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I was going to say that the line in the article >> This new mode of living came with another alien sensation: that of having tons of time. describes what it's

I was going to say that the line in the article >> This new mode of living came with another alien sensation: that of having tons of time. describes what it's like for me if I don't smoke or drink for a few days. You say you healed your addiction and depression by going off-grid. I lived off-grid for a long time and it probably made me more of an addict. But at least I was living a genuine life, meeting people and ending up in weird situations that stimulated me. Not in the depressing mundane world of social media. Your post makes me remember that, and it's something I very much want to get back to. The original article makes me sad that people a few years younger than me are so addicted to this screen that 3 days away is as difficult and mind-boggling for them as 3 days without booze is for me.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
> I lived off-grid for a long time and it probably made me more of an addict. it was the same for me. The first time when I returned back to civilization I was overwhelmed by the emotions of being among humans again. Shopping malls, busy side walks, traffic or more than 3 people in a room almost gave me panic attacks. The addict in me said: "you've got so much catching up to do". "surely you earned the right to party a little after all this abstinence?". I've been an addict all life so it would be preposterous to think I could kick the habit within a few months. What it did give me was the confidence to face my own feelings all by myself? Feelings I never faced being sober. My second hike was well planned out and I cut down my drinking and smoking well before I left. Suddenly there was a destination (on the map) I had to reach in very specific time, a level of fitness required, a positive state of mind I wanted to be in much more than a blunt, a scotch or the approval of the opposite sex. Also what contributed was that I gradually replaced quite a number of relationships with more positive ones that supported and believed in me, and who didn't really know or care about the old me. I'll continue to struggle because there is no cure for the human condition. It's not _one_ thing I have to do and some months later it's all different. It's playing the long game and realizing that even if I sometimes lose myself I must get back up.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Coming back is a shock - I was out for 10 years (not all in the wilderness, but mostly renting in small towns or camping or living in a van in Asia, Europe, Australia). I had the misfortune of coming back to the US a month before Trump won the election. I had the double misfortune of my homecoming flight being to Las Vegas for my brother's bachelor party. The fucking darkness. The recessed lighting, the militarized look of the signs and vehicles. I still remember turning on the TV in the hotel room and listening to this horrible shit pour out of the only channels... things I couldn't imagine ten years earlier. It took a couple years before it sank in and the daily shocks started to numb me. And encumber my mind. But I'd been an alkie on the road, and when the pandemic hit all the worst of that came back. Spent most of the last couple years inside a bottle, with no way out. Nowhere to go. Nowhere you can go. Girlfriend likes to drink, but tells me I should sober up. Girlfriend seems like the reason I drink sometimes, but she's not; just the sense of being trapped. When your only outlet is through a screen, or patio outside the bar with a few neighbors, everything narrows down. I know a guy who just got back from ice climbing in Utah and I think, well, fuck it's too late for me to ever do something like that. I really feel trapped. Hey anyway, thank you for sharing this. It does give me some inspiration. You're the kind of person I hope I run into out there, when or if I do get out there again.
  - Cd00d 5y ago
    Hey, good luck. I hear you.
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    I experience this too where I find it hard to motivate myself as I get older. So I stay clear of activities which I used to be my biggest hobbies, either because of fear to my health (snowboarding, ultra marathons, etc) or because my mind ages which is the hardest fight of it all because it all starts with attitude. Spotting that behavior in myself is the hardest thing of all. So easy to see it in my friends but am totally blind to my own idiotic old-man behavior. Thanks nuduerme for the delightful discussion. It's always nice to bump into like-minded "travelers" like yourself :)
