"My Mental Chatter Reigns Supreme"

I've had the creepy feeling that fundamental shifts have been taking place; that everything's a bit weird, beyond the post-COVID weirdness and political weirdness. And I think I've zeroed in on it.

Have you had a conversation lately where someone blurted out something random, expecting you to understand? And it turned out to be just something circulating in their brain, which may or may not have something to do with you...but you obviously were given no context to understand what they just said?

This is happening all the time to me. Everyone expects everyone to be tapped into their own mental narration. It's very weird.

My observation has long been that, as a society, we've been lobster-boiling (i.e. progressing too gradually to fully notice) toward extreme narcissism as a norm. I suspect this represents a new level: "My mental narration is the actual universal driving force for the world".

If nothing's real but me, and I fully identify with my inner noise, then whatever pops up constitutes the very seat of reality.