“If you’re put on a pedestal you’re supposed to behave like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.”
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It is human nature to ponder anxieties that do not exist.
The mind is a fabrication machine, developing worries before they deserve any attention. Wrote Carlos Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan (Amazon)
:“ To worry is to become accessible… And once you worry, you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”The only way to assuage the nerves is to focus on what’s in front of you, to do the work regardless of the way you feel. Progress happens to the relaxed
Don’t worry before it’s time
Writes Eric Barker on his life advice blog:
You’re not your brain; you’re the CEO of your brain. You can’t control everything that goes on in “Mind, Inc.” But you can decide which projects get funded with your attention and action. So when a worry is nagging at you, step back and ask: “Is this useful?”
As a survival mechanism, anxiety pushes us to take action — the most basic fear is that we need to eat and have a place to sleep for the night. But anxiety is also a thinking problem that needs to be neutralized by greeting it at the door where it appears wearing the same costume as it did before.
Everything is going to be alright, just like it was yesterday.
gif via Jason Clarke
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Facebook is a video game for adults. The social network specializes in goading emotional responses that dupe the older crowd into thinking they are legitimate purveyors of news.
The reality is imperfect. Technology companies compel people to spread misinformation that emboldens preexisting echo chambers. A post-fact society threatens the plurality of opinion so fundamental to healthy democracies.
We could argue that CNN and Fox News are also culprits.
Screen staring and the rapid spread of information distort what’s real and what’s false. Unfortunately, it is the networks that benefit most from the gray space in the middle.
Facebook is a weapon of mass propaganda, a platform where conspiracy theories thrive. We should be giving our parents the same lecture they gave us on video games but about their manipulative online use.
Jedi mind tricks have their consequences.
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Lost, gone, vanished.
Our short-attention spans attend to media manipulation.
Yet, we are the purveyors of news. We can spread a thought or opinion on the internet without the slightest veracity, a task only governments used to be able to do.
But we no longer think for ourselves. Our thoughts are almost always somebody else’s. The opposition holds the same blind bias.
A war of words froths with inevitability in the online space.
Tethered to the smartphone, we yield the liberated sense of self to the perfect selfie. We think we’re different but we’re just trying to be naked and famous like everybody else.
But our ability to woo others with pictures and words stop at the screens we share them on. We are fearful to express such individuality in the real world.
Without showing genuine authenticity between ourselves and others, we restrain society of original thought. Genius becomes a mere shadow of itself.
Wrote John Stuart Mill in On Liberty:
“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
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Screens are contagious. If we see one person look at their phone, we emulate them like we do catching someone yawn.
But the addiction is not totally our fault. With the vibrant colors of apps, the dopamine of Facebook likes and news alerts, on top of serving as a consolidated utility of our camera, wallet, and communications device, our phones are designed to hook us.
Tech is the “cigarette of the century.”
It’s amazing that in this post-internet world of surfeit information and 24/7 conversation we can even concentrate at all. We’ve numbed our thumbs from excessive use.
We’ve lost the signal to those little gaps of solitude and doing nothing where we reaped the benefits of a wandering imagination.
Can we get our bored minds back?
There are plenty of options other than riding the Facebook or Google monopoly on our attention. For as many tricks these companies play us, there as many tips to get away from them: turning our screen gray, just sitting and staring outside the window, and at the most extreme: throwing our phone into the ocean.
We can only harvest quality attention if we can escape the torment of distraction and external stimuli fighting for the inside of our heads. The world around us already creates a theater inside our head. We see the world once, with an intrinsic pair of eyes, with no need to record the outside world with a third eye.
“Attention is a form of prayer,” wrote French philosopher Simone Weil. We should insist on slowing down if we’re to restrengthen the human will.
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Ask more questions, not because you want to be right but because you’re naturally curious and want to know more about the spaces inside, not the exterior of opinion. Wrote René Magritte: “Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.
Every thought has one that precedes it. Opinions can be traced back to what you’ve seen, heard, or read in an effort to confirm bias. But loosen the emotional grip of sidedness. Said physicist Richard Feynman, “You must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Have strong opinions, weakly held
It is not necessary to be confident in order to act. “Rightness,” wrote author Louis Menand, “will be, in effect, the compliment you give to the outcome of your deliberations.” Your gut instincts remain plastic. Dealing with conflict and uncertainty is what makes us human and non-robotic.