maccard 5y ago
> The original article makes me sad that people a few years younger than me are so addicted to this screen that 3 days away is as difficult and mind-boggling for them as 3 days without booze is for me. This is the same argument that has been used for generations. Our parents were addicted to rock music, before that it was something else, and you can go as far back as socrates to say they preferred "chatter" to exercise. Why is 3 days without any screens such a big deal. Not all screens are the same. 3 days of doomscrolling on instagram is not the same as watching an hour of a movie or a tv series, or using youtube for guitar lessons. Why is not going 3 days without screens an addiction, but not going 3 days without reading a book not an addiction?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Having one foot in both eras - pre and post internet screens - I can clearly see that no activity that existed before (TV, "rock music", radio shows) was anywhere near as addictive for me as the crack cocaine of smart phone apps. And I'm relatively inoculated against it. Relatively: Compared to people who never knew the world before. Our parents weren't "addicted" to rock music. Reading a book is, objectively, infinitely better for your mind than watching even the most erudite educational video on YouTube, for the simple reason that you're required to visualize the content for yourself. This was common knowledge during the TV era. The only thing that made TV not the end of reason was that it was a large object that children couldn't drag with them everywhere. No, it's not just an "old man" generational thing. The people raised in the smart phone era are different. This is a qualitatively different technology, a far more invasive and all-encompassing form of media than anything that's existed before, and it distorts the basic elements of what it means to be human, namely: *How one encounters others, how one encounters nature, and how one encounters oneself*. Three fundamental discoveries that are lost when they are discovered "for you" via a constant stream of videos, podcasts, news feeds, texts and blog posts in your pocket. For the first time, it's possible to imagine a human who never discovers any of the basic things about life; who lives from cradle to grave being shown images of kangaroos and dolphins, watching shows about lovers and wars, without ever actually experiencing any of them, and being satiated with the constant flood of images presented, dying with no knowledge of anything besides the shadows on the cave wall. That is a fundamental shift in what we do as a society with human capital, what we teach children, and what it means to be an adult; and this is visible throughout every aspect of our current decline as a civilization. Listen to an interview on YouTube with random people on the street in 1960, on any subject, and you will hear voices from blue-collar high school educated people that are more eloquent - by habit of learning to communicate directly with others - than the most gifted podcasters are today. So no, the difference here is not just "rock and roll" versus "big band". Or even printing press versus handwritten scrolls. It's a cheapening and denuding of the human landscape; and I say this as someone who spent most of my life building the systems that contributed to it and, superficially, am mostly enmeshed in it, understand it, and don't believe it should rob us of authenticity. But it does. Rock and roll never robbed anyone of authentic experience. Neither did reading a book.
jcelerier 5y ago
> But at least I was living a genuine life for a very western-culture-centric definition of "genuine life"
- noduerme 5y ago
  Meh. Who was living a more genuine life? A guy who grew up in a village sleeping on reeds and riding an elephant? I mean, I knew a guy like that. He wanted to move to the city for electricity, and to own a Playstation. "Genuine" in the way I'm using it means unfiltered interaction, following your intellectual curiosity, willingness and sometimes bravery to enter unknown territory. It wouldn't need to be described as "genuine" in other cultures because there's no artificial alternative.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

