A short monologue by Hannah Hammond arguing that many people live in an "unconscious" state—doom-scrolling, zoning out on phones, TV, or games—driven by dopamine spikes, which leads to guilt and lost awareness. The speaker contrasts this with a conscious mindset and a "subconscious" described as intuition or an inner voice that warns against overuse of unconscious behaviors. The piece serves as a prompt to become more aware and less habitually distracted.
Chapters
There's three states of consciousness that people are in. The first is the unconscious. I relate that to all the times where people are scrolling on their phone, doom scrolling when they're watching TV or a movie or playing video games. It's the state of mind where you're completely shutting off your brain. You're able to just sit there and zone out. That's the unconscious. And I think a lot of people stay in that state. And you look around, people are walking around town, they're at dinners, they're just staring straight at their phones, and there's nothing really happening. Your brain's like, oh, dopamine, Dopamine, Dopamine. Spike, spike, spike, spike. Feels good, feels good, feels good. But then we feel guilty on the other side of it because you just spent an hour and a half not being conscious. And you know deep down you are subconscious. And so there's that unconscious mindset, there's the conscious mindset, and then that subconscious. To me, the subconscious is intuition. You know, can some people say it's God? It's that voice in your head that's telling you, I probably shouldn't be spending all my time being in this unconscious state because we're not meant to be.