The Mirror and the Window

How quickly humanity has become accustomed to speaking through mirrors. Many critics sound alarms about artificial intelligence, yet it is the iPhone that has most profoundly altered the human psyche. We've become glued to mirrors in our hands in ways Steve Jobs never foresaw.

These mirrors provide rapid-fire imagery from a multitude of mediocre sources. The content has been flattened out so much as to be amusing but very rarely inspiring. It doesn’t allow time for contemplation. It spitters and sputters, hitting dopamine receptors, and moving us along with the whirl. It does not tap into individual perspectives and experiences in ays that make us think; make us wonder about how we fit with others; make us wonder about how our broader society works. It is entertainment mainlining that numbs our senses and makes us suspicious and fearful of the broader society. No wonder so many of us are depressed.

The best American ideas stem from the seeming contradictions between the individual and their place in society. We lionize the free spirt, the maverick, the pioneer but also hold that such individualized freedom is the essence of a collective freedom. America’s founding philosophies stem from a pioneer ethic that allows one to strike out and develop something new and that, in doing so other people may follow. It recognises the possibility in every individual—give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and in doing so, we all have the chance to breathe free. This is revolutionary concept in human history—that we need not kings and queens to rule us but that we can assume a destiny in our own terms. Power to the people is not simply an aspiration in America; it is a promise and one that has been fulfilled for many and the struggle is to keep broadening the promise so more and more people can be free. That struggle is central to the promise. This has always been the most radical aspect of the American experiment.

At its heyday as a global power, from the 1960s to the early 2000s, the United States’ biggest exports, in terms of social impact, were movies and music from the rise of rock and roll, from Elvis to Bob Dylan to the Eagles and Tom Petty, to Madonna and Lady Gaga, and right up to Taylor Swift. The songs from these and countless others became anthems not only for sex, drugs, and music, but also for a distinct individualism that goes beyond social norms. The music of America from this time reflected its own audacious belief that it was somehow special and that it could screw the man and any social conventions and thereby be cool. Hell, I used to go to Dead Kennedy's shows in a dark muave sports jacket because that was way more punk than the stud-infested black leather jackets of most. It was all about individual expressionism and, through such, finding one’s place in the world. The Ramones, Patti Smith, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and other punk bands articulated an anti-institutional, participatory ethos that transcended borders. This was a powerful export. Vaclav Havel cited the power of the Velvet Underground in inspiring and sustaining him and other revolutionaries in the Czech Republic. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were not only inspirations to the Civil Rights movement in the US, but also for South African anti-apartheid activists. Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and the Doors all represented radical versions of self-expression (for the time), fueled by the hope that transcendence could be chemically induced. These artists were smuggled into the underground rock scene in Prague and Warsaw, and the counterculture helped shape the European Green and peace movements of the 1970s, including the Italian automania movement, where music festivals blended radical politics and free expression. James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder epitomized “Black is Beautiful” and “Soul Power,” which became catalysts for self-determination from the South Africa to Nigeria. Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971) became a blueprint for socially conscious pop worldwide — influencing humanitarian and ecological awareness in Western European pop (e.g., Sting, Peter Gabriel, and later Bono). Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Tupac Shakur, and others provided a lingua franca for marginalized and oppressed youth worldwide, including banlieue rap in France and anti-fascist hip-hop in Germany. In Latin America, rappers in Mexico and Chile used U.S. beats to frame their own struggles against corruption and poverty. This is a partial list and, while there were certainly other powerful musical movements form other parts of the world, the dominance of this radicalised, individualized, power to the people music is distinctly American.

While most toil in anonymity, they can listen to Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, NWA, or Kenrrick Lamar and their pleas for the downtrodden and oppressed and believe that they aren’t alone. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" (1971) questions the fights against racial equality and the country's involvement in an unwinnable war. Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill sang about gender harassment, sexual violence, reproductive choices. Rage Against the Machine railed against corporate America, cultural imperialism, and government oppression. Many have been inspired by these soundtracks, and this did lead to action, but the power was that it permitted people to be themselves, to rejoice in themselves, to dig into the unique filaments that made them dignified individuals, and this, in turn, allowed them to join with others in a common cause. That tradition of expressive freedom—at once solitary and communal—is powerful beyond compare. It is the hope that America’s promise can be fulfilled: that each voice might find an audience, that individuality can harmonize with society; that we are all in this together.

The space for such inspiration is collapsing into the mirrors. As people become transfixed, spellbound, and stupified by an endless stream of popcockery, they are less able to tap into their individuality and thus susceptible to tribalism, to us versus them, to anger and angst. The algorithm doesn't reward dialogue; it rewards performance. It doesn't amplify conversation; it amplifies conflict and spectacle.

This makes us feel even more alone as we focus on digital reflections rather than on our reality-bound lights and colours. We post to an invisible algorithm that responds with numbers—hearts, shares, a dopamine hit calibrated to keep us posting again. The algorithm was designed not to connect us but to extract from us: our attention, our data, our compulsive return. The question is no longer 'Do I have something to say?' but 'Will this perform well?' The metric becomes the message. And because the algorithm rewards emotion—particularly outrage, envy, and self-righteousness—we learn to produce those emotions on demand, even when we don't feel them, or especially when we don't feel them.

All this performative ambition is robbing people of their souls. As people lose themselves in the social media maelstrom, empathy—the burden of self-awareness—is lost in the glare of continuous self-curation. People don’t know what other people feel, what they think, what they aspire to be or do; they are just singular dimensions of refracted light that dim instead of illuminating.  The language people use in public becomes stilted, awkward, and self-conscious because of the bewildering mix of expressions and reactions from other live humans—too many know how to perform on TikTok—alone--but not what to say when a loved one passes or when a friend gets a fantastic promotion. People trapped in this find it harder and harder to let go, to forget themselves—the mirrors never allow us that mercy.

Even in this hall of mirrors, the human impulse toward connection persists.  We can sever these artificial tethers. So many of us hunger to be known, to be touched, to be understood.—not through a little mirror but through connections with real people we know over time. We are social, not nodes in some vast machine. People need to stop reaching downward into the dizzying mirrors. We need to reach outwards for companionship, for solidarity, for hope. Our voices may tremble with uncertainty, and sometimes we are scared, and yet our hum, when allowed to resonate, creates the best music of all.

Caring about others requires the courage to look away from oneself. It requires silence, patience, and the willingness to be changed; to learn about the self through the recognition of the other. These are not glamorous celebrity-strewn virtues; they will not trend. The revolution we need will not be televised, streamed, or hashtagged. It will happen quietly—in how we listen, how we speak, and how we dare to imagine a “we” that does not erase the “I.”

This is not nostalgia. The past was no golden age of sincerity; its hypocrisies ran deep. But in the music and movements that once rose from American soil, there was a faith in the possibility of communion. That faith must be reimagined now, on a planetary scale.

We need to speak through windows rather than mirrors—transparent, open, and uncertain. To speak truths not as performances but as invitations. To post less and perceive more. To recognize that the world’s screens are filled with faces just as fragile, just as yearning, just as alive as our own. Only then might we rediscover what Baldwin called “the trembling and tender truth of the human heart”—that beyond the performance lies the person, and beyond the person lies the shared pulse of being alive.