Higher Thought Meetup Next Friday

It’s time to meet up again!

Let’s play Higher Thought: The Cannabis Game together in Mt. Tabor Park on Friday afternoon, August 19, at 4:30 p.m. (That’s a week from today!)

We’ll meet on the north side lawn of the upper reservoir. I’ll be there on a blanket with some games. I expect we’ll go for a couple of hours or so.

Feel free to bring musical instruments and/or snacks! (But you don’t have to.)

An Incisive Essay

What is the internet doing to our brains?

This recent piece by Ezra Klein from the New York Times really nails what I’ve been trying to express about why it’s healthy to take a break – at least an entire day once in a while – from all screens.

Klein quotes from a book entitled The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr:

The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing. It was then that I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. At first I’d figured that the problem was a symptom of middle-age mind rot. But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it — and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check email, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected.“
Nicholas Carr

Klein goes on to comment:

‘Hungry.’ That was the word that hooked me. That’s how my brain felt to me, too. Hungry. Needy. Itchy. Once it wanted information. But then it was distraction. And then, with social media, validation. A drumbeat of ‘You exist. You are seen.’“
Nicholas Carr

You get it, right?

But I think the whole essay is worth a read – even if reading it involves a little screen time. Hopefully, it will serve as some sort of inoculation against yet more screen time.