[Intro]
It's like somethin' just
Over the horizon
Wanna take a walk, maybe
See what we can find?
Look long and hard
Look near and far
Above all things, remember
Always look inside
[Verse 1]
Listen in to these words
From a citizen of Earth's surface
Let's try and rewire the circuits
Determine a purpose
Meanwhile, I'm strivin' for perfect
But, homie, perfect takes practice
And I find in these days and times
I'm always so damn distracted - they hit you like:
Shop here, wear this, want this
Love this, be this, buy this, buy that
Log in, sign up, tune in
Click here, watch this, read up, write back
So much to know
And so many things to own, TV in your home
And your mobile phone
Make sure that you're never really alone
And it's pathetic, like a global epidemic
Attention span so fragmented
So addicted to bein' connected
We now gettin' updates by the second
Got us all time wastin'
Up on MySpace and Facebook
Prime for the takin', got the whole world hooked
Gettin' high on information
Post-generation Y babies
They call 'em the digital natives
Hide behind their monitors as technology
Kills imagination
Excuse my cynicism
But a world where every kid's best friend is a computer
Is a system failure headed
For an apathetic future
Just a few centuries back
They made maps of a flat world by candlelight
Now the whole world's at your fingertips
Mapped down to your street via satellite
So advanced from where we started
It's all so complexified
Brand names buy ad space in your mind
But they'll never get what's inside
[Chorus]
I wasn't there when they wrote the rules
But I do my best to follow them
In this world of machines
We starvin' for oxygen
All I can offer is these words that I write
And I only give 'em what I know
So I give 'em what's inside
Said I wasn't there when they wrote the rules
But I do my best to follow them
In this world of machines
We starvin' for oxygen
Where were you the day that humanity died?
Searchin' for signs of life
To reconnect with what's inside
[Verse 2]
Somewhere, there's a room full of men
In suits lookin' up at rows of numbers
Terrified by the red in their eyes
As arrows point down from the pressure they're under
And they're sayin' we might drown in our
Own greediness, livin' beyond our
Means, chasin' dreams that we learnt off
MTV Cribs, look at what we did
Smog fills the sky
And the cars line up at the servo, and I
Can't help but think to myself
This can't be the way it was supposed to go
On the nightly news
Floods and bushfires, earthquakes and tidal waves
Temperature's risin', armies fightin'
Bombs go off, and sirens blaze
But we just tryna get by
And occupy our spot on the timeline
So we change the channel to sex, drugs
And violence programmed for prime-time
Sit back in our chairs
For some livin' room voyeurism
As reality TV turns all of life
Into a competition
Airbrushed magazine pages
Give us false idols to worship
Got us all so depressed that we can't
Live up to picture-perfect
Sometimes, I just wanna unplug
And go back to basics, and I wonder
What my story mighta been like
Somewhere else in history's pages
But here we stand
The sons and daughters of colonialism
Crossed over water
Just to be makin' our homes on stolen land
And me, I don't know the plan
I'm just here to play my part
Do my thing, walk my path
Talk my shit, make my mark
I swear I wanna make a difference
From the bottom of my heart
But I don't know how to fix it, man
I wouldn't know where to start
So advanced
From where we started, images off the production line
We outta touch with what's inside
[Chorus]
I wasn't there when they wrote the rules
But I do my best to follow them
In this world of machines
We starvin' for oxygen
All I can offer is these words that I write
And I only give 'em what I know
So I give 'em what's inside
Said I wasn't there when they wrote the rules
But I do my best to follow them
In this world of machines
We starvin' for oxygen
Where were you the day that humanity died?
Searchin' for signs of life
To reconnect with what's inside