Let me be upfront about one thing: I don’t particularly want to be writing a blog, from which this article comes. But as I am an unpublished writer completing his first book in this early twenty-first century of ours, for what should be obvious reasons, I am.
Why don’t I particularly want to be writing a blog?
For one, I’m not a very big fan of the Internet, and beginning in mid-2008 had spent more than five years (mostly) not using it – nor computers in general.
My 280 weeks offline
To be more specific, I did still use computers at libraries to access their catalogs, after three years I did very sparingly start using email again, and after the fourth year I did occasionally ask a few people to look up various pieces of information for me online. To be even more specific, I wrote the first draft of my manuscript by hand, edited on top of that with a red pen to complete the second draft, typed that out on a circa-1930s Remington typewriter, then had an ever helpful cousin of mine transcribe that over to a computer for me.
Secondly, when I say I “mostly” didn’t use the Internet, I’m fully aware how intertwined our lives are with the online world and the virtual impossibility of completely separating oneself from it.
In this flush-happy modern world of ours, I have no doubt that the chlorine in the drinking water used to make my bodily “waste” go away was purchased, ordered, and delivered by services dependent on the Internet, and that the lever on the toilet might as well have been an “enter” button (or better yet, an “out of sight, out of mind” button).
Nonetheless, my abstention was significant enough to note, but upon moving to a new city in late-2013, where I knew no one, I of course couldn’t go about repeatedly asking my new housemates to give me a hand with various online activities – buying a used desk, chair, bookshelves, etc. So after a five-and-a-half-year hiatus I acquiesced, and since November 2013 I’ve been back online. (Note to prospective publishers interested in contacting me about writing a cutesy My 280 Weeks Without the Internet book – forget about it.)
In hindsight, and particularly in regards to writing the manuscript for From Filmers to Farmers, I can now see that abstaining from the Internet is the best thing I could have done those six or so years ago. I’ll digress.
Although I suppose that largely abstaining from the Internet for five-and-a-half years is something someone would do for either highly ideological reasons or to perhaps secure a fat advance from a New York City book publisher (again, please don’t contact me), the rather anti-climactic reason for why I began my hiatus was little more than the result of a gut feeling. I suppose I was always irked by the fossil fuels I had to burn through in order to do a bit of online reading, my contribution to the destruction of the eco-sphere in order to mine the rare earth elements necessary for the construction of my computer (partaken on my behalf by multinational corporations), as well as the amount of Asian coolies I used by proxy in order to assemble my computer’s components and all the others that made the network possible.
So sure, although that stuff and more often went through my head, it wasn’t as if some moral epiphany had suddenly washed over me. Instead, having given up film making – and so film and video cameras – a few years earlier, it just seemed like the appropriate thing to do in the natural progression of things.
Shallow and shallower
It wasn’t until I was about two years into my hiatus (which, for all I knew, was going to last my whole life) that I got a strong confirmation for what I was doing. This came courtesy of what I think is not only the best book that has been written about the Internet, but the best book that can be written about the Internet.
That would be Nicolas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. I won’t give a summation here, but I will point out that the book provides ample scientific evidence of how the Internet hampers our minds from thinking very creatively or deeply, and that multitasking is much more of a hindrance than a benefit to our thought processes and productivity.
Although I didn’t expect it to be so blatant, Carr’s conclusions became readily obvious to me in the final half a year of my hiatus when I increasingly asked other people to open various webpages for me. And not only did I continue to access library catalogs, but I also began to heavily peruse the catalogs of online booksellers. As my usage increased I noticed my ability to concentrate on my research and note-taking significantly deteriorating, and I went from being able to sit down for hours at a time at the library to repeatedly “needing” to get up and log onto a computer, only to end up tapping away at the refresh button on my email account with repeated fruitless clicks.