Going deeper provides more questions than answers. Curiosity stimulates the will for discovery. Things tend to only make sense in reverse.
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Instagram is a clash of sameness: the same travel pics, coffee cup shots, and innumerable selfies. The app ‘homogenizes‘ photography so that all images look roughly the same.
It’s always refreshing to see Instagram users who are trying something different, who are using the platform to explore their creativity instead of posting endless food porn.
Not only are we drowning in photos, the conformity of images is ruining the art of photography.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are countless apps for editing your photos and videos to make them stand out from others in the feed. VSCO offers some unique filter capabilities but apps like Hyperspektiv and Photofox transform your photos into something unique by mixing elements of graphics and paint.
Adding interesting captions is another way to differentiate ourselves from the crowd. Tell people what the image is about or give a unique interpretation of what the eye can’t see. Even better, bewilder the viewer and keep them guessing. Like photos, all writing is in the edit.
Give everyone a camera and the stage, and they’ll exploit it just like everybody else. The upshot is a mass experience that mostly dulls expression. Scratch it up, discolor the frame; dare to be different.
More Cliches 🚫
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Do you ever ask what happened to the day that just past?We often carry on throughout the day without thinking about our actions.
We tune out of our existence, and we turn into robots, competent without comprehension. Said writer and philosopher Colin Wilson: “The more I allow the robot to take over my life—that is, the more I live passively—the less real I feel.”
On the flip side, one can also be too mystic, excessively absorbed into the occult.
Reality is too sober
There are some things worth being awake for and others being drunk on habit. Even the routine — doing the dishes, going for a walk — can excite the deepest thinking. Meanwhile, overthinking like anxiously driving a car stresses one into accidents. Thinking how to run will trip you up.
If you can learn how to flow forward, the world becomes less sober and gamelike.
Chaos and the cosmos goad unpredictability and order, a pendulum that hangs in the balance only by staying awake while being at peace.
We can only control the whims of the market if we control our own attention, values, and beliefs.
Yet, we let go. We enroll in life, maybe even live a little.
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A short-term realist, a long-term optimist.
Can one hedge against fear and doubt while simultaneously pushing for a better and brighter future?
Most of us struggle in bear markets when confidence ebbs into despair. We can only permit pertinacity.
What keeps one going is the light at the end of the tunnel, connecting the slightest ideas to extend the road through all perceived hurdles.
The obstacle is the way, they say.
Necessity is the mother of invention. If we can’t tolerate ambiguity along the way, we’ll most certainly give up.
If the gateway to light is the eye, persistence lies in the guts.
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When acclaimed South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee
was asked about the writing process, he compared it to the effort of praying.“In both cases it’s hard to say to whom one’s discourse is directed. You have to subject yourself to the blankness of the page and you wait patiently to hear whether the blankness answers you. Sometimes it does not and then you despair.”
JM Coetzee (see books)Of course, some writers believe the blank page is non-existent. They suggest that one should write poorly until they produce something of substance.
Better yet, consider the work philosophy of Vincent Van Vough and unthink: “Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile.”
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Well-spoken, cynical, and eerily accurate, in 1966 these kids predicted what life would be like in the year 2000.
Their predictions include:
- The rise of robots and job loss due to automation
- The threat of nuclear war
- Globalization and the destruction of cultures (note: they couldn’t have foreseen the backlash)
- Population and overcrowding
- Genetically modified foods
- Sea level rise. Warns one child: “The oceans will rise and cover England.”
Little did they know the internet would further complicate things.
It’s your turn. What will life be like in the year 2050?
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America and Western Europe have stagnated while China dives into its newfound riches.
Ethnic nationalism is on the rise while the liberal globalist elite does nothing to stem the tide, too occupied in complaining about the ‘deplorables’ on their devices while ordering more wine from Amazon and posting selfies on Instagram.
The myth that no two countries with McDonald’s refuse to fight each other appears to be just that. Realism is back, manifesting itself through the whims of protectionism.
Are we doomed to conflict?
Not necessarily. It is in these moments that pessimism and inventiveness coexist.
Wrote British historian Thomas Babington Macauley in 1830:
“We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason . . . On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”
We can get out of this rut. Doom and gloom is the end all for worrying times. Tribalism can be cured, as can the negative aspects of nationalism.
There is a good side to bad problems that expose a weakness in the international order. But instead of whining in our own filter bubbles, we can use the moment to cushion against discontent.
