Your battery is running low. What's the first thing on your mind? "Does anyone have a charger?" Or even worse, you carry a backup battery on you because your cellphone must always be active and ready. Thus you have become dependent by making sure your connections are never out of reach.... figuratively. How many people on your phone do you text weekly? Monthly? The numbers in your phone gather like dust, files to be used in the future should something happen. What about the numbers in your phone of people you haven't seen in over a year? Does having their number stored away in your anchor to modern society make you still feel 'connected' to them in the back of your mind even if you haven't spoken to them?
The Cellphone is now the largest dependency tool in the world. Children from all age ranges have it. Their parents justify this for 'safety' reasons yet the child flaunts it around like jewellery amongst peers and will sit down and lose themselves in the latest application rather than focusing on homework. Adults are constantly terrified to leave ther cellphone at home. What if someone calls me? What if it's important? What if I need to get a hold of someone?!
Imagine each day you have not left sight of your cellphone yet no one called you, your texts weren't that important, there wasn't any danger you thought there would be if you had left your phone at home.
The feeling of needing your cellphone by your side is addiction. Addiction to the anchor of modern society. This is your safety net, this is what keeps you grounded in what you believe to be a fast-paced technological lifestyle. The idea of something fun passing you by is too much to bear! Quick, where is my cellphone, I can't fathom the idea of boredom without internet access let alone a missed call or text!
Want to try a little exercise? Turn off your cellphone for two hours RIGHT NOW. That's right, you won't do it will you. The slight chance something important (in your mind) actually happening is too great of a chance to pass up to un-anchor yourself from society. As long as your cellphone is on, you are connected just like everyone else. Without it you might teeter off all on your lonesome. But the truth is that if you have to rely on this anchor in the addictive form (not being able to turn it off for a long period of time) then you are already alone.
Now we wonder why people pay these huge phone bills? Because the companies can charge that much and people won't walk away. People have become servants to their cellphone provider. Cellphones are such a crucial part in peoples lives that it seems the one that's coming out in a few months will be outdated by the end of the year. At the end of the day, even with your new phone, you still talk and text the same people. Oh the realization that your phone didn't make any new friends for you.
Your phone might even make you feel important just like all the other anchored down people who bought it. The same people who rush to buy the latest popular item of advertisment, the same people who think having 'fun' is defined by the entertainment industry, and the same people who pay for bottle service at a club where the owners are in the back laughing while their pockets get fat.
The market to sell vanity so people can stroke their image and seek approval amongst his or her peers is at an all time high. Not to mention everyone in that place brought their anchor along with them, for the sound or sight of a text message has become what they believe as the reassurance of their existence. Someone not forgotten about in the midst of everything. Now the owner of the club who's laughing at the vanity fools might need his cellphone, but even he probably doesn't need it as much as he thinks he does.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Our Journey
We have all drowned in our own contentment on various matters, especially the matter of which brings us to this gathering corner hidden somewhere amongst the lands, castles, refuges, and vast seas of cyberdom. For the younger generations our lives have been so affected by such technology compared to the generations of old. The generations of those who used a dictionary, a phonebook, and payphones. Our dependency on technology has made life easier for us, but has it specifically made your life better?
One can easily assume because of the increasing boom in technology and social networking that our lives have drastically improved. But where are we spiritually? How are our relationships? How are our expectations and our dopamine receptors thanks to instant gratification that constantly plagues every corner of every turn in our modern society?
Children these days are addicted to downloadable free applications on ipads and iphones. Adults are living vicariously through social networking sites and constantly seek approval not just at home but in cyberspace. Our society is shrinking thanks to the internet, and in many ways this is beneficial to realize we are all one. However when it prevents us from daily exercise, when it prevents us from finding where our true passions lie, when it prevents us from a positive attitude that was long replaced by a zombie like state that thrives off of dopamine... we lose the greatest gift we will ever have, our life right in this moment.
New Years will come and the gyms will be surged with inspired people ready to change their life. Though as we all know these people dwindle away much like the youth in the first few weeks of community college. Did they change their mind on what their goals were? Or did their goals become too tiresome, too energy demanding, or do they realize they are content with their 9-5 work lifestyle as long as they can come home to the media's illusion on what life is all about?
