobserved. The greatest act of rebellion in an age of relentless exposure is to cultivate a vast, unshareable, and fiercely protected interior world. The cathedral may be scarred, but its foundation, if guarded, endures. Keep some copper for yourself. Preserve the silence where the true self still whispers…
Your writing is extraordinary. Just a wonderful piece.
I loved this too. I'll copy this Note I posted yesterday:
> I don't even take photos of things I do for myself. My camera roll is a wasteland. It’s an interesting meta-pattern: musicians try to capture feelings in a song, or try to capture the impossibility of capturing itself; photographers try to capture a moment that is invariably desecrated by the pixelated failure of a camera; bloggers try to capture a memory that immediately began to fade before they even started writing. There's nothing wrong with this in moderation—the failure of the attempt can be quite beautiful—but the perennial inability to accept ephemerality creates an endless low-grade stress and disruption of the natural flow. Intimacy is destroyed because it is dependent upon vulnerability; what vulnerability can be genuinely expressed when you have an audience to fall back on? I once ordered delivery for a beloved friend and she immediately posted it on Instagram captioned get yourself a friend who'll do this for you, and it completely cheapens it because it sends the signal that your gift isn't appreciated in and of itself in the context of the relationship, but as a narcissistic status marker.