Phone Addiction (Part 2), Too Much Information (Part 2) and Matthew 7:5
September 22, 2024
8 min read
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Newsletter
{Body}
Phone addiction
This is Part 2 of 3. Click here to read Part 1.
As it stands, your smart phone (probably) controls you just as much as you control your smart phone.
This is not your fault, per se, but it is your responsibility to deal with.
Beyond ditching your phone for a brick, there are some easy wins when it comes to curbing your phone addiction and require that you learn how to outsmart your base animalistic instincts.
Quick context: your nervous system prioritizes novel, bright features in its environment, which is why your eyes love to feast upon the glowing, polychromatic screen of your smart phone, laptop, or TV.
Similarly, your brain is currently wired to prioritize news that makes you afraid, hateful, greedy or affirmed. This is why you fall for clickbait headlines or feel compelled to constantly check notifications.
Bright, colorful, upsetting, status-boosting, pleasure-inducing, and bias-confirming. These primal impulses (and more) can be either mitigated or outright avoided by adjusting a few settings on your phone (below), or applying a few strategies to your phone habits (next week, Part 3).
{Mind}
Is there such thing as “too much information?”
This is Part 2 of 3. Click here to read Part 1.
While “too much information” is subjective and depends on what the situation is, broadly speaking the answer is yes: there is such thing as too much information.
As explained last time, simply having more information will not necessarily yield truth or wisdom about a particular topic, because more rarely means better.
After all, according to that perspective, you would literally need infinite information — access to everything about everything — in order to understand (and therefore make the best decision upon) a single topic.
But if that were the case — if you did have all information at your fingertips — you would never actually make a decision about anything, because processing infinite information would take your brain infinite time!
This is also known as analysis paralysis — a state in which one freezes up when presented with a comprehensive list of pros and cons for different sides, and are asked to decide which option is “best.”
Best according to what standard?
Best according your bank account? Your long-term investments? Your looks? Your physical health? Your emotional stability? Your spiritual progress? Your children? Your children’s children?
You claim you want to know the future based on the decisions you make today, but if you did you would immediately be overcome with paranoia and overwhelm.
Every single choice — do I open the door with my left or my right hand? should I eat another grape? — would then be seen on the infinite horizon of echoing potentialities. Every decision would be a conceivable disaster waiting to happen.
So if just having “more information” is not the sole answer to living better, what is?
Stay tuned for Part 3 next week when I answer this question head-on.
{Soul}
How much unnecessary energy do we invest into the scrutinization and condemnation of others?
From celebrity magazine “gotcha moments” to YouTube/podcast gossip to journalistic hit pieces to reality TV to outright hate speech to everyday judgement and low level shit-talk, humans are constantly out with their pointed fingers and pitchforks.
What if, instead of focusing so heavily on the behaviors and attitudes of one another, we redirected all of that energy into metamorphosing ourselves — into making ourselves less and less selfish? What kind of change might that inspire in our fellow species members?
It’s not that being critical of or offering reflections to others is never advised; throughout history, those with the courage to stand up for what they believe in have proved instrumental to the progress of human rights.
Instead, the point is that it is easier to receive suggestions from someone who is fully living in their integrity than from an obvious hypocrite.
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