Not only that, but all this occurred even though I was readily aware that virtually nobody ever emailed me except for a few seed saving organizations I had joined and/or volunteered with, as well as various unsolicited organizations that repeatedly sent me what I presume were targeted emails with offers of various pills and other concoctions that promised to increase the size of my “member” (to this day I’m still not sure how the Internet and all its devious algorithms deciphered that well-kept secret of mine – curse that darn NSA!)
Anyway, having now jumped back onto the Internet bandwagon full-force (minus online video), my ability to sit down and concentrate on the research for my manuscript has been decimated.
At best my work output is somewhere between a third and a half of what it used to be. And not simply because I spend a half to two-thirds less time at my work and in front of a computer instead; while I used to be able to read a book for hours on end, a half an hour is now an accomplishment for me.
Similarly, when I’m sitting down at work, the productivity just isn’t there anymore, more and more of my time being spent twirling my pen between my fingers and daydreaming about nothing of importance, probably deep down anticipating when I’m going to give in and let myself get up and log onto a computer again.
And for what, you may ask?
To log into my email account and find out that no one has emailed me; to discover that my website has had no new visitors since I last checked; and to perhaps visit one of the two news portals I peruse and read a few fairly interesting articles on energy supplies and/or about the latest tit-for-tat resource war shenanigans between those nations vying for the remaining dregs in this early peak oil era of ours.
In fact, this very website you’re on is the product of the distraction I’m talking about. While it’s hard to deny that the kind of book that I, an unknown writer, am writing in this modern era pretty much requires a website for promotional reasons, I also can’t deny that the construction of the site provided ample fodder for me to feed into my newfound Internet reliance (unless addiction isn’t too strong of a word).
I spent about a month on and off building it, which included teaching myself how to code HTML and CSS, as well as how to manipulate (but mostly just copy and paste) JavaScript, PHP and Ajax that other people had coded. By the way, I did this on a loaner as I don’t own a computer and haven’t bought one since I purchased a brand new Apple G4 back in 2000, and which was disposed of years ago. When I then tried to take myself away from coding my site in order to work on the prep work for my last draft, I found my mind repeatedly unable to concentrate very well, it probably having gotten too used to the hyper-stimulated environment of clicking and jumping between links and pages on the Internet (again, see The Shallows).
That’s one of my two main gripes with the Internet. The other, contrary to what gets bandied about in fashionable circles today, has nothing to do with net neutrality or the whole Snowden/NSA brouhaha. For what concerns me is the longevity of the Internet, and what its demise portends for a civilization that without it, for one, would barely have any idea what to do with its own feces.
A future without the Net
Let me be quick to point out that when I say “demise” I don’t refer to some imminent coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun or an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) unleashed by some rogue nation, both of which could theoretically cripple electronic infrastructures in an instant and usher entire societies into utter chaos virtually overnight.
No. What I’m talking about is the slow and comparatively uneventful demise of the Internet due to peaking supplies of oil, other forms of energy, and the rare earth elements required for construction of the computers and the rest of the paraphernalia that makes up the Internet. In other words, not an overnight crash, but the decades-long slip into the up-and-coming dark ages.
As John Michael Greer has put it in one of his excellent peak oil books, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered,
To suggest that the Internet will turn out to be, not the wave of the future, but a relatively short-lived phenomenon on the crest of the age of cheap abundant energy, is to risk running headlong into the logic of abundance…It’s essential not to get caught up in thinking of how many advantages the Internet might provide to a post-abundance world, because the advantages conferred by the Internet in no way mean that it must continue to exist. The fact that something provides an advantage does not guarantee that it is economically viable.
So while issues of online privacy and access may at best offer a passing interest to me, what really concerns me is how our uber-dependent society is going to manage without its ever-present www intravenous (or to be more specific, without cheap energy).
How many businesses are you aware of that would still be able to function, or even know how to function, without the Internet? How about their suppliers? The transportation system which they rely on? It ends up being not much of a joke to wonder how long our porcelain goddesses would continue to woosh away, regardless of them not having a direct connection to the digital realm.
