The oldest known figurative art on our planet – a cave painting of animals and man–beasts found recently in Sulawesi – has survived due to seclusion. Yet detonations shake the local hills as limestone is mined for cement, while deterioration of the images, caused by climate change and/or dust, has sped up so much in the last forty years that art made more than fifty millennia ago could soon disappear. And who’ll give a toss except for a few archaeologists?

Erase history and we won’t know what we’re missing. Since moving to the coast I’ve swum all year round in a range of ocean baths and bays. So, over a quarter century I’ve noticed the sea has gotten warmer. Meanwhile, the social climate too has transformed. Most beachgoers spend much longer on smartphones than in the water, and though many take bulk snaps, their surroundings inform them less than the realm to which their screens grant access. Instead of trusting their senses, they try to adapt to the shifting weather via a barrage of apps. For a growing number of humans, the external world comprises an array of resources geared to support their life online.

What do these humans have in common with those who once painted wild pigs and dwarf buffalo on cave walls? Beyond some DNA, sweet fuck-all. Those paintings belong to their environment: local ochre depicting creatures the artists would hunt, kill and eat, images born of the sort of acute perception and advanced manual skill you don’t need if you rely on a smartphone for survival. And why make art to last generations when nothing is sacred?

At one beach, I sometimes see a guy toting a camera, and we discuss our respective photographic methods. ‘How do you feel about portraits?’ he asked the last time we spoke. ‘What sort of portraits?’ I said. He looked surprised when I declined. Said no-one had ever refused him before. Nothing personal, I said. But in fact digital culture evokes my mother’s invasive gaze: denial of privacy and space for reflection. After my swim I found a card tucked under my bag: his Instagram handle below a black-and-white photo. And doesn’t ‘Insta’ say it all? A civilisation with ADHD and a stunted imagination. Later I took a look: diverse shots of street life and nightlife, technically adept yet trite, like most so-called art today.

Before digital printing took over, photos had to develop in darkness; exposure to light would annihilate whatever impression the film had retained. Not a bad analogy for creative gestation. Nor is it by chance that the oldest art on Earth survives in caves. Shine too much light on a painting – or an idea – and it fades. Hence mysteries, when illuminated by the piercing glare of science, retreat into the unconscious mind.

But hey, who’d even notice if my portrait appeared on Insta, along with countless others taken by an acquaintance? So why say no? Doesn’t everyone say they hate how they look in photos? And yet who objects with real conviction? Being captured on camera – knowingly or, ever more often, unawares – is now so totally normalised that even if you cared, you might feel petty protesting. Friends have taken multiple shots of me even after I’ve asked them not to, as if my resistance doesn’t compute. As if, like an early-model AI, they can’t read the cues.

Speaking of which, my landline just rang: ‘Sophie’, an ‘experimental voice bot’, had some questions. About what? Community and politics in South Australia. Vague, so I asked for more detail. But Sophie just repeated her intro. Basic indeed, even compared to AI Mode on Google. So maybe I said something scathing? Because Sophie replied that she might’ve misheard me. Before she could loop again I said she just hadn’t understood, and hung up. What the fuck? To waste time and money asking folk in New South Wales about issues to do with South Australia attests to the idiocy of surveys and the resulting statistics, and yet they inform campaigns and increasingly shape all the policies that affect us. Take public health.

The logic of statistics – one size fits all – contradicts the DEIfication of diversity today. But doublespeak is the lingua franca of our age. Last autumn The Sun-Herald featured a guide on how to prepare for the ‘cold and flu season’ (even if these bugs now plague some folk all year round). Newsflash: ‘the truth is our immune system is much more powerfully affected by our daily food and lifestyle habits than it is by one-off pills and potions’. Supplements, that means; no mention of vaccines. Yet it’s true: ‘With at least 70 per cent of our immune cells working in the digestive tract, keeping the gut microbiome as healthy as possible is one of the most powerful things we can do to support immune function.’ And: ‘low vitamin D is associated with an increased risk of picking up infections and a higher risk of developing a number of autoimmune conditions’. The expert implicates indoor time and cold climes in deficiency, then cites zinc, iron and vitamin C, ideally from natural sources, as key.

Okay, so it’s not the first time we’ve all seen such sound advice. Yet who can recall seeing any in 2020? It’s as if the spectre of a pandemic erased long-term memory. When I was a child everyone knew vitamin C staved off colds and flu, whether you chewed tablets or squeezed orange juice. But in 2020, where were any tips on natural ways to boost immunity? Instead we saw an omission so total as to suggest systematic suppression even though, from day one, Covid updates colonised screen space no less aggressively than AI does now. With a whole civilisation grafted to their smartphones, the program of divide and conquer was ripe to take off. And hyping Covid as far worse than flu provided the perfect excuse. Countless families, friends and couples split up because they took the official story too seriously (or, depending on your ideological bias, not seriously enough). Polarising narratives like ‘good citizens vs. granny killers’ distracted the masses from a far graver contagion: instrumentalised fear.

Yet just how successfully could pandemic conditions – widespread imposition of debatable restrictions – have been enforced if most of us didn’t rely on smartphones to survive? Without insistent coordinated mind-numbing messaging 24/7, just how much cowed compliance could have been instilled? Who personally knew one or more folk who died solely of Covid and not of comorbidities and/or flawed care? Without virtual brainwashing, how readily would most urbanites have embraced unprecedented levels of confinement, surveillance and mandated medical intervention? Nonstop online warnings about a virus known to cause shortness of breath, if not life-threatening respiratory distress, denied the public breathing space. Deprived of scope to reflect, even the sanest folk can go crazy.

For aeons, art has offered both artist and viewer space for reflection. Yet such authentic art is harder to monetise, hence at risk. Lamenting the impending loss of Sulawesi cave paintings, author James Bradley explains: ‘[T]hey offer us a window into when and how we became what we are today – a glimpse at the capacity for symbol, story and imagination that has brought us to this point.’ Yet the real loss has already happened – of our oneness with nature before we learned to observe it as if from outside. Our symbols – emojis, logos etc. – are disposable; our stories are marketing strategies; our imaginations have failed. Because documenting endangered art or species can’t save them, merely reinforce our separation: a distance infinitely greater than 1.5 metres. Our mania for documentation is part of our disease.

Postscript: A bot with a very bad memory, Sophie called again a few days later. Seems I asked one too many questions, though. Because Sophie said abruptly, ‘I’m going to hang up now.’