PhiloPsycho Freedom

• 6:45: Woken up by co-Digital Detoxer (co-DD), went back to slept since I didn't have to get up for another hour and a half
• 8:20: Got up
• 9:00: Left for Windsor
• 9:30-12: Attended University of Windsor convocation (Co-DD was graduating)
• 12:30-2: Cora’s for brunch
• 2:30-4:10: Mall (this time frame is a bit off, and I mostly hung around outside the mall since I didn't want all the advertisement exposure and had no money)
• 6-9: Work

When you're busy, you don't' have time to sit and dwell. This is a widely used approach to distressing situations, which can vary widely. To compare what I'm doing to distressing situations in people's lives is ridiculous, so I'll stop the comparison there. Today, I decided that I would continue with this digital famine until I could have one pure day - One day where I can live truly digital-less. I'm hoping, desperately, that that day will be tomorrow since I have no plans and work won't be able to force the usage of things on me. Starting to crack a little bit, really craving Facebook, Reddit, and e-mail. I feel a little bit of pressure from ignoring my e-mail in case something important comes up, but I then realize that they'll probably get in contact with me by some other means if it's that important. Typical craving, though: grows until it comes to a head, then it terminates.

The general upside of this is that I'm forced to have a more normal sleep schedule because I'm too tired to read at night and I wake up with the sun. Getting a lot of reading done, though.

Cheated:

• Mall Adverts
• Texted Co-DD (he allowed the use of his cell phone for work purposes) during his convocation to tell him he should shake Peter Mansbridge's hand (who was an honorary grad for this convocation)
• cell phone as camera
• One phone call that I promptly ended

• 10:30 - Woke up naturally, without an alarm (curtains open, somehow I was able to sleep for almost 5 hours with sunlight)
• 11:00-2:00 - Got out of bed, ate breakfast, read, played piano and guitar for my bird. I obviously have a lot to do with my time (I'm not getting many hours at work)
• 2:00-5:15 - Worked out, read more. Tried to find the chess board, but it seems to have been misplaced
• 5:30 - Left for work after beating my dad at makeshift chess (using pocket change and checkers on a (checkers board)
• 11:30 - Made a test run of sangria
• 12:30 - Beat my co-Digital Detoxer at chess
• 1:30 - Slept on co-DD's floor among the articles littering his floor

I'm starting to learn to cope with the lack of constant electronic entertainment. The most difficult thing is time spent driving because I'm driving in silence, sans radio. to fill the void, I either get lost in thought or experiment with beat boxing. I find that I'm having more and more diverse songs popping into my head, from "Don't stop me now" by Queen to "Immigrant Song" by Zepplin. I'm not sure if theses songs are occurring at a higher frequency from before or it it's just more noticeable due to the lack of actual music (aside from what I've played, myself). I also find that I keep dreaming about the internet, which is particularly abnormal because I normally don't dream (Yes, yes! We all dream every night for most of the night. I mean that I don't remember them, fool!).

A little over a week ago, I came into contact with the idea of doing a digital detox. The thought process seems to be something along the line of seeing what effect these devices have on our daily lives, experiences, and our sense of self. I've heard of people doing something similar when they attempt vegetarianism. I thought I'd give it a go and started it a day after hearing about it.

The Details of the Digital Detox:

• No cell phone
• No Ipod or car radio
• No computer
• No TV
• Deactivating Facebook
• Avoiding digital devices whenever possible (had to switch to an analog clock for this, too)

Note that it’s digital, and not technological. I considered technological, but that would be quite impossible due to work, transportation, and the like. I quickly recruited my friend, who isn't that digital to begin with, to join me on my endeavor for support and to help work out the kinks of what should and should not be allowed, why exactly we were doing this, and what we were hoping to gain from it.

Like, I said, When I started, I began in the same vein to when people decide to do a trial run of vegetarianism; Do you feel any different from eating meat? is there a difference in living costs? Does eating meat affect energy levels? Similarly, I decided to see if there were any effects on how I live in and experience the world. The idea was brought to my attention through a magazine known as Adbusters (which is extremely worthwhile, by the way).

One thing you'll notice is that the style of each day's entry does not remain consistent, as I either got lazy, forgot, didn't like the previous format, or an assortment of other reasons. I'm going to put up what I wrote untouched just so you can see the progress through a week (which takes a different direction somewhere in the second half of the week). I decided to keep my thoughts on a pad of paper during the week in the absence of a computer to record it on. Here's the first day:

Up at ten, bored by one-thirty. I had an interview at noon that was a half hour drive away. The trip there and back was not interesting, to say the least; No radio, mildly sleep deprived, entirely rural surroundings (which means windows up due to wind from driving speeds, and to cut down on the smell of manure).