When was the last time you felt connected to nature? What was the longest time this last month you spent away from your cellphone? When was the last time you didn't try to fit into the mold of what 'you think' society expects from you? For many of us are dancing to the tune of instant gratification, vanity, and cultural expectations at the expense of this time we have now.
I wish to exit this lifestyle of technological dependency. I wish to dig deep within myself to weed out all of the social conditioning that this modern lifestyle has developed us to be. I wish to seek a personal revolution where technological dependency and instant gratification are minimized while productivity and the growing of oneself is maximized. I wish to have the courage to break free from the shackles of constant entertainment, to break free from our modern pop cultures idea of having 'fun', to break free from fitting into or avoiding stereotypes others might label me as.
The goal; exempt yourself from the manufactured life that seems to go down a conveyer belt which places you right in the middle of everyone else. Instead I want to replace it for one where we get off that conveyer belt and discover who we are so we can seek our own journey where the masses are't constantly surrounding us.
Taking the first step might seem difficult, especially when we have become so accustomed to technology and instant gratification. The biggest factor I believe that people are worried about is the fright of what they might discover. People are content with being told what to think, being told how to live, being told that they have nothing to worry about. This in retrospect is living the life of a caged animal whose soul has been so conditioned that the minute the shackles are released and a window of opportunity presents itself, the animal will be too afraid to leave the dependency it has known. It's comfortable in content.
Temporary satisfaction and entertainment fit into 'Lifes rewards and pleasures' category in your brain. But ask yourself, don't you think you deserve better? Isn't there more out there to discover? Time is ticking away and the more time you waste, the least likely it will be to break yourself free of the conditioning society has been placing upon you.
One can easily assume because of the increasing boom in technology and social networking that our lives have drastically improved. But where are we spiritually? How are our relationships? How are our expectations and our dopamine receptors thanks to instant gratification that constantly plagues every corner of every turn in our modern society?
Children these days are addicted to downloadable free applications on ipads and iphones. Adults are living vicariously through social networking sites and constantly seek approval not just at home but in cyberspace. Our society is shrinking thanks to the internet, and in many ways this is beneficial to realize we are all one. However when it prevents us from daily exercise, when it prevents us from finding where our true passions lie, when it prevents us from a positive attitude that was long replaced by a zombie like state that thrives off of dopamine... we lose the greatest gift we will ever have, our life right in this moment.
New Years will come and the gyms will be surged with inspired people ready to change their life. Though as we all know these people dwindle away much like the youth in the first few weeks of community college. Did they change their mind on what their goals were? Or did their goals become too tiresome, too energy demanding, or do they realize they are content with their 9-5 work lifestyle as long as they can come home to the media's illusion on what life is all about?
When was the last time you felt connected to nature? What was the longest time this last month you spent away from your cellphone? When was the last time you didn't try to fit into the mold of what 'you think' society expects from you? For many of us are dancing to the tune of instant gratification, vanity, and cultural expectations at the expense of this time we have now.
I wish to exit this lifestyle of technological dependency. I wish to dig deep within myself to weed out all of the social conditioning that this modern lifestyle has developed us to be. I wish to seek a personal revolution where technological dependency and instant gratification are minimized while productivity and the growing of oneself is maximized. I wish to have the courage to break free from the shackles of constant entertainment, to break free from our modern pop cultures idea of having 'fun', to break free from fitting into or avoiding stereotypes others might label me as.
The goal; exempt yourself from the manufactured life that seems to go down a conveyer belt which places you right in the middle of everyone else. Instead I want to replace it for one where we get off that conveyer belt and discover who we are so we can seek our own journey where the masses are't constantly surrounding us.
Taking the first step might seem difficult, especially when we have become so accustomed to technology and instant gratification. The biggest factor I believe that people are worried about is the fright of what they might discover. People are content with being told what to think, being told how to live, being told that they have nothing to worry about. This in retrospect is living the life of a caged animal whose soul has been so conditioned that the minute the shackles are released and a window of opportunity presents itself, the animal will be too afraid to leave the dependency it has known. It's comfortable in content.
Temporary satisfaction and entertainment fit into 'Lifes rewards and pleasures' category in your brain. But ask yourself, don't you think you deserve better? Isn't there more out there to discover? Time is ticking away and the more time you waste, the least likely it will be to break yourself free of the conditioning society has been placing upon you.
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