I must admit: I am so over the internet! Even as I embrace new technological capabilities it provides, such as podcasting, etc, I find myself less and less personally reliant on it. I know there was a point in my research, writing and in my life in general when I really needed it, and when I thought it was really important and really good.
But I no longer think that. I no longer need it as a crutch anymore. I’ve been feeling like this for a while now actually. And I suspect a good number of other people have been as well, if only judging by the number of bloggers over the past six months who have closed up shop altogether and moved onto something better. (Wired magazine also seems to have spotted a similar trend)
My friend JK talks a lot about what he calls “ancient instant messenger,” which I take to mean something like this invisible connection that we can develop and share with other people - even at a great distance (I referenced it in my first podcast, actually). Some might call it telepathy, or maybe even compassion. But whatever it is, it’s a pre-existing thing within the human mind, heart and soul that the internet has only made more concrete, more visible.
Despite increasingly frantic attacks by the powers that be, I don’t personally think the internet is going anywhere. But it’s interesting to think about what each and every one of us would do if it did. What would you do if tomorrow you woke up and found out that your internet was down? This is probably a common occurence, thanks to the unreliability of most internet service providers. But what if it lasted all day, and continued through the weekend? What if you talked to your neighbors and found out theirs was down too? What if you called your mom in Idaho and found out hers was down too? And then it simply never came back online?
How would you feel? What would you do to fill up your time you usually spend online? Who would you blame? How mad would you be?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past few months. And part of me wonders if maybe that’s not actually the best thing for us. Homeland Security thinks the internet is radicalizing us? Ha! Take it away and watch how radical we become when we take what we’ve learned online about forging connections with like minds and persuading others and use that on our neighbors and co-workers because we have no other outlet and the situation is looking more and more dire each day! Just watch! The internet at this point has become in a lot of ways a safety valve: people can vent their frustrations with other people who actually care, so that we don’t necessarily need to spend time trying to talk to other people physically close by us about the things that are the most important to us.
If you’re into conspiracy theory or alternative religion or media literacy or some other subject we talk about here, when was the last time you tried to have a conversation in real life about this stuff? I know some of us don’t want to “look crazy” with our friends and family, and so rely on the internet for these types of conversations. But I’m thinking more and more that’s actually fairly detrimental. What we need more than anything is to stop preaching to the choir. Stop trying to reach those who already know. I’m not advocating we go out and evangelize on street corners (although hey, who knows?), but that we don’t actively hide our values from others around us for fear of ridicule or argument. I’m only saying this because I do it myself a lot, in some kind of vain attempt to smooth out social interactions and not always be “that guy” saying shit to people who don’t want to hear it. It’s a difficult thing to balance, but there’s a nice quote in the Sermon on the Mount about this, I think: “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”
Also funny is that when I moved into my new house a couple of months ago, I discovered a sheet of paper hanging by the backdoor with Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugural speech printed on it, which couldn’t relate more:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
That such a message would have been left for me in the house I moved into is, I think, ample evidence of “ancient instant messenger” hard at work. It may be time to wean ourselves off the external structure the internet provided for us and develop these anciently human internal technologies so that our light can shine out on the world.
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12 Comments
If the internet was down forever
I would miss it. Then go batshit crazy for a few hours, make some improvised explosives, get my crazy anarchist friends together to fight the archons who we would belive to be preparing to end our free lives forever.
And then, as with other times this came close to happening on a smaller scale for a much smaller reason several times before, a beautiful girl would put it in perspective and I would realize it’s not that big of a deal. But I would miss this site. and Olde English (www.oldeenglish.org) and wikipeidia. But other then that, i’d just spend way more time at the library.
heh, my and my friends’ conversations have been known to cause psychotic episodes up to half a block away.
Good point about our dependence on the Internet for the kind of debate that is near to our hearts. Why wouldn’t we be able to do that in real life?
It reminded me of an essay by Douglas Rushkoff called ‘What’s Next‘, in which he also discusses a possible transcendence from the Internet to a more close-to-home version of a global brain, namely one running on the trusted biological server inside your skull.
Could the internet really function as a global gnostic catalyst? As a pair of crutches that can support us in the journey of regaining our intuitive, right-brain faculties amidst a left-brain conformist society? It’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Yeah, I come aross as an adjusted human being in real life, the internet allows me the persona of being a retarded dadaist.
If the internet went down forever I’d probably stay inside for a few days until people who play MMORPGS stop rampaging, because I’ve definitely seen some anger fits thrown over 15 minutes of the game being down.
I actually printed up thousands of technocracy brochures that I wrote, and went around and put them under windshield wipers at the state capitol and elsewhere last year. Now I figure I am actually probably reaching more people.
I would probably do more of that, if it went down for a few days. Ha.
Here it is — me battling about a dozen people! haha.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/200...0/glutton_for_punishment.php#comments
I agree. Over the past five years or so, I’ve spent far too much time on the web - reading political blogs, engaging in pointless debates with other internet-dependent geeks, or just reflexively surfing from site to site. There’s MORE out there! I’ve gotta see ALL of it! Gotta KNOW! Talk about your Faustian bargains. Paradoxically, in a very real sense my life is more impoverished now than before the internet. Instead of writing actual letters, I tap out little phatic emails to friends. Instead of spending time outdoors in the actual world, I sit alone in front of a screen (so much for virtual “community”). Thanks to the internet, I’ve assembled far more information in all forms than I can possibly assimilate in what remains of my life. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but recently I’ve begun to think about pulling the plug.
I’m not going to promote that kind of behavior, sorry!
P.S. said:
why’s it always have to be one extreme or the other?
Why is it that everyone is so often accusing one another of “binary thinking”? I see this all the time…
I’ve experienced this quite a few times. I have a close friend from childhood whom I’ve stayed in contact with for a very long time through the aether. The fact that she until very recently lived in Alaska and I have lived in Oregon, Washington and now California doesn’t seem to have made communication in this way any more difficult than simply calling her up.
She and I have a long history of having emails cross each other through the internet, handwritten letters that crossed through the mail with spontaneously-chosen similar subjects….we’ve always been very close spiritually although extremely distant physically. I’ve always wondered if I could try this with anyone else….
On another note I’d have to say that I wouldn’t miss the Internet one bit if it were gone. I’ve recently found out about an 80-acre plot in the Sierras that I could conceiveably get my hands on for a song….why wait for the collapse? Why not escape long beforehand?
-k