In my usual way, I have been observing the unfolding patterns and recurring themes surrounding me which remains my primary source of inspiration and intellectual wanderings. It always feels like life is orchestrating itself as only it knows how, to let something emerge, an idea, an energy, a movement that is tacitly asking to be noticed. Very much like an opportunity to grasp, an invitation to further explore but which first needs to be acknowledged and that is only feasible if I am paying attention.
“Attention”, mine, yours, ours, a giant commodity that the online world is continuously fighting to obtain at all costs. Most people I know are aware of it, talk about it, and yet find it tremendously difficult to fight back to retain and direct theirs where they feel it should go. I would hope that no one ever consciously decides: “I am going to dedicate myself to wasting an hour (or more) scrolling on social media, browsing mindlessly online, engaging with news from untrustworthy media channels, etc.”
Every now and then I find myself in circles where it’s common knowledge that we need to distance ourselves from the “attention monster”, otherwise known as the constant influx of inputs and distraction. People go on retreat to detox, clear their mind, meditate and regain control over what belongs to them but somehow has been taken over by something else. It’s like an invasion we welcomed. We know it does us no good but we struggle to push back. Worse, we let more in and the vicious circle gets bigger and its grip gets stronger. Then habits form and it becomes harder to shift.
I always explain to people that it’s far easier to start (anything) with stronger boundaries and maybe decide to loosen up as time goes than it is to start loose and get tighter later. This might be true but unfortunately this is not what’s happening. One of the reasons is simply because placing, maintaining and enforcing boundaries is hard and it’s never made anyone popular. Hence, most people want and choose “easy” and are themselves “lazy”.
Interestingly, the clients of mine who labelled themselves “lazy” are never the lazy ones. But the world is currently full of lazy people who want the easy path and fast gratification, in the same way they embraced fast food, which as we know is in fact junk food. If you think of the incredibly rapid uptake of AI by everyone, from every walk of life, it’s mostly because it makes tasks feel easier and seemingly allows them to be completed faster, at hardly any perceived cost. But in turn, individuals get lazier and their tolerance for effort gets smaller.
In the end, the name AI itself is appropriate. It makes “your” thinking and intelligence “artificial”; not its, but yours, mine, ours. The name AI doesn’t say what it is but what it does.
I challenge anyone to give me one aspect of what makes us uniquely or specifically human (in a Viktor Frankl way) that has been fortified or increased positively by technology the way the “augmented human theory” claimed it would happen. AI doesn’t provide us with “augmented cognition”; in fact it’s now documented that one of its major risks is “cognitive offloading” all the way to “cognitive surrendering”. It is slowly taking away from your intelligence and, in true Nolan style, you’re watching it sail away from you and, as dramatic as it sounds, you’ll have to fight to get it back.
Side-note while I am on a stretchy metaphor. I watched The Odyssey on IMAX last weekend and absolutely hated it and considered walking out halfway through. Isn’t it funny that someone like Nolan, who prides himself on living with no smartphone and no email, yet creates a movie that swallows three hours of your life and spews you out with a feeling that it took something from you and gave nothing in return. That was my experience and it’s not too dissimilar from what I am writing about here.
The good that comes from exercising your capacity to focus, to pay attention, to be present, to let yourself be bored sometimes is something that modern life is actively trying to take away from you. Only you can reverse it for yourself. This is not to say that technology should be banned. Not at all. It’s the way we engage and use it that needs proper consideration and adjustment. But as I attempted to explain earlier, once the genie is out of the bottle, good luck putting it back in. Time and effort will be required and if those are what the world needs, those aren’t what the world wants...
Here is an example you might relate to. If you’re a gym-goer and if you spend two minutes looking at anything other than your phone and your own reflection, you’ll probably note that most people aren’t focused on what they do on the machines. They’re on their phone most of the time and especially between each and every set. Virtually no-one is not wearing headphones (except me because I gave my AirPods to my mum and wired headphones are a pain in the ass).
They got the memo that sedentary life is killing them softly and that they need to get their tush off the desk chair but can’t seem to do it without a tech device that acts as a lifeline wherever they go. Maybe at some point, they’ll get the other memo that says they need community and relationships - earthbound ones, real-life ones, not just virtual.
By the way this isn’t going at all where I intended. So let me try to do a right turn and see if I can get back on track, not too awkwardly, drawing again on my Nolan experience. I spent a few days trying to articulate for myself what upset me so much about the biggest blockbuster of the year (so far).
Unlike some things I read, I personally didn’t care that Helen of Troy was a black woman. If the poor actress had ten lines of script and five minutes on screen, I am being generous. However, I didn’t understand the casting choice of the super-hyped couple of the moment Zendaya (as Athena) and Tom Holland (as Telemachus) who seem to have taken centre stage of the enormous marketing and promotional push that is currently taking place. Spider-Man was a perfect fit for them. Nolan movies and Greek deities should have been spared from being included in their repertoire. It’s a massacre. It’s empty.
Now I am getting to it. It was full but empty. It was full of nothing. It made a lot of noise, took up space and time and gave nothing, ignited nothing, emoted nothing, inspired nothing. It was grandiose externally but flat and draining. Characters were one-dimensional. Even great actors like Anne Hathaway or Robert Pattinson couldn’t do anything to save it. Then there is this scene where Argos, the old and dying dog of Odysseus is being stomped on under the table and yelps of pain. Unbearable. Isn’t the world cruel enough as it is? Was it necessary?
I tried and found nothing to redeem this movie. I read reviews from the entire spectrum of opinions. If you’re tempted, I suggest the essay “An Uncomplicated Man” published in the London Review of Books by Emily Wilson who is a translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad.
What I learned however, once I uncovered the “full of nothing” aspect, is that I could see that exact same pattern in many other places and situations. Social media being the most obvious example. But it’s also in people talking who have nothing to say, people posting who have nothing to say. All wrapped up into somehow fancy and make-believe packages. Yes, “nature abhors a vacuum”, but our own nature needs that space. How are you going to hear yourself thinking, feeling, how are you going to hear or feel others if all of you and all around you is full of noise, of junk, of stuff?
I have written ad nauseam here and in Health and Wellbeing Magazine about the importance of what surrounds us. I don’t think I have ever meant it as much as I do right now.