Back in 2014, I was on a cruise with family (boomer parents, I don’t actually like cruises) - and I did not have my phone or internet access for 17 days. This was in the time when internet access out at sea was exorbitantly expensive, and we just forewent connectivity.
For the first few days, it wasn’t easy. I would look at my disconnected phone expecting a text message or Facebook notification to spring up. When they didn’t I let the phone die and put it away in a drawer for the rest of the trip. I pulled out a book I had brought, not really thinking I would read it.
Then, something happened.
I remember vividly the insane cognitive shift I had while out at sea, the three books that I read over the course of the next two weeks, the conversational skills I seemed to find out of nowhere. The world seemed brighter, in port in Rome I remember thinking to myself that I would never go back to an existence with a cognitive anchor. I would start putting the pieces in motion to be like the people that built the city around me.
I was free.
Around the tenth day, I found deep creativity - I began journalling and writing about everything, connecting dots in my mind. The “boredom” was something I was reveling in. I was planning the next ten years of my life. I felt anything was possible.
Then, the trip was over, and we docked.
I got to some little hotel in the Italian countryside, plugged in my dead phone, and entered the wifi password. I checked Facebook, and the magic was gone. The immediacy, the anxiety all flooding back. I installed Tinder and started swiping on girls I would never meet. “What did I miss out on?” - not even thinking about how much I had seen or the thousands of years of history that were directly within my grasp over the last few weeks.
That was twelve years ago. I think about this all the time. I long for that peace and silence of mind once more. The unfettered creativity.
So, it is time.
I think about the billions of dollars poured into engineering the reality we see so that we spend a few more seconds in app and generate some centi-billion dollar corporation just a few more cents of revenue. The opinions of a thousand non-experts, the voyeurism of other people’s lives, the idea that we are somehow “missing out.”
We are up against the greatest psyop for human attention in the history of existence. We are against the idea that the speed with which people become famous and then fade into obscurity, or the millions of dollars made and then lost in an instant is normal. We somehow think that the internet in our pockets is a good idea, something that we can lose ourselves in like a limitless drug, inches away from grasp for the vast majority of people.
We are in a war for the mind of every human being.
So - I am going to miss out. I am going to pull the plug.
I have entirely detached myself from the hyperconnectivity of the smartphone/social media world. I will allow calls and check text messages once or twice per day. But, beyond that, I am sick and tired. I have factory reset my device, debloated/degoogled as much as I can on a Samsung device, made the phone as dumb as possible, and will take the next 30 days to try to find some semblance of calm. I invite you to join me.
Maybe it really has always been the damn phone.
As always, God bless, and until next time.
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