On de-screening, identity, and layers of shit.

I discovered recently that Bill Gates goes on occasional personal retreats to think about big global problems and just read and write. During this time he eschews screens and just reads regular books and writes notes on paper.

While I am not a massive fan of Gates this is kind of offline retreat is something I can really get onboard with.

I personally find it much more efficient to plan writing on paper, usually using mind maps, typically in pretty scrawly handwriting because mine is so bad (but I at least can read it!), and basic lists work pretty well too.

I have a handy stash of both note books and loose leaf paper for just these purposes.

I think it's something about the lack of distractions that come with planning NOT on a window on a machine, where it's so easy to click over to something else.

Planning on paper is, by comparison, much more efficient. Although I will say that I have also found the simple notes application on my phone also works well, this is relatively distraction free compared to a window on a PC or laptop.

Anyway, that was the context that led me onto this post....

On de-screening, identity, and layers of shit.

So I thought, OK Gates de-screens to think about BIG PROBLEMS... he's future-thinking, reacting to the world, trying to come up with solutions (probably technical ones) to global warming, for example.

Nothing wrong with that per-se, but this is a far cry from say deep-thinking sans screens for personal insight, in the meditative sense, or personal-development, or transcendent-beyond-the-self 'development', if you get my meaning.

Gate's kind of retreat is still very much a doing retreat, rather than a not-doing retreat. Passing no judgement on either here, each to their own, let's just say that for now.

However this got me to thinking about the growing number of people who are consciously de-screening, consciously spending LESS time on screens, more time back to regular F2F.

Even Weight Watchers has a digital detox plan!

And this becomes part of their identity, they are 'de-screeners' that's a thing, a talking point with others, a sense of commonality with other de-screeners.

But then, isn't that what we ALL did before the mid-90s...?

So now the kind of Tech developments that Gates has been at the forefront of have reduced our quality of lives to the extent that some of us now derive a sense of identity from NOT doing the kind of activities that his technological innovations have encouraged us to do....

And after all that effort of descreening, we now have to get back to the business of constructing identities offline, just like we used to.

One wonders whether the whole identifying online thing isn't just an unnecessary layer of shit that's better off removed.

As in by all means USE the Net and social media, but USE it, for information gathering, basic connectivity, but NOT living.

In a social sense I can't help but feel we're no more evolved than we were in the 1990s, but now we've got a bunch of descreeners who FEEL as if they are because they've descreened.

Whereas all they've really done is removed a layer of shit from their lives.

Posted Using InLeo Alpha