Lately I have been seeing dots. Everywhere I look there are dots in front of my eyes. Other people seem to be seeing them too, and almost everyone I talk to these days, at some point in our conversation will say the word "dot."
Of course, the dot has been around for a long time. It has been used as part of the small case letter "I", and also to signal the end of a sentence, period. Legend has it that the dot was invented by a woman named Dorothy who desperately wanted to slow down the flow of information. Dot, dot, dot... The dot was also found to be very useful to mathematicians and moneylenders who renamed it the "decimal point" and used it to separate the primary numbers from the fractions; the dollars from the cents.
But I fear that what we are seeing today is an alien dot, one that is being used by evil forces to undermine our civilization and to destroy life as we know it. Just look around and you will see this dot everywhere, appearing on every piece of written material, in television advertisements and on all billboards. And you'll notice that this alien dot is not connected to sentences or to the letter "i." Most of these new dots are just sitting there, often surrounded by a few nonsensical letters that seem to be placed there just to camouflage the alien dot's real intent. Or else you'll see the dots following the three letters "www," which to me looks like an obvious code for world domination.
Which brings me to what I believe may be a dangerous conspiracy -- the "Dot Con." It could be run by beings from outer space, or possibly it is a new Mafia organization with a dot Don.
Whoever or whatever is behind it, the Dot Con seems to have installed itself primarily in younger people -- the dot people. And even though they try to appear casual and cool, they spend almost all their waking hours devoted to the dot culture and to the production of new dots. You can tell who has become one of the dot people by looking into their eyes where you can actually see the dots reflected.
You can tell where the Dot Con has already invaded: You'll see people sitting in little cubicles or at café tables staring into lighted screens, being hypnotized into zombie-like dot drones. And it seems that the more dots they see, the more they become mesmerized, and soon they start believing that they must have their own dot. They start to have dot envy, and they become what is known in psychological circles as "dotty."
Of course I may be wrong about all of this. Maybe I'm hallucinating the dots; fantasizing the Dot Con. Maybe I'm just getting old and entering my "dot-age." But I don't think so. It all fits together too neatly. And if I'm right, then we all have to fight back against this insidious takeover of our lives and language right now, before it is too late and we all become dot drones.
I ask you to join me in this struggle: Try to ignore the dots, and whenever possible erase them. Encourage each others resistance with the chant, "We will not! We won't dot." Be vigilant and maybe we can still save our civilization from ruin, period.
Wes Nisker is a teacher of Buddhism; Author; Performer; wesnisker.com