Countercultural Musings
Clarifying what I need to find joy- not every minute of the day- but regularly so that I can sustain my mental health, energy level, human connection to others, and trust in other human beings is an ongoing process. I must spell this process out for myself. My culture is not nurturing me. It can break me in ways that cannot be withstood over time. Depression, half-alive existence, and lack of joy are not conditions that
I envision prolonging into my future.
If the demands of my culture do not allow me to focus deeply, I am searching for ways to practice a countercultural lifestyle. I DO NOT CHOOSE to participate in a cultural practice that forces me to train my brain to leap from one superficial task to another like a gymnast on steroids. The feeling of constant anxiety caused by shallow flightiness and socially obligatory instability of my train of thought degrades my quality of life. I want to experience joy, not perpetual anxiety and lack of connection to others because there is never enough time to connect on a deeper level. I am searching for community and opportunities in my daily life to relate with others who crave the same liberty and autonomy of disconnecting from destructive widespread cultural practices. Join me?
All of the things that require depth are suffering, and we are sacrificing depth in all sorts of dimensions of modern life. Depth takes time. And depth takes reflection. It takes attention and commitment.
-paraphrasing Sune Lehmann in Johann Hari's book
Stolen Focus...
The ability to multitask is not possible for the human brain to accomplish according to a leading neuroscientist at MIT. Professor Earl Miller, in the book Stolen Focus, states that constant switching from task to task degrades our ability to focus. Our performance drops when we switch focus because the brain must correct errors and backtrack, so no deep thinking can occur. Errors happen when we switch tasks that would not happen if we were focused on one task only; Finally, we are likely to have less creativity over time when we ‘multitask’ which happens constantly in modern life as people shift focus from one activity to another.
Our brains are creative when they have time to “shape new connections out of what [they’ve] seen and heard and learned” (Hari 40). If time is spent switching focus and correcting errors, the brain cannot follow its “...associative links down to new places and really [have] truly original and creative thoughts” (Hari 40).
We use our precious mental energy shifting from one activity to another, exhausting ourselves mentally at work, so in the end we don’t have the mental strength to allow our brains the time they need to ruminate over one idea or task- i.e., think deeply. The demands of our culture do not allow us to focus. Hari reports that “...the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company, for example, gets just twenty-eight uninterrupted minutes a day” (41). Hari goes on to describe the exhaustion the brain experiences from filtering and sifting through the huge amounts of information it encounters on a daily basis. “In addition to switching tasks like never before, our brains are also being forced to filter more frantically than at any point in our past” (p. 44).
Our ability to pay attention deteriorates and our work gets worse under these circumstances.
LJ’s Footnote - an imprint of truth
Reclaiming my life is something I must find the strength to approach or I will be an agonized, status quo afflicted, and an ailing human being. I have been that human being for several months, and I don’t want a lifetime existence in this frame of mind. I am looking forward to experiencing more joy in my life.
