Electronic visual stimulation
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
@how said:
I know of no attachments more widely addictive to todays worlds inhabitants than the electronic visual stimulation that we are all plugged into. Gaming is just part of it.
I think if you take the widest possible view of this it starts with print media (books and photos), continues to radio, cinema and television, internet-connected computers and eventually the smartphone. They become gradually more addictive, although arguably computers without social media are less harmful. The era of always available Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube seems to have made this addiction widespread.
Personally I try to protect myself from this by using as little social media as possible, but I still find it hard to limit my forum use. When I go to visit my father and don’t have my tablet with me, I still log in on my phone, and suddenly my phone use goes up by three hours a day. Dropping forums completely I would expect to create some withdrawal.
I find the ‘Screen Time’ indicators on my devices and the weekly usage stats a great reminder of how much time I spend with devices.
How does this feel for you?
Comments
I have always noted that for myself the prime sense gate of interest is the visual one.
It is the key signaling device in full attendance when I'm present and the first one that books off when I'm about to leave the building.
When we talk about a practice feeling like it's 3 steps forward followed by two steps back, my two steps back seem to be intrinsically connected to my conditioned susceptibility to visual stimulation.
If I have a totem animal, karmically it would probably be a Magpie. An ever-widening heart & mind only limited by whatever sparkle from any nearby phenomena happens to catch my eye at the moment.
My most consistently helpful medicine for my obfuscations of reality is to physically limit my total screen time allotments of any day to be no longer in duration than whatever time I devote that same day to formal meditation. I think this sometimes looks a bit like a Presbyterian's idea of a Buddhist practice (or punishment). Still, it effectively self-regulates my own conditioned responses to electronic stimulation like no other method.
So dam you, Jeroen!
The construction of this response has just added another 3/4 hour of formal meditation to my day. My meditation being reduced to an imaginary hair shirt, ever competing with the torments of electronic media addictions.
I’m sure the insight brought about will eventually be worth it @how
Thanks to @lobster for finding this channel, this video in particular resonated with me
Your example has not gone unnoticed, good sir. I have been contemplating this, and I think it is a good method. Now I won’t be able to take it on board as stated, I just don’t have the capacity to meditate for multiple hours a day. But I may adapt it in some fashion, to bring down the number of aimless hours I spend on my iPad each day, and bring some balance to my life.
That does sound like a downside, yes, but your presence here is appreciated.
My battle is not between meditation and electronics but between productivity and lazy distractions/indulgences. I am not talking about rest or fun-things-we-actually-want-to-do, which I include in productivity, but pure laziness, which includes but is not limited to mindless electronics consumption.
Recently, I did an experiment of having a simple stopwatch on my wrist and measuring the time I spent doing productive things. It was a great motivator and lowered my lazy procrastinations substantially. The only problem is I sometimes forgot to press the stopwatch when changing activities so the mesurement gets imprecise, sometimes very much so, which made me stop the experiment. Think I'll give it another go.