Not exactly a topic du jour amongst polite company, how many of us are talking about the end of the Internet?
Does Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State address any of this? No. Does Mr. Snowden? Not that I’ve read. Does The New York Times, The Toronto Star, The Melbourne Age? Fat chance of that. Even if you read through eco-oriented magazines and some peak oil writings, it’s not uncommon to come across pronouncements of the Internet as harbinger of a post-carbon era where a world of diverse local communities is bound together through the deliverance of ones and zeroes.
I’m not sure if I should then call it a sad fact or not, but I suppose it should come as no surprise that pretty much all of what’s been written about the Internet’s demise exists, of all places, on the Internet.
Conscious of the fact that most of us seem to be giddily sleepwalking over the edge like a mob of true believers, I see no good reason why I should create or re-create too much of a dependency on the Internet, it probably being a good idea to ween oneself and one’s community away from it as much as feasible.
What kind of a timeline am I talking about here? Honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea, but I certainly don’t expect the Internet as we know it to be around for the duration of my lifetime. That being said, I think it’s fair to say that when the Internet does start to go down, for various reasons it’ll be rural areas that lose their connections first before I lose mine in big city Toronto.
Let it snow, Snowden
But in the meantime, should we not be concerned with the recent NSA leaks and such?
Well, sure, I’ve read Orwell’s 1984. And yes, the surveillance state will probably get significantly more uncomfortable for many of us before its existence is significantly threatened by the diminishing returns of a post-peak oil world.
But nonetheless, from what I can tell there’s absolutely nothing new that the recent NSA leaks have pointed out (either because you’ve already read books by James Bamford and such, or you simply applied common sense), while the repeated libertarian cries for digital rights amount to what are basically little more than shrill cries of fossil fuelled privilege, the demands all the more delusional when we consider the Internet’s inherent bias towards surveillance. Erroneous talk of technological neutrality is fodder for another blog post, along with another about our ever-ridiculous technological optimism.
I’ll never forget that day I first read about the NSA leaks, a friend of mine later that evening whipping out his cellphone and showing me the PRISM logo, followed by some unpleasant words about being spied upon.
Concluding our conversation, my friend then turned to his fiancée and said, “come on honey, let’s go set up your new media box” (a device with which to watch digital content on a television set). Frankly, I don’t think I could sum up my feelings more clearly than by quoting from one of the greatest books of this early twenty-first century, Andrew Nikiforuk’s The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude: “The people on fossil fuels [are] perhaps the most narcissistic and bankrupt cohort in the history of the species.”
And never mind the problems within a digital world, what about the problems outside of the digital world? Do you have any idea of the hassle and interrogation one gets crossing an international border when customs finds out that you don’t own a cellphone? (Hello Australia and the U.S.!)
In summation, what should be the real story of importance here is not privacy rights or equal access to the Internet’s transmission lines, but what – if anything – our preparation for the Internet’s demise will be.
Reposted from the blog at From Filmers to Farmers: From Couch Potatoes to Potato Cultivators.
Preston Sturges on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 1:23 pm
Well if you want to publish your book, you’d better keep tabs on the field and what the potential readership is up to. You won’t find that in the reference stacks. Someone I followed online published a book that got decent reviews, but it was a subject crowded with other authors and he made little money.
Plantagenet on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 1:32 pm
This guy is incredibly shallow. He whines that Greenwald, Snowden, the NSA and Orwell are “nothing new” and claims that the human desire for privacy is just “fossil fueled privilege”. Sorry, but the desire for privacy is an innate human characteristic and a basic human right.
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 1:40 pm
@Preston: Very good point. Although not out until 2017, I do hope the book will add some relevant food for thought as I expect it to be the first to point out that Canada and Australia (and similar places) are not (in the words of Wendell Berry) “authentically multicultural.”
At the core of the book is this: “It’s often said that ‘we are what we eat.’ But since the majority of the food that the majority of us eat is grown in monocultures, would that not make us monoculturalist rather than multiculturalist?”
