Concretely, though, the Fear of Missing Out interrupts, continually, all day every day, any possibility of relaxation and expansion. Of just sitting there, slack jawed, watching the clouds, or a stream, or birds flying around, or grass growing.
Ponder how the 2020 use of LSD is to be more productive, in order to be more “successful.” More successful means more money. But what does more money mean? It’s all a silly game, whose nature hasn’t really changed since Chaplin’s conveyor belt, or Lucille Ball’s. Who is pushing it?
Kids nowadays are being taught to blame “Capitalism”, but as I’ve argued often, this is stupid. The blame rests with the bankers and the dilution of our money, and following productive power. We should have plenty of leisure now.
But what would we do with it? We are wound up like coiled springs. Most people “relax” by watching scenes of intense violence. I have not and don’t plan to watch Game of Thrones, but I understand it includes regular scenes of torture made as graphic as their technology allows them. No doubt VR torture scenes exist now somewhere.
I was driving down my street the other day. It’s just a normal middle class street in a normal middle class neighborhood. And it hit me–it was 7 or 8 PM–that in most of those houses most of those people were watching TV, and probably watching people get murdered. Cops and robbers. War. Horror movies. The kids are in their rooms practicing shooting people.
Not all homes. Some were sitting around the kitchen table reading the Bible. Many were watching sports, at least back when sports were on. I tend to exaggerate bad things.
But still, that was not a fully wrong perception either. And that people gather around the glowing altar nightly is really demographic fact. The average American watches almost 8 hours of TV a day.
Dear God, I was expecting to see 4 hours and that would have been crazy to me.
But all of this, all of the blinking lights, all the things that would stop if the power went off, all of it takes us away from time and space, from stillness and quiet.
Small wonder we are insane.
Anyway, I will share something I just rediscovered: model kits. One of the first things I can remember that made me happy as a kid were model kits. I really liked particularly the Aurora model kits. I had King Kong, and Godzilla, and a couple Neanderthal’s, and quite a few more. I was very attached to them, and very proud of them.
I just started painting and assembling a Vought F4U-1A Corsair, the type of plane Pappy Boyington flew. It is REALLY small: 1:72 scale. It takes patience. But it is really, really calming.
I am going to start including more things in my life that are slow.
As I’ve shared from time to time, I’m a bit down on the current Dalai Lama, for reasons I’ve probably articulated. I will actually add an interesting anecdote from “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”, by Alexandra David Neel, where she relates a mendicant Saddhu mocking the then-Dalai Lama, for lacking the power to protect Tibet. Said Saddhu himself was able to push someone away without touching him, so he apparently had some powers of his own.
But this Dalai Lama seems like he could have a permanent show at Vegas, or a facsimile of the Potala built for him at Epcot Center. Maybe that’s just me being an asshole. That is a distinct possibility.
But one thing he said I liked was that a hobby of his is working on watches. This requires enormous care and enormous patience. I like that.
Oh, it’s an interesting ride, all of this. But most of the time that you are looking at a screen, you are probably missing it. You are not learning much about yourself or the world. You might learn facts–or what are presented as facts–watching documentaries, but they won’t teach you to think, to see, or to feel honestly. All that happens far from the blinking lights.