4 ms·
> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the
by colmvp 9y ago
> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything.
I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. Or that abstaining from social media but still having access to online content would benefit my brain.
To me, it's not like M&M Peanuts, where I can either have no M&M Peanuts because none exist in the house, or can consume entire bag in one sitting because some are in the cabinet. Instead, I think it's fair to say I should be more open about being discriminating on the technology we use instead of naively accepting every new hot thing as being good for us as long as we have the discipline to moderate.
I know of people who basically lost years of their lives to World of Warcraft, which is entirely why I never ever touched that game with a ten foot pole because I know my susceptibility to those games. It's also why I deleted Facebook/Twitter, because I know I easily get hooked onto news and that hundreds of designers/engineers are working on captivating my brain in the name of ad revenue.
In a sense, I feel like we just all need to be honest about our own limits and acknowledge that technology has a drawback that is not insignificant. Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized.
- alsetmusic 9y ago> I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. The title refers to a completely different lifestyle, not an added day of leisure. It directly contrasts “hunter-gatherers” and “wealthy westerners.” This is not a trivial distinction.
- aorloff 9y agoYou might have picked M&M peanuts randomly, but sugar is a big part of the creeping force of civilization, and hard to fathom its impact on you until you take a break from it for several months.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI made a bet to avoid eating or drinking anything with added sugar for a month. It made me discover how much stuff has added sugar. Things that I would assume would be fine to eat all had added sugar. Most bread was a write off, practically every sauce, and more or less every packaged food contained sugar. To be honest, the sugar cravings weren't hard to work through, I've never really eaten much sugar, but the sheer amount of food that I wasn't able to eat because of added sugar was staggering. At least drinking was easy, I could still drink most wines, beers, and spirits.
- gbog 9y ago> how much stuff has added sugar I depends on what is "edible stuff" to you. Carrots, meat, cabage, fish, etc. have no added sugar in them. Why not simply cook your food, like most people in the world do? From what I read here and there, Americans have completely lost foot with food, for them having a meal means to take some boxed thing out of the fridge and put it in the microwave owen for 10 mn. This is /not/ a normal meal, it's a lazy way to get one's belly filled. The normal meal for normal people is prepared at home from raw ingredients and some spices.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI'm not an American. But yes, in the end, I did end up cooking all my food, not that I eat that much ready-to-eat food anyway. The problem is that I ended up having to make practically everything from scratch. I couldn't use pasta sauces, since they all have added sugar. Most bread has added sugar as well, so no bread for me.
- gbog 9y agoThat's not bread, that's sliced industrial cake branded as bread sold in wharehouses. Get your bread from a boulangerie and slice it yourself. And yes, buy no "pasta sauce" because it is just industrial pseudo tomato jam with a formula that has 50 "ingredients", just buy tomatoes and cook them slowly with some onions.
- aryehof 9y ago> Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized. What was his stance on email?