That this is relevant to peak oil is the fact that our economies and cultures are going to become more local whether we want them to or not, whether we prepare or not.
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 2:03 pm
@Plantagenet: You’re absolutely right, “privacy is an innate human characteristic and a basic human right.” However, my description of “fossil fueled privilege” is not in regards to privacy but in the expectation that the phantasmagoria of the digital realm (which exists due to fossil fuels and their accessibility) can ever be private – be it due to NSA-like entities or clever hackers.
Orwell was certainly “new.” The NSA revelations less so. Although the particular details recently revealed about the NSA’s workings had yet to be exposed, several books already existed on the topic. Yet regardless of those books, that the Internet and other digital communications are being monitored should be, I believe, common sense.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 2:07 pm
Allan — Great point by you too. Pre-industrial/fossil fuel age, I read that 99% of the world population was “gainfully employed” in food production — farming, hunting, gathering, tending the herds, etc… It therefore is a no-brainer that as the age of oil fizzles out, the only recourse left for those who survive is to return to food production.
Whether I end up surviving or not, I’m taking major steps to get ahead of the curve on growing my own food — wheat, rye, hay, corn, potatoes, garlic, beans, herbs and spices, onions, squash, etc… — the fundamental food groups. And I have four laying hens too — no rooster (yet) due to zoning restrictions, but I’ll grab one fast when I detect the big crash about to happen — though I’ll have to figure out how to muzzle that sucker until the zombie hoards thin out a bit. I’m also counting on several or more of my neighbors “moving out” so I can expand onto their front yards to really get the hay, rye and wheat quantities that I need. We’ll see how that works out…
Kristen on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 5:27 pm
I agree the internet is distracting, but it hasn’t hampered my ability to read for hours at a time or sit still and reflect on the sorrows that surround the city like broken tombstones. I rarely use Facebook because I doubt anyone really cares about my opinions, nor reads them. With the introduction of IPV 6 soon everything will have an IP address and be interconnected.
Also data servers around the country utilize renewable energy, so not all that data will be compromised
sunweb on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 5:28 pm
I lived off the grid without electricity during the 70s, so no TV. When I got some panels, I had a 12 volt BW one station TV for another 10 years. I had a computer but only email and research.
I just got on FB and find it a fun connection with some decent information. The internet is a fund of information. I have created a deep library for when we don’t have it, actually started 40 years ago.
The internet is a problem if it is an addiction, like any addiction that can take from your life.
Apneaman on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 7:36 pm
Hey Allan
Back in 2000, I read a James Bamford book I borrowed from the library. The security state was already well underway and he simply described much of what we see today. It was no secret and many of his sources were the people he was writing about. Anyone doubting your assertion that Snowden and Co were not saying anything ground breaking, need only do a dated Google search (Pre Snowden) for news stories plus academic and think tank papers regarding the security state. Anyone paying attention took Snowden’s “revelations” as just more (a lot more) evidence that we were well on our way to fascism. If the internet goes down I’ll spend more time at the library. If the library goes down then fuck it.
Makati1 on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 8:32 pm
Allen, I too wrote a novel, SF, on paper and only put it into computer format when a few publishers asked for it by e-mail. After a year, when no serious interest was generated, I dropped the idea, although a few said it was good, but not what they were looking for. Being retired and not needing the income, or the tax hassles with the IRS, I dropped the project.
I do spend a few hours on the internet reading news and using E-mail and Facebook to keep up with my family and friends 12,000 miles away. I am from PA but live in the Philippines. I also comment here to share my world view and to hassle a few flag wavers. I never owned or used a computer until 2003.
I do own a real book library, fiction and reference, and add to it constantly, as I know that the internet will be gone one day and maybe soon. I think it will die a swift death over, maybe, years, not decades. And, I can leave my books for others to enjoy in the darker future.
