Left to our own devices

Well, I made it to the train, which is always a good start considering that there is no other train heading this way for another 6 hours. It is quite a long day today and by the time I get home it will be getting onto 12 hours, with about half of it travel time. It is nice though because I have time to myself, something that is in short supply unless I am travelling, which is one of the major benefits of travelling for me.

I don't know about everyone else, but at least I need time with my own thoughts, time to reflect on life - and I need it often enough that it can be practical in nature and allow me to process and adjust so there is a chance for my own behavioral change to take place. While for the most part these changes are ever so slight, over a longer period they can add up to create quite different results for me.

I think that I have wasted most of life until relatively recently as I valued "free time" as time spent doing very little rather than using what is now much more restricted to improve the quality of experience. A lot of people of course consider free time to be a quality of life but by itself, it is just potential, whereas how it is used is the actual quality factor applied. Most distract themselves.

We have so many devices to pay attention to but we don't generally recognize the process tat takes place. Device itself has an interesting etymology as it means "desire and division" and when applied to the attention economy where attend means to "focus upon", we are literally focusing on our own disconnectedness, separating ourselves from the world and burrowing into the objects of our desires.

Weapons of mass distraction

Distraction is anther interesting word as it also means to break focus but to the point of illness as it means violent mental disturbance, so "driven to distraction" is akin to being driven mad, although it might be a short-lived infliction. Yet, this is what we are driving for in the attention economy, to break focus on one thing and bring it toward another to monetize it and, the easiest way to do this is through the devices that we have placed at everyone's fingertips.

We have done this to the point that we consider our free-time can be well spent on scrolling through the inane content of people's lives that we do not know and, have very little effect on us. Well, "very little effect" unless we consider how much of our lives are spent on consuming this ind of content while not consuming the content of our own minds.

While the unexamined life may not be worth living, what of a life spent examining the engineered perspectives of other people's lives that is created with personal branding and monetization in mind? Is that a valuable life worth living?

The value spread

While the immediate nature of value created by drawing large amounts of attention benefits in the short-term view, I wonder if there will ever be a time where rather than place the value in the hands of a few attention seekers, we spread that value amongst the many. This would mean that our attentional focus would need to shift and rather than thumb through the meaningless feeds, we would examine the life around us, the people around us.

It is interesting to consider that most forms of depression are connected to social disconnection of various kinds with the cure being reconnection, yet the lonely these days often turn to device distraction, separation of attention from themselves and the life around them. The compelling nature of entertainment is the unreality of the experience, the ability to suspend belief and immerse oneself in a world that is not one's own life examined.

I wonder, would we watch our own experience with the same amount of enthusiasm as we do the lives of others, or would we become uncomfortable with the familiarity of staring into the abyss and seeing ourselves? Would you want your life examined by others and have them recognize how little life you actually lead and how much life of other's creation you consume?

Exploration from a distance

One of the draw-card factors of Steem for me is that for the first time in my own experience of the internet I have found a balance that satisfies more than my "need" for distraction through entertainment and instead, take a path of investigation of my own mind. Not only that, there is the ability to get feedback and of course, interact with others who are on their own relative journeys of discovery as they explore their world.

While everyone can pick and choose, often the world in which we are roaming on Steem is one that gives us a view of places that were hidden to us earlier, even as they affected our lives. For me over the last couple years, I have become much more interested in personal economic and financial considerations that previously eluded me yet fundamentally impacted upon my existence. Wealth takes many forms and knowledge is a component of most of them.

I am grateful for...

It doesn't matter if it is economic wealth, informational wealth, skill wealth or wealth of relationship, understanding of the factors is a key component as it allows one to recognize opportunity, as well as *be grateful for what one has. It is impossible to have gratitude for what one does not know and gratitude is one factor that increases life satisfaction. Without examination though, that is a component of life that is inaccessible.

Distraction from the examination of life holds us back from the knowledge and possibility that provides the many forms of wealth and, the understanding required to be grateful for what we have or, the potential space we have available to us to work with. As said, I have wasted much of the free-time of my life in distraction activities rather than building a life of wealth I can be grateful for.

Is it possible to be truly grateful for life, and truly depressed?

I guess that requires more examination unachievable through distraction.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]