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The Awakening from Dogmatic Slumber

-- By LiasBorshan - 30 Dec 2020

Waking Up

I still remember the intense shock I felt when I realized just how pervasively my devices were tracking and predicting my behaviors. I remember suddenly becoming aware of the extent to which I depended on my devices. Every time my phone made a beep, I compulsively reached for it. Even when it was not beeping, I obsessively checked my phone to see whether there were notifications that I had missed. The shock of this realization, however, quickly dissipated, as a wave of fatalistic inevitability washed over me. After all, if all of my devices are tracking my data and predicting my behavior and all of the apps that I use in trying to socialize are doing the same, what chance do I have of avoiding and resisting this violation of my privacy? Furthermore, if all of these devices and apps are necessary to engage with the world and become employed, how on earth was I ever going to combat my dependency on these technologies? The answer was in many ways easier than I’d thought, but in other ways quite a bit more difficult. This essay will briefly explore the steps I took to secure some distance from my devices and apps in the hopes of providing other similarly situated students with a potential road-map for navigating the complex and daunting process of resisting the parasite with the mind of God. It seems to me that there are two equally important aspects to dealing with this issue. The first is combating the addiction that most of us have to our devices (particularly our phones). The other are the practical ways one can make their uses of technology more secure.

The Addiction

Many of us have experienced that tantalizing urge to continue scrolling on Instagram or Facebook, or that intense desire to check one’s phone when the familiar ding sound indicating a notification is made. Without knowing it, many of us have been conditioned to behave this way compulsively. These tech companies make their money by capturing our attention so it is only natural that their products, through behavioral prediction, would have an addictive effect on us. In my experience, the most difficult step by far in separating myself from my technological dependence was kicking the intense addiction that I had developed. Initially, I attempted to separate myself cold turkey from using my phone at all. I turned my phone off and attempted to go as long as I could without having it on during the day or checking any of the apps I associated with my phone (Facebook messenger, etc). If I needed to do anything technologically related, it would be on my computer and it would not include This proved remarkably difficult as I felt myself having withdrawal-type symptoms and constantly reaching for a phone that was either not there or not on. I even got headaches and felt exhaustion from having to actively resist the temptation to check for updates and turn on my phone to hear the comforting ding noise of some notification on an app. One of the things I found most useful during this weaning process was reallocating my device usage from my phone to my computer. Eventually though, after 2 weeks it became far easier and the silence was such a bloody comfort. We seldom notice the extent to which our attention spans have been affected by our attention grabbing devices. I found myself being able to read for more than 30 minutes at a time without feeling immense frustration and a temptation to grab something or do something else or alt-tab to some other activity.  

Closing the door on the Parasite.

The second important part in this process is privatizing one’s technology. While this part of the process may seem stressful and overwhelming, there are a number of easy steps one can take to make this happen. First of all, one of the most common uses for our devices is to maintain channels of communication with our loved ones and friends.

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