existence without performance

The journey of being could be seen as a progression of going from performance to existence.

We all perform a part. Our existence mandates some level of acting out our role in life, either through the personality we develop, the roles we inhabit, or the lines we rehearse to ourselves. The saints could be said to be the only people who exist without a hint of performance. The rest of us may, in fleeting moments, also cross a threshold past performance through deeply ingrained habits or identities that have come to unify our being through the flow they grant.
Unfortunately, this state is not our day-to-day reality.

In a culture of performers, we perform. Within a society that serves entertainment and distraction, we stay.
We perform and remains, in large part, because of digital technology. Our devices don’t exist (in any ontological sense) but simply perform a function.

This is, of course, how we'd like it to be; most of us don’t want machines that do anything but perform their tasks (existential inventions are problems for Holywood to handle), but in our naiveté about technological tools, a number of problems arise.

We both treat our devices as if they do exist and treat ourselves as if we only perform.

There is a desperation in those who have lost a device and try to make their way without their digital appendage. Through our perception of these tools as essential, as more than what they are, we imbue them with a preternatural existence. Our behavior and clinging to them only reinforces this unreality.

Similarly, when a tool stops performing just one function and begins to supplant its user's performance in the world, it does not simply allow the user to exist and let their performance fade into the background. Instead of freeing a person to live, technology forces its constituents to continue a performance in service of a larger machine.

In our hubris, we fall far short of our goal to eschew performance and only adopt a greater commitment to our act.