> I lived off-grid for a long time and it probably made me more of an addict. it was the same for me. The first time when I returned back to civilization I was overwhelmed by the emotions of being among humans again. Shopping malls, busy side walks, traffic or more than 3 people in a room almost gave me panic attacks. The addict in me said: "you've got so much catching up to do". "surely you earned the right to party a little after all this abstinence?". I've been an addict all life so it would be preposterous to think I could kick the habit within a few months. What it did give me was the confidence to face my own feelings all by myself? Feelings I never faced being sober. My second hike was well planned out and I cut down my drinking and smoking well before I left. Suddenly there was a destination (on the map) I had to reach in very specific time, a level of fitness required, a positive state of mind I wanted to be in much more than a blunt, a scotch or the approval of the opposite sex. Also what contributed was that I gradually replaced quite a number of relationships with more positive ones that supported and believed in me, and who didn't really know or care about the old me. I'll continue to struggle because there is no cure for the human condition. It's not _one_ thing I have to do and some months later it's all different. It's playing the long game and realizing that even if I sometimes lose myself I must get back up.

noduerme 5y ago
Coming back is a shock - I was out for 10 years (not all in the wilderness, but mostly renting in small towns or camping or living in a van in Asia, Europe, Australia). I had the misfortune of coming back to the US a month before Trump won the election. I had the double misfortune of my homecoming flight being to Las Vegas for my brother's bachelor party. The fucking darkness. The recessed lighting, the militarized look of the signs and vehicles. I still remember turning on the TV in the hotel room and listening to this horrible shit pour out of the only channels... things I couldn't imagine ten years earlier. It took a couple years before it sank in and the daily shocks started to numb me. And encumber my mind. But I'd been an alkie on the road, and when the pandemic hit all the worst of that came back. Spent most of the last couple years inside a bottle, with no way out. Nowhere to go. Nowhere you can go. Girlfriend likes to drink, but tells me I should sober up. Girlfriend seems like the reason I drink sometimes, but she's not; just the sense of being trapped. When your only outlet is through a screen, or patio outside the bar with a few neighbors, everything narrows down. I know a guy who just got back from ice climbing in Utah and I think, well, fuck it's too late for me to ever do something like that. I really feel trapped. Hey anyway, thank you for sharing this. It does give me some inspiration. You're the kind of person I hope I run into out there, when or if I do get out there again.
- Cd00d 5y ago
  Hey, good luck. I hear you.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  I experience this too where I find it hard to motivate myself as I get older. So I stay clear of activities which I used to be my biggest hobbies, either because of fear to my health (snowboarding, ultra marathons, etc) or because my mind ages which is the hardest fight of it all because it all starts with attitude. Spotting that behavior in myself is the hardest thing of all. So easy to see it in my friends but am totally blind to my own idiotic old-man behavior. Thanks nuduerme for the delightful discussion. It's always nice to bump into like-minded "travelers" like yourself :)

maccard 5y ago

> The original article makes me sad that people a few years younger than me are so addicted to this screen that 3 days away is as difficult and mind-boggling for them as 3 days without booze is for me. This is the same argument that has been used for generations. Our parents were addicted to rock music, before that it was something else, and you can go as far back as socrates to say they preferred "chatter" to exercise. Why is 3 days without any screens such a big deal. Not all screens are the same. 3 days of doomscrolling on instagram is not the same as watching an hour of a movie or a tv series, or using youtube for guitar lessons. Why is not going 3 days without screens an addiction, but not going 3 days without reading a book not an addiction?

noduerme 5y ago
Having one foot in both eras - pre and post internet screens - I can clearly see that no activity that existed before (TV, "rock music", radio shows) was anywhere near as addictive for me as the crack cocaine of smart phone apps. And I'm relatively inoculated against it. Relatively: Compared to people who never knew the world before. Our parents weren't "addicted" to rock music. Reading a book is, objectively, infinitely better for your mind than watching even the most erudite educational video on YouTube, for the simple reason that you're required to visualize the content for yourself. This was common knowledge during the TV era. The only thing that made TV not the end of reason was that it was a large object that children couldn't drag with them everywhere. No, it's not just an "old man" generational thing. The people raised in the smart phone era are different. This is a qualitatively different technology, a far more invasive and all-encompassing form of media than anything that's existed before, and it distorts the basic elements of what it means to be human, namely: *How one encounters others, how one encounters nature, and how one encounters oneself*. Three fundamental discoveries that are lost when they are discovered "for you" via a constant stream of videos, podcasts, news feeds, texts and blog posts in your pocket. For the first time, it's possible to imagine a human who never discovers any of the basic things about life; who lives from cradle to grave being shown images of kangaroos and dolphins, watching shows about lovers and wars, without ever actually experiencing any of them, and being satiated with the constant flood of images presented, dying with no knowledge of anything besides the shadows on the cave wall. That is a fundamental shift in what we do as a society with human capital, what we teach children, and what it means to be an adult; and this is visible throughout every aspect of our current decline as a civilization. Listen to an interview on YouTube with random people on the street in 1960, on any subject, and you will hear voices from blue-collar high school educated people that are more eloquent - by habit of learning to communicate directly with others - than the most gifted podcasters are today. So no, the difference here is not just "rock and roll" versus "big band". Or even printing press versus handwritten scrolls. It's a cheapening and denuding of the human landscape; and I say this as someone who spent most of my life building the systems that contributed to it and, superficially, am mostly enmeshed in it, understand it, and don't believe it should rob us of authenticity. But it does. Rock and roll never robbed anyone of authentic experience. Neither did reading a book.

jcelerier 5y ago

> But at least I was living a genuine life for a very western-culture-centric definition of "genuine life"

noduerme 5y ago
Meh. Who was living a more genuine life? A guy who grew up in a village sleeping on reeds and riding an elephant? I mean, I knew a guy like that. He wanted to move to the city for electricity, and to own a Playstation. "Genuine" in the way I'm using it means unfiltered interaction, following your intellectual curiosity, willingness and sometimes bravery to enter unknown territory. It wouldn't need to be described as "genuine" in other cultures because there's no artificial alternative.