Grounding In The Age Of Infinite Content
Engaging with even a fraction of the estimated 2.5 billion GB stream of data generated per day is enough to fry anyone's wetware. AI-generated content is going to push this up even further. Maintaining a healthy, curated media diet helps, but ultimately we would probably feel better spending far less time online.
How then, when navigating cyberspace is a necessary skill to avoid being Eaten by techno-capital, does one spend less time online?
The unsubtle answer is just to touch grass, which is entirely valid, but it's increasingly hard to unplug completely. Meditation app downloads tick steadily upwards in what feels like a deepening takeover of all desire (even the desire to be grounded) by techno-capital.
We're engaged in a total war against systems designed to strip-mine our attention. As the tech gets better, it becomes more important to disengage.
We don't need Luddites to get around this, we need people who are grounded enough to engage with the system without being captured by it entirely. Deeply embodied, deeply human, deeply grounded people can navigate without capture.
At risk of hyperbole, groundedness is a non-negotiable prerequisite for sanity and perhaps any agency at all in the coming deluge. It has been for some time.
The trouble snowballs further when one considers the task of escaping a real-time desire satisfaction engine when your semiotics were designed to serve the needs of that system. Limbic system hacking is already a known quantity. It's hard enough to get people to stop being angry about everything.
Getting someone to recompile (sigh) their semiotics is downright daunting.
Good thing there are several contemplative traditions that have warned us about this! And plenty of cautionary tales in the public consciousness!
Jokes about human fallibility in the face of things we've know for thousands of years aside, I can't overstate how important it is to spend time away from your devices engaged in activities that make you feel connected to your mindbodyworlduniverse.
We need to set our roots deep. Bare feet in the dirt, looking up at the sky. We need to spend time sitting around a fire together. We need to spend time co-regulating. We need to stretch, do yoga, do qigong, meditate, contemplate, sink into the rich texture and fabric of our experience. We need to remember and help others remember that we are human and that our bodies exist.
The buzzing, swirling, crackling energy being blasted at us needs to be metabolized through movement and stillness. We need empty space to breathe easy. The deeper our practice -the more centered and grounded we become- the more we stabilize the things that nourish our being, and the more we're able to hold down the fort.
As if your life depends on it, because in a way it does:
Take walks through the woods and bathe in sunlight. Watch the moon change phases and listen for shifts in the wind. FEEL your own patterns and how they interact with everything around you. Shake. Roll. Dance. Fight. Fuck.
(For the love of God.)
