The Death of Depth

Depth is dying.

We no longer descend. We skim. We scroll. We consume the surface and call it knowledge, call it connection, call it life.

Depth demands silence, but people fear silence. It demands patience, but people demand speed. It demands suffering, but people medicate it away. No one is willing to sit with the uncomfortable, to hear what’s painful out. Depth cannot survive in a culture addicted to speed, applause, and comfort, a culture waiting for the next bait every minute, every corner every chance.

And so everything flattens. Relationships become profiles. Work becomes performance. Thought becomes slogans. Even rebellion becomes a brand. The sea has dried into a puddle, and everyone splashes about calling it an ocean.

The tragedy is not that we lost depth by accident, but that we abandoned it so willingly. We don’t want to see or hear let alone think what is true. Because depth is heavy, painful, slow. It wounds before it reveals. People prefer the shallows, where nothing hurts and nothing is real.

But without depth, there is no truth. Without depth, there is no self. Without depth, life is only theatre, nothing but masks performing for masks.

Depth will not return through progress, or technology, or reform. It will only return when someone dares to sink, when silence is endured, when suffering is faced, when the shallow masks are burned.

Until then, we will keep pretending, dancing on the surface, applauding our own emptiness.