temporaryreality

 

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:

 

 

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.