I spent yesterday in one of my internet holidays. When I woke up, I found myself sitting down at my computer. I made a blog post and then, feeling disgusted with myself for obsessively surfing blog sites, I unplugged my DSL modem, which is a little bit hard to reach behind a pile of stuff along one wall. That provided a sufficiently diffiuclt "barrier to entry" that I managed to stay offline all day. It was a little bit of psychological self-manipulation, I guess – pretending my internet was broken. I just had to forget I had a smartphone, too – but I always keep the ringer turned off on that (so it doesn't interrupt when I'm in class), but that wasn't too hard, as I just stash it on a bookshelf with the charger plugged in when I'm at home, sometimes.
Does this make me an anti-social person, that I take such holidays?
I read some good short stories and even worked on my writing a little bit, but it wasn't a very productive day. I went grocery shopping and cleaned cleaned my apartment a little bit. I felt domestic but not very content. A bit restless. I should have taken a long walk, but this persistent sore throat I've had urged me not to go out into the cold.
I'm back "in the world" today. It's hard to stay away from it, isn't it?
On being “back in the world”:
In October of 2010, I got the idea to visit a friend in Roanoke, Virginia.
I wanted to ride Amtrak. From Washington DC (where I was living) to Roanoke. Why not? I was set on the idea. It was exciting. It turned out, though, to be quite impossible. It’d been years since passenger rail service to Roanoke ended. Passenger service now ends at Lynchburg, Virginia, 60 miles away as the crow flies.
I got the idea to make lemonade out of this batch of lemons Amtrak had dealt me. I would ride to Lynchburg with a backpack, two good walking shoes, and a map or two. I would spend the next few days on a leisurely trek to Roanoke. I was awaiting a job that I was told would start in November, but ultimately never panned out. So I had the time.
I spent the first day doing a walking-tour of Lynchburg, sleeping outside town in a forest. Then, after a day in Lynchburg, and an afternoon in the Lynchburg Public Library, I set out eastbound. All went well, the hiking, navigating, and camping, although there was a cold rain one night. An enjoyable and peaceful five-day-long hike. Lots of Rebel flags in the rural swathe between Lynchburg and Roanoke. On Friday, my fifth day of this journey, I rendezvoused with my friend on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We agreed I’d be walking south along it near Roanoke at 4 PM. I was. I got picked up. — The Blue-Ridge Parkway is a scenic low-speed-limit highway in Virginia and Tennessee with little traffic, and lots of viewpoints, rest areas, and even walking paths alongside. Delightful. I can still hear the friend honking his horn when he saw me — It was the kind of thrill one can only get after an exhausting final push [20+ miles that day, before 4 PM] to make the rendezvous.
I realized that I was totally “off the grid” that week — No computer, no Internet, no email, no phone, no TV, no MP3, not even radio. no direct use of ANY electronic devices for those five days. I used paper maps, of course, which in a few years may itself actually seem quaint. I did carry a turned-off cell-phone, which was not needed in the end. (The friend found me without problem).
I realized in those five days, well I realized again, that Electronic Reality (a world of always-at-our-sides Smart-Phones, instant-messaging, instant Internet access, computer games, TV, and even things as low-tech as the light bulb, all form an artificial “electronic world”. The Non-Electonic Reality is…just…different. I suspect the majority of First-Worlders alive today have never really experienced this ‘Real’ World. Of being forced to rise and turn-in with the sun, of not having easy and instant communication, not having easy and instant information, not having easy electronic-based entertainment. Maybe they’ve come close on a camping trip or two, perhaps, but those things are done for recreation, not real living. My trip had a distinct goal: Arriving on a Friday afternoon in Roanoke, for a weekend visit with my friend. The trip was a method of transportation, fundamentally.
From my occasional forays into it, I have come to see that the ‘real’ Non-Electronic World is definitely more authentic, for better and for worse. Is it “better”? In some ways it is certainly less comfortable, more dangerous, etc., but all the same more authentic. The electronic world helps us, pacifies us, but lulls us into a stupor.
Luther is said to have had a religious experience on a long hike similar to the one I’ve described above. It was a particularly vicious thunderstorm he was stuck in on a foot-journey of some distance. He was studying law at the time, I think. He was convinced he’d die in the storm. He pled for survival to the heavens, and he did survive. The experience amazed him so much that he became a monk. Imagine a 2013 version of the same: Young Mr. Luther is ambling along, checking Facebook every half hour on his Galaxy S3 Smartphone, while listening to pop-songs on his MP3 player. A thunderstorm is coming, but he’d already checked the Internet earlier that day and had seen it coming. As it approaches, in between Facebooking, Young Mr. Luther tracks the storm on live radar on the 4G-ready device he is carrying. When it arrived, Luther takes refuge in a little cave he has located on Google-Maps. No need for divine inspiration. “Sic Transit Gloria”.
Your post inspires me to put into words this long-held belief that this ‘Electronic World’ may not be conducive to an authentic life at all, if leaned on too much. (I do understand the irony/hypocrisy of using an Internet medium to write this little essay). Or maybe I’m wrong and it’s my own problem, that I’ve just failed all of this time to adjust to the Electronic World. That may be it, a bit, but I really do think there is something to this idea of ubiquitous electronics, “The Electronic World”, dampening the prospects for the authentic human life.