The ruling class need you. You have what they want and you also have agency.
The same systems that trap people are trapped by the people.
Time is life’s true currency. The corporate class want to steal this from you and you can never get it back. Harvesting the time of the many to convert to capital of the few. The attention economy.
High screen time enhances misery. So let’s reject screen time.
Screen time is a problem of 2 parts:
- We know it’s bad.
- We do it anyway.
We will spend 17 years of our life on screens. Some of that is jobs. Some isn’t. Actually, a lot isn’t.
Even when you’re offline, there’s still that voice in your head asking about the online world. If I use 𝕏 too much, I think in post-like sentences.
“Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness and never more than when they affect the word.” – Walter Ong
His focus was on the difference between literate and oral cultures. Literate cultures think more logically. Oral cultures were more fluid, more forgiving.
Our dominant tool to access culture is through the phone. It’s part literacy and part oral.
“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” – Neil Postman
Technology is binary. So much of what we use it for also becomes binary.
“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.” – Sydney Smith
The phone makes everything feel personal and urgent. But it’s not real and so makes you feel hopeless instead. We become passive consumers of life, able to see everything and affect nothing. It’s why consuming the news is a bad idea.
When we use our phones, we’re removing ourselves from our daily lives. That’s the place where we’re meant to be the most active! Reality becomes something you settle for when you can’t access screens.
Solution: Replace screen time with zine time. Replace the small rectangle with a better small rectangle.
Zines came about in the 80s when big media was being consolidated.
Most of all, pay attention.