It pains me greatly to repeat the phrase, "facts don't care about your feelings". One immediately reads it with a nasal, annoying girlfriend tone and intonation.
And yet, despite its unpleasant bouquet, it holds true for most things in life.
I like Gabor Maté's criteria for addiction:
Dr Maté uses three criteria in his definition of addiction. Firstly, craving the addictive substance or behaviour; secondly, engaging in the addictive substance or behaviour to experience pleasure or temporary relief from some kind of pain; and finally, the inability to give the substance or behaviour up.
Free will is an absurd and ridiculous concept. What drives us occurs without conscious purview. Measurement shows us this (again, if it were up to wordcels, we’d still be arguing about this - it was only when the measurers came in that it was put to bed).
Because we’re not in control, measurement is operationally essential to understanding what is habbening.
Biology is as real as things get, and much can be measured and ascertained.
The importance of biology requires no explanation. If we are anything, we are a set of drives and impulses. Drives and impulses are derived from genes interacting with the environment. Emanating from some mysterious substrate of the jewniverse, whilst being loosely contained within the borders of our bodies. Indeed, this is what we mistake for a self.
Attachment to sensations and thoughts, as they arise against the infinite backdrop of consciousness.
The mechanisms inducing types or qualities of experience, without a doubt, can be measured. People measure heart rate, testosterone…thyroid….cholesterol…whatever it is inside our bodies.
Outside our bodies, we're typically happy that flight engineers check our aircraft's sensors, probes, and structural integrity before we fly in it. We wouldn't argue that these measurements are not required for the successful operation of an aircraft.
Testosterone is below x level: we notice your acting like a bitch.
The plane has a broken wing: change it, or chances are you, and 300 others will cease to exist.
There is a relatively concrete reality to measurements and what they can indicate to one about the state of this lumbering gene robot we call a body, as it acts in space.
Whatever you want to say about the limits of scumbot understanding, assertions of the non-material nature of reality - whatever other word plays or dogmas people come up with - is irrelevant to what I discuss here.
And irrelevant to what we will be discussing further in the coming weeks, with my measurements. As we aim to completely transform our ANS function for the better, permanently.
Unfortunately, it has become undeniably apparent to me, that if we want to hjave a ridgy-didge ANS function, and thus life, certain sacrifices will need to be made. The addict will need to reassess what he consider important.
Measurement of the body indicates what is happening in the organism when exposed to certain stimuli. Patterns in nature. Specific outcomes are associated with what is happening in the organism, and can also be measures. End of story. I’m sorry if this is sounding insultingly simple. For whatever reason, people are finding this difficult to understand.
I don't say that you must exist in this or that way. I dislike advice guys and moral-fagging.
I do show that the quality of some ways of existing, as a matter of experience, are inferior to others. Indeed, in terms of the diminished sensations and retardations of cognition and body mediums like social media induce in the present and over time.
To clarify, I'm essentially proposing two things:
Existing in energetically and time-deficient states due to chronic social media use - and being logo-centric in general - ironically severely diminish the ability to achieve any of the grandiose goals people say they have in the real world.
Concrete methods are available to manage chronic ANS excitation, the associated hormonal cascade retardation, vascular integrity and 1000's other impacts induced by social media and rubbish cultural-biological habituations. These methods increase focus, attention, biological integrity and vitality, and effectiveness in real-world action. Matter moving matter, which is required for grandiose real world goals.
The way of the superior man is that of virile focus and attention and must therefore preclude things that diminish it.
Yet, I'm not proposing a binary choice. There is a sliding scale here. Everyone needs some entertainment. The problem is when people start mistaking mere amusements for something tangible, and suffer for it.
Suppose you're one of the few more concerned with enhancing your personal power, which any good Nietzschean or person who enjoys life should be. In that case, your decision-making criteria are simple.
Some things enhance you and some things diminish you.
Our choices, therefore, should be based on whatever allows you to maximise living energetically and joyfully.
I'm making the case that being involved in non-operationalist abstraction too much, while often entertaining, is largely diminishing. Unless you're making dirhams off it like some people are.
I'm also presenting ways in which you can become more resilient to those things that were probably developed to transform you into a product, a consumptive unit, an object of manipulation and a data set all in one.
We all decide how we want to entertain ourselves. The danger is when we mix up what is entertaining and operational. Granted, in some cases, the dividing line is opaque - but in your experience, it is not opaque.
Pushing an addict to change or give up an addiction usually only results in them pushing back. The desire to change has to come from the addict to have the best chance of success.
What diminishes your experience of life? What enhances your experience of life?
Simple questions with vast implications.
Anywise, I'm off for a surf. If you have any issues with this message, please let me know via twitter - I won't check, nor will I respond.
Have a nice day. Get offline. Enjoy yourself.
-A