On a Modern Mental Illness

Recently, my designated WWW machine failed.  I've been reduced to using a WWW browser remotely, with
my rented server, which is a loathsome experience even moreso than using a WWW browser normally; the
one machine I now own capable of running a recent WWW browser is an Apple iPad I recently inherited.
I've tried to use an old laptop for such, but it's so old that recent WWW browsers aren't available.

I used to run most of my WWW traffic over the Tor anonymity network, not that I ever used it for any
illegal activities, because Tor is obviously not trustworthy for real stakes.  The government of the
United States of America obviously persecutes anyone who runs an exit node so that it may have great
control over the network.  Still, I was compelled to do something about the omnipresent surveillance
to which I'm subjected, so I used it for certain activities knowing it was likely more than useless.

For several months, I simply avoided my usual WWW venues, but slowly began to use the Apple iPad for
benign websites; eventually, this situation became untenable, because I needed to use other websites
whose activities I'd rather not reveal.  I tried to use such websites over the rented server, but it
was intolerable.  I recognized how easy it would be to carry on, if only I weren't so concerned with
impotently hiding this.  Eventually, I found myself giving up, and using the Apple iPad for websites
I'd only used over Tor previously; truly, it relaxed me to finally give up on the silly little game.

I now see this activity of impotently hiding Internet traffic to be nothing beyond a mental illness.

A related mental illness is the concept of ``threat models'' against such surveillance.  I imagine a
man locked in a cage and constantly subjected to some unnatural torture; his protests are met with a
retort that he must explain why he should have his most fundamental of rights, that he needs a model
to explain why the torture be so very bad and whether he has any chance of thwarting it.  Such a man
must over-analyze every single action he takes in terms of such torture, and it eventually gets old.

It's impossible even to be a disconnected shut-in without subjection to the omnipresent surveillance
of society nowadays, and I'm unwilling to leave society entirely, and so it became a gradual wearing
down of will over years.  It was fun for a time; freeing for a bit; but, ultimately, mental illness.

There's no reason to play an endless game in which a single mistake marks a permanent loss.  Renting
a domain name by itself requires personal information, as does renting a server, so certain parts of
the game are already unplayable.  Still, I have a desire to not make it easy for evil to track me in
some of my dealings yet; using an electronic payment method of course makes it easy.  I use cash for
all in-person transactions, without exception outside of slipups or emergencies, and I've found ways
to use hawala for certain transactions over the Internet.  Bitcoin fails me, in this respect, as I'd
need both a wallet unconnected to me and, more importantly, someone willing to accept it as payment.

Even in those cases where I may be seen by the top-level players, there's still some value in hiding
from players of equal standing, since blackmail and leaks are more likely to happen at such a level,
but even there I feel my will to care eroding, and the day may come when I desert that game as well.

This mental illness is akin to a physical illness for which a man pursues the incorrect cure.  Magic
programs are not a cure for omnipresent surveillance; the only cure is killing the responsible evil.
.