“You Become What You Behold” - Terence McKenna
Digiphrenia
I learned this word from Jason Silva only a few hours ago, and it perfectly describes the current state of the public square.
Coined by media theorist, Douglas Rushkoff, in his 2013 book Present Shock, Digiphrenia merges digi for “digital,” and phrenia for “disordered condition of mental activity.” (Fun fact: Rushkoff was one of the first guests on Look Up!).
These days our brains reflect some combination of our email inboxes and Twitter feeds: stuffed with a never-ending flow of messages that no human could possibly process, and ripped apart by a cacophony of voices who literally shout for our attention. Often these voices are supported by video evidence and data that has been perfectly cropped & crafted to fit whatever narrative they promote.
While our digital consumption may be driven by a deep desire to know, it unfavorably attacks our ability to understand. It’s not surprising then, that this week even the brilliant Sam Harris, whose podcast is ironically named Making Sense, shared his inability to do so.
Our Individual Actions Create our Collective State
In his economic treatise Human Action, the father of Austrian economics, Ludwig Von Mises, explained,
“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
It must then be true that all irrational action is in the first place individual action.
When we each spend 5-10 hours per day consuming a smorgasbord of content, our individual sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous systems remain constantly activated. As a result, all of society becomes angry, fearful, exhausted, and in disarray.
Our lives are so utterly dependent on the digital that we spend the vast majority of our time ignoring the real. This schism has infiltrated every area of life. Take the stock market for example, which seems to have completely decoupled from economic reality.
Who Benefits?
Authoritarians benefit from disorder.
While much of the current chaos might be emergent, we cannot ignore that there are nefarious actors who will utilize this chaos to push their own agendas. This week’s news regarding Chinese Twitter bots is a perfect example. I’ve also written in the past how race riots help Trump’s “strong man” playbook. If there is an act of domestic terrorism before November, we’ll see how quickly the media narrative would shift from antiracism to “please protect us.”
“Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome” – Charlie Munger
Meanwhile, media companies and social media platforms are posting record performance. They have zero incentive to change the game, even as they contribute to the destruction of the shared stories that have shaped our society.
Please indulge my hyperbole, but like digital cockroaches Big Tech would not only survive a nuclear Armageddon, they’d probably become more powerful. Those of us still alive would live in bunkers plugged into Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok while receiving regular drone deliveries from Amazon. Okay, maybe this is absurd, but you get the point.
Digital Detox Is A Silent Protest
Our digital world will soon be overlaid on our physical one via augmented reality. But if the current state of digital affairs is any indicator, this is not a reality that I desire nor one that we should be willing to accept.
Given the presence of the aforementioned misaligned incentives, we have zero top-down solutions to the negative externalities that our digital media machine creates.
So the responsibility falls on us as sovereign individuals to take action.
This is why every week I unplug completely for a daylong digital detox.
I understand that I am privileged and many of us cannot take a full day offline because our livelihoods are completely dependent on staying plugged in. However, the compounding effect of a few hours offline per day across billions of individuals would be profound. Added benefit - my digital detox has become my favorite day of the week.
This week, I read two articles declaring that Bitcoin is a form of silent protest. I agree.
I also believe that digital detox is a silent protest against the digital media machine.
Building healthy digital media habits is a way to take back your sovereignty.
COVID19 forced real-world activity to grind to a halt, but has only amplified the volume of digiphrenia.
Imagine if the world had taken 3 months of digital instead of physical distancing? What impact might this have had on our mental health, our relationships, & society at large?
Our human operating system is in dire need of an upgrade. I really hope we create one before the digital completely subsumes the real.
But until that day comes, it is the small actions we take that determine our freedom.
Let me know what you think of this post
This Week’s Podcast:
Social Justice with Simon Mont, Founder of Harmonize
“Separate government from governance. Governance is the way we come together to make decisions about what matters to us, and how we’re going to allocate resources, and how we’re going to organize ourselves to actualize the values that we want expressed. Government is only one manifestation of our collective process of governance.”
In this episode, I sat down with Simon Mont, to discuss social justice, governance, and new systems building.
Simon was an Organizational Design Fellow at the Sustainable Economies Law Center and currently stewards the Non-Profit Democracy Network. He has spent the last 10 years organizing, canvassing, teaching, and facilitating conversations on racial justice.
What I’m Reading
Entrepreneurship & Technology:
The Soul of An Entrepreneur, David Sax
Digiphrenia, Douglas Rushkoff
Politics, Economics, & Markets:
Can we Pull Back from the Brink?, Sam Harris Making Sense Podcast
John Cleese v. Extremism (2 min watch)
The American Press is Destroying Itself, Matt Taibbi
How Robinhood Convinced Millennials to Trade Their Way Through a Pandemic, Rob Walker
The Fed’s Roadmap, Guggenheim Partners
Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency:
A Peaceful Protest: Opt-Out, Buy Bitcoin, Adam Pokornicky
Why Bitcoin is a Silent Protest Against Corrupt Governments Everywhere, Tatiana Koffman for Forbes
Pentagon Documents Reveal US Pentagon Prepare for Bitcoin Rebellion
New Lessons on A16Z Crypto Startup School
Thank you for reading this edition of the Look Up! Weekly.
As always, feel free to reach out with feedback, guest recommendations, and ideas for future posts and episodes.
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