Good luck with your book. I’ll watch for it to be published and get a copy. I like your thinking.
tahoe1780 on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 9:24 pm
Hey Mak, Is your book available on-line?
Nony on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 9:53 pm
I think the Internet is affecting me in the way described by the writer.
Makati1 on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 10:48 pm
tahoe, it never made it to publication. I do have a copy in my files that I could send. It is not polished, but easily readable. It is called “Mid-Point” and is about 300 pages. I’m at jgalt43 yahoo, if you want me to send it to you.
I printed it out and made some soft bound copies for family and friends. Especially my 88 year old mother who taught me the pleasure of reading and still has a library of several thousand books she rereads and adds to.
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 10:54 pm
@Northwest: Local food production will definitely become more prominent. No time like the present to (re)learn those skills.
@Kristen: I don’t doubt your assertion. I assume people are affected in different ways. Maybe because I can be such an info glutton that I was easily able to sway from one extreme to the other.
@sunweb: Deep libraries could definitely be an asset in the future. No e-books for me.
@Apneaman: True enough.
@Makati1: Although I sometimes imagine the Internet’s demise will occur quickly rather than over a prolonged period of time (say, in a Gail Tverberg sense), John Michael Greer’s notion of a Long Descent seems to make the most sense to me. We’ll see. And yes, it does make me happy thinking about the joy the (tactile) books I’ve been collecting may bring to others in the future.
@Nony: You too, eh? I hope you’re not also getting too many of those “targeted emails.” 😉
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 10:55 pm
@Northwest: Local food production will definitely become more prominent. No time like the present to (re)learn those skills.
@Kristen: I don’t doubt your assertion. I assume people are affected in different ways. Maybe because I can be such an info glutton that I was easily able to sway from one extreme to the other.
@sunweb: Deep libraries could definitely be an asset in the future. No e-books for me.
@Apneaman: True enough.
@Makati1: Although I sometimes imagine the Internet’s demise will occur quickly rather than over a prolonged period of time (say, in a Gail Tverberg sense), John Michael Greer’s notion of a Long Descent seems to make the most sense to me. We’ll see. And yes, it does make me happy thinking about the joy the (tactile) books I’ve been collecting may bring to others in the future.
@Nony: You too, eh? I hope you’re not also getting too many of those “targeted emails.”
Apneaman on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 11:24 pm
Kristen
I never had much trouble switching from the dopamine hits of the internet to slow contemplative book reading. I wonder if age plays a factor? I’m pushing 50 and had about 25 years of heavy reading before the internet. I’m curious if people who’ve had internet access all or most of their lives have a harder time.
Nony on Mon, 6th Oct 2014 11:43 pm
https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+rewires+your+brain
(not meant out of meta cuteness)
Makati1 on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 12:47 am
Apneaman, from my observations, you are correct. Most who have grown up with the internet have trouble with, or no desire to read an actual book. I even know a few who have their i-toy read it to them if they are interested. No inflections or even correct pronunciation, just words. They cannot just sit down and read a book for the pleasure of going somewhere in their mind. I pity them very much. They are missing so much pleasure and relaxation and will be lost when the internet goes down.
