Studies show that eating chewier vs. gooier foods promotes neurogenesis and boosts cognitive function. Which raises the question of whether the rise of the ultra processed diet – pasta, pastries, pies, ice cream, white bread, dips, spreads, smoothies, reconstituted fries, multivitamins etc. – is conducive, among other lifestyle factors, to the rise of dementia.

Nor is it just edible fare that offers ever less fibre to chew on. Take AI Overview, yet another Trojan gift horse from Google, which intrudes on almost every search with prepackaged answers to questions: like a spoonful of baby food thrust in your face when a smorgasbord of results (if algorithmically ranked and censored) awaits you.

It seems that the further removed from its source any substance or content becomes, the less it retains any distinctive features. As nutrients and facts suffer successive refinement to render them more readily digested, their action, like a river of treated effluent, erodes any rough edges of consciousness until it resembles the squelchy online murk that envelops it.

We see diversity dwindling wherever we turn, as monoforests replace tree communities lost to logging, and overfishing and warming waters doom marine ecosystems. All so we can find predictable products on the duopoly shelves, or at our door within 24 hours, courtesy of Amazon, which flourishes while its denuded, poisoned, polluted namesake dries up.

My permaculturist ex runs an organic farm that, for flat-dwelling me, evokes Eden, yet his ten-year-old prefers supermarket food. Opening the packet, he said, gives her a hit, like unwrapping a gift. His insight speaks to the untold ways in which stimuli geared to trigger release of feel-good brain chemicals are deployed by corporations to condition our behaviour.

How often do we consciously notice when some stimulus gives us a hit? Seldom, if ever. Hence, addiction: constantly checking devices for messages, drinking and drugging, smoking or vaping, chugging coffee, binge-eating, binge-watching TV, scoffing choc-tops and large popcorns at every film we see: munchies that excite the brain but undermine the gut.

When I was ten, ads in magazines and on TV promised that using or wearing various products would make me more popular. Instead, my art helped with social acceptance and self-esteem. But ten-year-olds have it harder now that marketing more closely surrounds us, and the virtual only compounds it. Buses and buildings double as billboards; online we pay for ad-free space, with every ad calibrated to snag our gaze and hijack our brain, aggressively intruding on whatever we’re doing. By contrast, the natural world – wind, waves, sun, rain, rocks, trees, flowers – engages more senses, such as smell and touch, which can ground us. Ads just target sight and hearing to arouse longing, doubt and fear, and instil a sense of entitlement, which fuels an endless quest for acquisition, comfort, acclaim and attention.

So when I type ‘what activities produce’ into the Google search box, drop-down options for completing the question include ‘dopamine’, ‘oxytocin’, ‘serotonin’, ‘endorphins’, ‘greenhouse gases’, ‘testosterone’ and ‘carbon dioxide’. A mixed bag, and yet neurotransmitters top the list. Folk feel guilt or dread about climate change. But above all, it seems they want to feel euphoric. High.

Nature can oblige – or it could before we vacated it. Unlike the man-made world, it yields an infinite range of textures, colours, tones, scents, tastes and subtle sensations. Its uncorrupted presence can heal. But as our species has grown ever more entrenched in the hollow shell we call civilisation, our capacity for presence has receded until only a few stray artists, poets, psychoactive plant users and spiritual adepts know (vs. dream of) immediacy, and the audience for their art, verse or wisdom is minuscule. Civilisation reigns via repetition, with history imposed by rote as thought-terminating mantras program the future in advance: zero carbon, the singularity, tours to Mars, self-driving cars, uploading our minds – such as they are – to the cloud etc., as if our brains were meat machines reducible to tech metaphors.

And mechanistic metaphors can be just as hostile to sentience as technology is to nature; under their spell, the mind dwells in finite linear time, fixated on quantity while quality goes to hell. Content is king, Bill Gates once said. But what do kings achieve beyond presiding over state functions in fancy dress while nerds in suits control global economies and the media? And content in the online landscape means flattening art to the status of paved roads or paths: an economical way to tame space, shepherd the masses and maximise traffic.

Globalisation. Incorporation. Amalgamation. Standardisation. Homogenisation. Assimilation. Pixelation. Take your pick, makes no difference; all can assist the reduction of experience to progressively smaller bits, the better to beget uniformity with fuck-all resistance. Call it late capitalism or life in a simulation or hyperobjects all the way down or mass extinction #6… Call it Aquarian-age growing pains, but whatever you do don’t call us, we’ll call you, and our call-centre staff in Manila will just keep parroting a script without addressing pressing questions until despite misgivings you yearn for AI to replace them even if it continues to rely for its development on a diet comprised solely of info derived from the net, an exponentially growing proportion of which will be AI-generated, creating a downward spiral like drinking your own piss, eating your own shit, or the quest for the next Taylor Swift, Johnny Depp or JK Rowling instead of anyone original. Financial derivatives fuelled the GFC and derivative creativity kills culture. So AI, far from bringing salvation to an afflicted humanity, is just one more effect of its having overrun the planet, stifling other lifeforms until diversity has dwindled as we farm not just crops, livestock and seafood, but solar power and wind.

So these vast, dull expanses of chemical-saturated land, factories, pens and installations exist to sustain nations, and yet our imaginations starve, because such farming finds its analogue in social media platforms. What defines genuine art? AI Overview has the answers. But I’d say that a truly creative process releases enough dopamine to make praise and profit disposable.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN NOSY BOOMER WITH DOG AND WARY PHOTOGRAPHER

HE: You must have quite a collection by now. I often see you here.

ME: I’ve deleted tens of thousands.

HE: You could train AI to do it for you…

ME: Yeah? I kinda think AI’s an abomination.

HE: [Jaw drops.]

ME: Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you. [Or do I? Fulminates against AI training methods.]

HE: [Ruminating.] Garbage in, garbage out.