I go to the gym in the morning several days a week and there have been a number of newer young people of late. Even though there are signs everywhere prohibiting the use of cell phones in the change room and weight room this is ignored by a number of them. In fact, while they may figure they are working out for an hour, or whatever length of time, for some of them it is half that. It's not that they are listening to music. The thumbs and going and I realized along the way that one watches videos.
Apparently this is the International Day of Unplugging, a quixotic proposal knowing that we need our fixes of connection every few minutes, if not seconds.
I spend far too much time on my phone, rarely actually using this device to have a conversation. Still, I savour the times of disconnection, when we're paddling, or cycling. I never take my phone into the gym. In the morning I head downstairs without my phone so that there is a period of disconnection after waking.
Discovering that there is a disconnect day took me back to our study group on the sabbath and the notion of "cease and desist" as one of the biblical Ten Commandments -- the lengthiest, in fact -- rather than a suggestion. It's significant that the "suggestion" (who can command these days?) is that Unplug Day begins on the Friday evening and ends on Saturday at sunset, akin to the Jewish sabbath.
I listened to a CBC "person on the street" segment where people in Toronto were asked if they could unplug for a day and nearly everyone said it would be very difficult or even impossible. They didn't give convincing reasons, they just knew that it wouldn't work -- yup addiction.
ILLUSTRATION BY ALAIN PILOn
There was an excellent article in the Globe and Mail not long ago by Michael Harris with the run-on title Come on, repeal the noise: Quiet is increasingly precious. To some, it may feel normal to live in a constant state of interruption, but that’s only because we are already so completely changed
Harris asks:
What are we blotting out today? What value is there in silence that our noise pollution obscures?...
None of these physical, cognitive or spiritual benefits can be ours, though, if we do not demand the silence that our online minds are so convinced we can live without. We will always fail to make that demand – of ourselves, our cities, each other – so long as our minds are primed to believe that constant interruption (and casino-grade stimulation) is natural.
Cut out the noise within our heads and we might learn to shun the noise around us. These two pollutions – the mess in our minds and the mess in our ears – are, I think, intimately linked. Online life shapes our senses and determines our idea of normalcy. To the adapted mind, physical noise seems less and less like an irritant and more like our only option.
You may wonder, will I unplug, take a device sabbath? No, but I'll be moderate rather than frenetic through the day. And I wrote this blog entry yesterday so that I didn't have to plug in to write about unplugging!
2 comments:
Yes, I think unplugging for a day would create a lot of anxiety for most of us. We'd be imagining what emails or texts we are missing - as if those messages are so crucial to read immediately.
Most of us can't imagine driving down the road to the store without our cell phone, let alone driving across the country on holiday. Yet, as many people did years ago, I made numerous trips, and fortunately none of them would have required me to use my cell phone for an emergency.
I'm not saying those were necessarily better times; having a cell can be incredibly helpful and reassuring. But our(and I include myself in this) addiction to electronic devices seems to be getting stronger and stronger.
It does feel good to disconnect, even for a few hours, and engage in nature. Kayaking is my favourite way to do this.
Meanwhile, I'll I've been using another device - a trail cam - to observe the den of FISHERS on our property who will likely be having another litter soon.
My semi-unplugging went much better than I thought it would. I lived to tell the tale! It's always encouraging, Roger, to hear of sightings of a creature that has largely been eliminated from an area.The one and only fisher I've seen was in the north of the province. Yesterday we saw a pair of bald eagles back at the nest on the Moira River.
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