finding a way through

[temporaryreality]

(cross-posted on JMG's open Covid post)

 

In post #6 (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/165100.html?thread=23918572#cmt23918572), erika talks about the decades of training individual members of our society/ies have been subjected to that have restructured not only our brains, our responses, and our ability to manage complexity, but also our subtle bodies as well as our collective reality. Leading to (and being continued by) what's going on now.

 

She mentions the numerical thinking, the quantification of juicy biological and spiritual/mental/astral/etheric life.

 

I assume that ultimately none of this comes as news to anyone here but I thought I'd still think out loud on and invite a continuation of erika's topic because of its relation to the ways we think, the ways we respond, and the ways we think we can respond to this digital mass hysteria clickbait age.

 

Here's this thread where it's also discussed: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/165100.html?thread=23945196#cmt23945196

 

How do we find our "forest passage" when we've inherited a world we're told has no such passages? One in which the literal forests are themselves damaged and inaccessible to us?

 

This year I'm learning more German and in a moment of weakness the other day, I downloaded duolingo and watched how I interacted with it. The "placement test" was fun - I answered question after question, and was pleased at having retained some semblance of language proficiency after a few years of not really working on it... and then I got scored and plopped somewhere in the "learning track." At that point things went downhill and I was able to observe how.

 

But first a digression or two. Late in December I could feel my tension and frustration with all of this mess just rising - commensurate with reading these threads, clicking on their various links, watching the insurmountability of changing the groundswell toward unwholesome/unholy things. You know, just the ick, and the cloyingness of the ick, and how it FEELS, in spite of THIS SPACE being what it is.

 

And then, I found myself thinking once more (because I do think about this periodically) about my mindless-moments' scrolling through craft patterns online, or looking at pinterest images or whatnot.

 

And of course there's all sorts of info out there about how the online world triggers chemical reactions and dopamine rushes in our brains. Click...ahhh....click....ahhh - the rollercoaster of false gratification on some neurological unconscious level.

 

Yesterday I went to study German at my allotted time but instead of turning (as had been my wont in the month or two previous) to my books, and the text I'm learning by heart, I popped onto duolingo and found myself revisiting "Ja" and "Nein" and "Hallo" so that I could earn some sort of weird gem-reward and accompanying mocking praise from code dressed as animated characters who DO NOT CARE; and I jumped up the "leaderboard" for having learned nothing but only clicked and typed things I already know.

 

And I kept going. The room grew dark and I lulled myself into thinking "I'm doing my German."

 

I'm not even much of a TV or movie watcher (I'll sit down with my daughter to watch shows now and then, but more as a way to sit WITH her and share and discuss the thing). And I'm not really a social-media user (excepting one fake fb account with which I can stay apprised of mimeograph groups and users' projects). But the machine-world has infiltrated so much.

 

Yesterday, too, my daughter mentioned a conversation she'd had with a friend about children watching TV. She later went online to look up one that was mentioned and she found reports of toddlers becoming functionally addicted to one show in particular. Here are some quotes from the thread she found:

 

The most epic meltdown we had was while shutting off the show to get her ready for her bath, it was on another level. I said right there and then that the show is banned in the house. I wasn’t fully subscribed to what some of the other posters had said about the show before that but I got it after that.

 

My 16 month old quit [name of show] cold turkey 2 weeks ago, and has only had a few severe cravings since then.

We noticed she stopped playing and would just stare at the back tv screen waiting for [it] to come on.

Now she only watches [name of show]. Half the time she'll go play while the tv is on, or sit with me and play/try to eat a board book while watching.

 

I had to do this with my little guy too and I swear he had withdrawals like someone on crack. He would stare at the black screen and cry. He cried for probably 2 weeks straight before it got better. My pediatrician said he was delayed in speech and that’s when I cut out screen time. I knew that was it.

 

I was floored to read posts from so many parents commenting that [name of show] was addictive and terrible but then they let their tiny kid watch [name of other show] that is somehow better. These kids are plugged in and programmed.

 

We're all plugged in and programmed and we're continuing to do it on a society-wide level across all ages.

 

Here, today, I've been working (on the computer) and drafting up this post (on the computer). Of course later I'll get offline and do Real Things, but will it be enough? I don't know.

 

Every moment requires navigation through forest and machine-lined passages.

 

We have to create more forest (literal and otherwise).

 

I don't have a prescription or a list of options (still trying to figure out how to unchain my ways of thinking of what's possible) other than (for myself) to continue to cultivate awareness of machine-life within me, of the ways I fall back into it, of the small seeds and tiny germinating presences I'd like to carry forward instead. Of the soft duff of the path I prefer rather than the rhythmic tramp through paved-worlds in unison with all the other trained target-audience members.

Comments

[temporaryreality]

Fair enough.

I do find, though, when I "do nothing and wait" and if I'm not aware of what's happening, I can easily get online and piddle about until the dopamine pathways are flush.

I tend to think it's problematic that my generation recalls backwoods lots being bulldozed for strip malls and my kids' generation thinks "backwoods" is by definition an hour's drive away. The next generation doesn't think much of backwoods at all unless it becomes a tiktok meme.

And the inner backwoods?

Does it matter?
Not in the deep time sense of things I guess, but I can't help but think it matters - probably because I remember what got bulldozed. Two generations out, who cares?

I'm an actor inasmuch as I'm the one clicking on links, or doing German, or meditating in the morning.

Maybe I just had lazy wording because I don't think we're saying things so fundamentally different. For me, create forest could also be called "allow forest."

[sdi]

I think you're right, we're talking past each other: using the same words to mean different things. I apologize for misunderstanding!

It's also worth noting that I'm normally a very, very driven person—Mars on my ascendant, like a tiger chasing me—so the lesson to slow down and not do has been a critical one for me... but it's not everyone's lesson! So I mention it in case its helpful.

[temporaryreality]

You don't have to apologize! It's the writer's job to be clear! Also, I generally write to figure out what I think ... and then it may turn out that I ought to re-think!

To be fair, I agree - we need less "Do do do, Go go go!" given the kinds of problems that creates. This is my meditation on what happens, though, when from infancy children are given unnatural and addictive stimulus that isn't, you know, lying on the baby blanket watching light in leaves, or playing with mud and making a little animal village, or learning rhymes and rhythms from auntie. Even when we come to it late in life and with a modicum of self-awareness, it creeps in and sucks an evening of otherwise pleasant language learning out of the world in exchange for pixel-rewards.

So I hear your wu wei argument and understand why you made it.

I've long been solidly in the process-oriented rather than goal-oriented camp which makes for a different kind of drivenness if there's a drivenness at all. There's still the sense of "do," though, and it's good to give that some consideration.