Davy on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 4:36 am
Words are words why is paper different than digital with knowledge? I have a library that is an expression of my sculpting of the greater knowledge. This library is physical and digital. I have a lots of stuff stored on line and on the book shelves. Pictures are also visual books. Art has inner meaning Yes I am on the internet constantly. I would not call it an addiction per say more an obsession with knowledge and the quest for truth. We are near something great we have to connect and prepare and the internet is vital for that. I also crave your companionship online since the ability to connect with people that deal with our subject matter is limited. Imagine a baseball stadium full of our kind…wow. That’s scary. I will say this I have been off line in a spiritual experience back in 2003. I saw all these things we are discussing here and reacted by pulling the plug on all that is modern I could. I had one foot in the corporate world and I would drive home to a secluded farm. It was like going from modern to pre-modern. One beautiful November night I saw the “end of time” outdoors under the stars in my mind’s eye so I decided to go “offline”. This consisted of quitting work, stopping “all” electrical use, I moved out of the house to a large tent, I ate differently, and I drank out of the creek. I did not leave my 150 acre farm for 40 days. I remember throwing my then primitive cellphone in the water the night of this conversion. I removed the brain of my then slow compact dell and tossed the main chip into the woodstove and watched it burn. I told my wife to pay the bills. It was a fantastic time of unbelievable liberation and connection to nature. I realize it is not something one can easily do nor do I recommended this for most considering how uptight the modern world is. In fact I was pegged as crazy by the family and forced to end my spiritual journey after about 40 days. I can tell you this and that is true spirituality has no modern component “NONE”. You cannot know nature nor your inner spirituality with modern distractions interfering in the connectivity of the spirit. I also believe being in a modern city will not allow this connection. I am waiting for that time again when we all go back to a postmodern. That might sound weird putting “back” and “post” together but that is what is coming we are going back to our true human nature of our evolution. What we have now is an anomaly, a fluke, or a freak time. The internet will be gone, cell phones useless, and the TV staring blankly at us. Collapse is a scary thought but so is continued disorder. What else can you call our dynamic system today other than increasing disorder?
Preston Sturges on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 12:51 pm
R. Crumb drew a cartoon of himself trying to work, but all he could think about was sex and collecting 78 rpm records.
Apneaman on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 1:12 pm
Even literacy is only 5000 years old; a small fraction of our evolutionary history. Reading is totally unnatural, but it is slow, calm and contemplative whereas the internet is hyper stimulating. Every time you click on something (actually just an instant before) you get a dopamine hit. It’s like a mini Crack hit. That is why attention spans are so degraded. Many e-addicts want to dismiss this new reality, but it is true and it’s costing society big time. For example, Many states, provinces, etc latest data are showing automobile deaths related to electronic distracted driving are exceeding those related to alcohol.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 1:26 pm
I sometimes strongly suspect that the only thing preventing the youth in America from marching into the streets and engaging in full scale riot is the fact that all or most of them are addicted to their iPhones, Facebook and other electronic media. I worry constantly about my 15-yo son who would rather stay inside and chat with his friends and “surf the net” on his iPhone than go outside on even a really nice day to do more healthy things. I’m sure there are millions of kids in that exact same addiction. I console myself by believing that in the near future, that iPhone and all the electronic “social media” crap is going to disappear anyway — but that may not end up being the case. I wonder about all the kids and young adults who are so addicted to the electronic social media thing.
Apneaman on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 6:18 pm
I have the same suspicions. I find it kind of sad. Almost as if something has been stolen from young people. My folks could not keep me in the house when I was a kid; fishing, hiking, hunting, hockey, baseball, basket ball, bike riding everywhere and I would never trade those times and all my good friends for anything. Hell, I have not seen some of them since I was 12 and I still smile when I think about our mischief. I think there is other damage too. What happens to little kids minds when they go online and watch people being beheaded and gonzo porn and all the rest of life’s horrors? I just can’t imagine the effect is neutral.
JuanP on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 7:49 pm
Apneaman nailed it, IMO. It all depends on whether you use these technologies instead of reading books WHILE growing up. Children that grow up with video games, smartphones, and Facebook have differently wired brains as adults. My intuition tells me that the damage done to the brain wiring is permanent in most cases.
To read a book you need to spend hours or days focused on one thing, if you don’t learn to read long, complex stories as a child, but grow up texting instead, your brain gets wired to handle no more than 160 characters at a time.
I don’t think a mind trained to read no more than 160 characters at a time can ever enjoy reading Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Goethe.
JuanP on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:00 pm
Nony “I think the Internet is affecting me in the way described by the writer.”
