Isn’t reading books a distraction from “solitude” in the same way as scrolling through your phone? Shouldn’t one be deep in your own thoughts to truly achieve “solitude”?
I agree that books can be a distraction from oneself. But they're as different from Twitter as great paintings are from Instagram. Books demand sustained engagement, usually with one idea or story over many hours. At least in my experience, there's far more potential of entering a dialogue with oneself, working out what you really think of a book, over this span of time than in the fleeting experience that social media encourages.
Not to mention that good books have usually survived the scrutiny of decades or even centuries. Their ideas aren't responding to a contemporary trend or discourse, which makes it easier to meet them in solitude, rather than as a member of the public engaged in debate.
You suggest that Gen-z might create our own, un-cringey community founded in our collective cynicism. But isn’t cynicism the opposite of community? Can’t you cynic your way out of every community? Isn’t every shared ritual cultish, strange, and cringey to the afar and distrustful? Football games, church hymns, meditation retreats, the lot. Anything different enough to be spiritual is strange enough to be cringe. In order to find the community to settle our attention Gen-Z must concede cynicism and buy in.
Not a community founded in cynicism, but a different sensibility and technological experience. I agree that "buy-in" will always be necessary to forming community, but we should also be discerning. This particular community wasn't my cup of tea, but if it happens to be yours, more power to you.
“Beneath the facilitators’ soothing instructions, I now heard a vaguely religious tone that struck a discordant note with me.”
Was it discordant because it was “vaguely religious?” Or was it that it was a vaguely religious tone not applied to religious things? In other words, are you categorically opposed to vaguely religious things?
You’re much younger than I: I’m 54. I bristled a bit at your generational dividing in this article. We are all people, and we all have things to learn from other people with different (or similar) experiences to our own.
One of those things is how to pay attention. Maybe consider reading McGilchrist’s THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY. He has a lot to say about what we attend to. He’s partly concerned with how we attend the world around us. How we look at the world determines what we see there. (I don’t know that I’ve heard the word “attend” used elsewhere to mean, essentially, “what we pay attention to,” but I think it’s an interesting usage.)
I don’t see in all this tech sinister conspiracies. It’s more the law of unintended consequences. Coupled, of course, with people’s addiction to dopamine and advertising’s money-making, attention-sucking all-pervasiveness.
Congratulations on taking your life back. Keep it up. This was an interesting piece, worthy of further exploration.
Amazing, amazing, amazing!!!
Isn’t reading books a distraction from “solitude” in the same way as scrolling through your phone? Shouldn’t one be deep in your own thoughts to truly achieve “solitude”?
I agree that books can be a distraction from oneself. But they're as different from Twitter as great paintings are from Instagram. Books demand sustained engagement, usually with one idea or story over many hours. At least in my experience, there's far more potential of entering a dialogue with oneself, working out what you really think of a book, over this span of time than in the fleeting experience that social media encourages.
Not to mention that good books have usually survived the scrutiny of decades or even centuries. Their ideas aren't responding to a contemporary trend or discourse, which makes it easier to meet them in solitude, rather than as a member of the public engaged in debate.
You suggest that Gen-z might create our own, un-cringey community founded in our collective cynicism. But isn’t cynicism the opposite of community? Can’t you cynic your way out of every community? Isn’t every shared ritual cultish, strange, and cringey to the afar and distrustful? Football games, church hymns, meditation retreats, the lot. Anything different enough to be spiritual is strange enough to be cringe. In order to find the community to settle our attention Gen-Z must concede cynicism and buy in.
Not a community founded in cynicism, but a different sensibility and technological experience. I agree that "buy-in" will always be necessary to forming community, but we should also be discerning. This particular community wasn't my cup of tea, but if it happens to be yours, more power to you.
You write:
“Beneath the facilitators’ soothing instructions, I now heard a vaguely religious tone that struck a discordant note with me.”
Was it discordant because it was “vaguely religious?” Or was it that it was a vaguely religious tone not applied to religious things? In other words, are you categorically opposed to vaguely religious things?
You’re much younger than I: I’m 54. I bristled a bit at your generational dividing in this article. We are all people, and we all have things to learn from other people with different (or similar) experiences to our own.
One of those things is how to pay attention. Maybe consider reading McGilchrist’s THE MASTER AND HIS EMISSARY. He has a lot to say about what we attend to. He’s partly concerned with how we attend the world around us. How we look at the world determines what we see there. (I don’t know that I’ve heard the word “attend” used elsewhere to mean, essentially, “what we pay attention to,” but I think it’s an interesting usage.)
I don’t see in all this tech sinister conspiracies. It’s more the law of unintended consequences. Coupled, of course, with people’s addiction to dopamine and advertising’s money-making, attention-sucking all-pervasiveness.
Congratulations on taking your life back. Keep it up. This was an interesting piece, worthy of further exploration.
Go to your local Catholic or Orthodox Church and you may find fellow semi-luddites without the hipster lingo.