Although I’ve stopped my “net detox” there is one lingering conclusion. And it isn’t exclusive to the net: a set of activities which I would deem The Grey Zone.
Grey Zone activities are stimulating, yet numbing. Engaging, yet undemanding. I briefly touched on this topic with regards to immersion. But only briefly. The missing piece, I think, is how the Grey Zone evicts your mind’s eye.
When you’re in the grey zone — watching television, browsing the internet, playing video games — you turn off your mind’s eye. Each activity listed provides a constant thoughtflow that replaces yours. It effectively shuts down the production of your own thoughts. More accurately, a subset of thoughts that are uniquely yours; you are now reacting at best. This isn’t anything new though. The grey zone exists in the past; we can attribute some old-era restlessness to excessive book reading, which Schopenhauer has some famous(?) remarks. I’ll paste here for convenience.
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal — that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk.
Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralyzing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts.
Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.
From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, On Reading
This phenomenon of reading oneself stupid has instead been replaced with far more sinister grey-zone activities. It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that majority of people — myself included — only gives maybe 5% of their mind real estate to reflection and generating their own thoughts. Why is that?
Because the grey zone has a clever trick to it: just by barely toeing the line between passive and active — where you can trace the footprints in the sand without ever bothering to look up — it makes it all too easy to never look up. In fact, looking up is something people actively avoid.
I’m sure you may have said before I don’t want to be alone or, more accurately, I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts. Why is this? Maybe we’re afraid to see how little we’ve given thought. But I think it’s because the grey zone makes you afraid to look up. It makes you forget how to look up. What it means.
How do you look up from the fading prints in the sand, how do you add to your internal canvas? It is a foreign activity to many now. And I think it does require some alone time. But it is hard to discover, because the grey zone has replaced it: relaxation. I don’t think majority of people know how to relax. If you talk to anyone, they talk about how they wind down with some television: but remember, television is actually a stimulant. You’re accepting new information, even if it is trivial. No wonder one may feel more restless, or experience that show-end emptiness from a binge: you are just more deeply recessed into the cavity you’re carving out in your head to make room for such binging.
To genuinely relax is to sit in a chair and do nothing. Some people evangelize this old-age activity of farmers and medieval and the like as .meditation. to separate us even further from its original beauty. But I concede, since the word .relax. got co-opted by big business. What are the youth to do? Do you have any idea?
You just need to see one thing, and one thing only. It won’t require any “net detox” like the neuroticism of yours truly. Just remember: relaxing, in the original use of the word, where you just sit in a chair, watch the breeze, the fall of leaves: that is beauty, that is what you want, that is what we all want, that’s all we ever wanted, to love the moment, to see that once more. Why look at the footprints in the sand when you have ocean waves, palm trees and laces in the sky to look at? When you realize this simple state of mind, that activity, all it requires is to just turn it all off — what are you waiting for?!
Don’t fall for the scam! Embrace the simplicity. From True Relaxation™, you get your real estate back, you breathe a bit easier, you find yourself flowing in a way you want: what’s not to like?
Relaxation is the antidote to an otherwise flat staircase that never ends.
It reminds me of the silent courtyard of my highschool, however long ago that way. There was a trimmed garden in the center, and I doubt anyone ever got the right mind to appreciate the sculptors. And there was another place, a fountain in a road-side lake. I do remember looking at that fountain, and just feeling deep inside, .why can’t I appreciate this fountain? It feels so far away from me.. And I think it’s because it is hard to relax in today’s world, to where you could find beauty in how that water turns into sheets of air. For even if you know how true relaxation works, sometimes it’s hard to get started.
I can’t say it’s instant after your first try. I know what it’s like to feel the thick window film in your head when looking at nature and the like. But just by sitting out your balcony, on the front porch, a walk through your town center: this will turn the wheels, and deliver you once more to that idle wonder you had as a child.