LOL. Thanks for my best laugh of the day and thanks for the link, too. I followed it and read the Wired article on the list. 😉
JuanP on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:02 pm
Wired Magazine article “Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.”
http://www.wired.com/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/all/
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:10 pm
@JuanP: According to Nicolas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (pictured and linked to in the post), our brains are not “hardwired” but actually quite malleable. No doubt that growing up with today’s array of gizmos is going to have various effects on the mind of a growing child, but even if you never used the Internet until your 40s, your brain still gets “rewired” once you start using it.
Carr’s precursor to the book was his Atlantic article, “Is Google Making us Stupid?,” definitely worth a read.
GregT on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:20 pm
Davy,
Your post above is one of the best I have ever read on PO.com. The rest of the comments are also spot on IMO, but yours really rings true for me. Two thumbs up!
Davy on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:34 pm
Thanks Greg, it came from the heart.
GregT on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:54 pm
Then you must have a good heart Davy.
JuanP on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 8:57 pm
Allan, I agree that the brain is malleable and still gets rewired at all ages, but what I was trying to say is that the original wiring remains there even after consequent rewirings, and in that sense the damage is permanent. You can go from reading Shakespeare to reading text messages without problems, but going from being raised on 160 character SMS to enjoying reading Shakespeare is a different proposition, alltogether. Based on my life experience I’d say very few can do that, less than 1%, IMO.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 9:37 pm
Davy — I’m with Greg. Your sentiments expressed in that post tingle the nerves.
My girlfriend oscillates between worried acceptance of the fact that we’re heading for major collapse and denial of that fact. She’s still trying to deal with it emotionally, I guess. During those times that she is accepting it and we discuss our thoughts about it, I always try to point out that this plastic existence we are all living in the age of oil is a tiny blip on the big radar screen of human history, that the natural human existence for hundreds of thousands of years (at least) has been for humans to live in small tribes, communities, working together, helping each other, knowing and caring about each other, tending to their own sick, burying their own dead. I guess we’ll all do just fine without all the modern conveniences — how did we ever get suckered into thinking this rat race was the “good life” anyway. Somebody pulled a dirty trick on us all, planet earth suffered, the human race suffered. Nature will put it all back together again, I guess we can count on that.
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen on Tue, 7th Oct 2014 9:57 pm
@JuanP: Ah, I see what you’re saying now. Kind of how it’s easy to go from a team of horses to a tractor, but not the other way around. Or from making a candle to flicking a light switch, but again, not the other way around.
@Makati1: I should have pointed out that if you’re that interested you could always go to the book’s site (where this post was adapted from) and sign up to be notified of the book’s release (2017? 2018?). You can get to the site by clicking on my name.
Makati1 on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 4:44 am
Thanks Allan, will do.
Davy on Wed, 8th Oct 2014 5:44 am
I am worried about my 7yr boys and the rewiring discussed above. I let the boys do the wii and TV but there is a time limit when they have to go outside and do what kids should do. This situation can be widened to the greater human experience. The rewiring is more than the individual rewiring it is in the collective. We have lost a vital element of our human nature to the digital world. There is the evil side of control and surveillance also. We have been romanced into believing in exceptionalism and progress. Digital is now progress and an opiate of the masses. Everything has an app today leaving our human nature defined by the digital experience. I am seriously online now but with the understanding it will be over soon. I have an attitude of enjoy it while I can but having the constant awareness of its finitude. The degree of management efficiency, communications, and knowledge enhancement is too great for me to reject on principals. I found going offline like I once did estranges friends and family that are online. After I went offline then back online I still refused a cellphone for 4 more years as a protest to modernity. I finally gave in when my girlfriend got pissed at an airport missed pickup. The complexity of the digital world will break down although the irrational abandonment of the descent will probably mean we hang on until BAU’s bitter end. Most situations have some kind of silver lining. Those of us who survive the coming reorder will be forced into a reconnect that leads to a spiritual rediscovery (3 R’s of descent). Nature, human relations, community, and our higher power will find new meaning.