Phone Addiction (Part 1), Too Much Information (Part 1) and Swami Vivekananda
September 15, 2024
8 min read
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Newsletter
{Body}
Phone addiction
This is part 1 of 3.
Let me start with the bad news first: you are a phone addict. I am a phone addict. All of us who cannot complete simple errands, chores or activities without the urge to have our smartphones nearby are addicts. We have to admit that to ourselves or we will never get clean.
Now before I dive into solutions, I want to make one thing clear: it’s not just the dopamine from the social media likes, outrageous headlines or colorful LED displays that you’re addicted to. You are also hooked on the “electromagnetic frequencies” — also known as EMFs — that your devices emit.
In other words, you have become so accustomed to EMFs oozing in and around you — from the WiFi saturating your home to the cell phone towers lining the streets — that to successfully unplug from them, is going to create pretty severe withdrawal symptoms for you.
As a personal anecdote, I once decided to live in a shack in the woods for 4 weeks by myself. No electricity; no internet; just me and my thoughts for 28 days.
Let me tell you: I went crazy. For the first 10 days I would pace for — no exaggeration — hours, unable to sit still for more than 20 minutes at a time. I remember feeling like my bones and nervous system were itchy and deeply disturbed.
At the time, I assumed that these symptoms were dopamine-related, but years later that I found out they were made even more intense because I had removed all electromagnetic frequencies from my environment.
I’m telling you all of this as a warning: if you’re serious about getting clean from your screen, you might have to slog through some intense cravings first.
So now that we’re all on the same page — we all admit that we’re technology addicts, and we understand that it could be challenging — what do we do?
{Mind}
Is there such thing as “too much information?”
This is Part 1 of 2.
Being shaped by the digital revolution, most of us assume that more information about a subject is basically a good thing.
More information about a disease leads to more cures; more facts about a friend leads to deeper connections; more data about a scenario leads to more informed (and consequently better) choices. Sure, misinformation should be avoided, but as long as the information is accurate, more is always better…right?
Not exactly.
Consider how many atoms make up your cell phone. Intellectually, you know there is a correct number, but to know that number does not mean you understand it, nor does it necessarily mean you will make wiser life choices from knowing it.
For example, even if you knew that your cell phone was exactly 10,036,442,956,122,041,233,687,098 atoms, that answer would not help you truly know it or live better.
And that’s because there’s still far more to its story. What elements are those atoms? Where exactly are they placed? For what purpose have they been placed?
Even if you had all of that information, though, you still wouldn’t know what the cell phone actually is or how to best use it, because no object exists in isolation. In order to fully comprehend and harness it, you would also need to understand the motivations of the user that operates it. And to do that would require that you knew everything about the user’s parents and grandparents, and the rich cultural context they grew up in.
In other words, for you to completely know one thing about one thing, you would simultaneously have to know everything about everything. And if you knew everything about everything, having large swaths of information about reality would be rendered totally useless.
This still doesn’t quite answer the question, so stay tuned next week for Part 2 as I address it more directly.
{Soul}
Drugs, sex, noise, junk food, information — how much of your energy is spent justifying and pursuing these small pleasures?
Status, clothing, self-righteousness, money — is it even possible to be present or grateful when your mind is scheming how to get another hit?
There is no other option but to dismantle one’s attachments on the quest towards freedom, for the two are perfectly contradictory.
Either you are totally liberated from one of your addictions, or you are in some measure run by it. How could there be a third option?
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