At home, I played some piano and started collecting various liqueurs that might mix well in the sangria I was planning on making, particularly for the solstice. I started considering getting drunk, but what the hell is the point of being drunk, alone, in silence? My parents have left town for the day and I'm trying to avoid using my cell phone, even if it's just as a phonebook.

At this point, It makes me reminisce about the many other times I've done things to test my will for some end: eating right, exercise, lent, etc. Stage one: withdrawal that creates an intense yearning for what you currently cannot have, which will eventually brake way for stages 2 and 3: indifference, then seeing your connection to the forsaken thing for what it is (a crutch, an addiction, the benefits and detriments, etc.)

I tried to read, but ended up falling asleep until four, with brief interruptions for the phone (I allowed the phone, but tried to avoid cordless ones). I dreamt that I was on the computer, going automatically to Facebook and reactivating my account. I got mad at myself, reshut it down, and repeated the process again. Bizarre dream.

Went out for the rest of the night with friends, which distracted me from the lack of tech. Bed early, as there is nothing to do at night by myself.

Cheated:

• Calculator for the interview
• Text received, but not answered

Afterthought: At this point, I didn’t really have a clear definition of what I was planning on doing, or trying to achieve. So I was clear cutting certain technologies which don’t make sense to cut by my later definition.

Lately I've been thinking about Thomas Huxley's idea of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters for an infinite amount of time. As the theory goes, they'd eventually recreate Shakespeare's works in their entirety simply due to random hitting of the keys. Don't argue this point, it's true. In fact, they'd not only recreate Shakespeare's works once, but would do so an infinite number of times. The same goes for every other literary work, supposing that they phonetically write out other scripts (like oriental, Cyrillic, Sanskrit, etc.)) and ignore accents that aren't available.

An easier way to wrap your head around this problem is to envision a keyboard that has pebbles being dropped on it, hitting only one key at a time and no others. Given that each key has an equally probably chance of being struck, it will produce every work if left doing this processes for unlimited time. The reason I find this example to be clearer is because most people seem to think the monkeys would have some sort of intent behind their actions, as if they're actually trying to recreate Shakespeare or whatever. This isn't the case - they're simply mashing keys and accidentally making novels.

Expanding from this, I realized that secular reincarnation is capable of happening. It is entirely possible that one or all of three things are infinite: time, space, and/or alternate dimensions. As long as one of these is unlimited, it's quite possible that when we die, our consciousness in its exact form could re-manifest somewhere else. This pulls a lot of things into question, of course. Where does consciousness rest? Is it possible to transmit it? Even if something is structurally identical, will you, as you are now, be part of it? What about a/the soul? Too many questions, really. But, it is promising for any non-religious person who's despairing at the afterlife.

To clarify where I'm coming from, probability theory states that nothing has a 0% chance of happening (aka everything has a chance greater than 0). Even if it's infinitesimally small, it will express itself somewhere in an unlimited number of trials. The real mindfuck here is if you consider omnipresent beings. If every possible combination of things must happen, then somewhere an omnipresent god must exist, and in another place it must not, which violates the first one's power. This clearly demonstrates that there is a limit to the probability curve in practice - we don't have gods walking among us and intervening, as some interventionist religions would believe.

Thus, we should refine the statement to be:

In an infinite universe, anything that is possible must happen.

Note: Do not attempt to actually create the monkey's on typewriters. Only a fucking idiot would expect to see similar results when comparing an infinite sample and an extremely small, finite sample.

Somewhere at sometime you've probably heard the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20". For those of you who haven't, this phrase is describing how much clearer events are once they're over with. We have the ability to gain some distance between us and the problem or choice of the time. This is all descriptive of something called "hindsight bias" which is how we're biased to think that things were obviously going to turn out as they did when they may not have been at the time. Enron's huge success that eventually ended the utter downfall of the energy giant? Obviously that was doomed! Their hiring description was basically the DSM-IV-TR's criteria of a sociopath. The people in the 2nd tower on 9-11? They should have expected another plane coming! The bay of pigs? Clearly JFK should have known better than to go through with such a shoddy plan! In fact, none of these cases would have been easily identified as a failure from the perspective of the decision makers (stockholders, people in the 2nd tower, JFK and staff, respectively). From our cushy position right now, it is quite obvious that these things would happen, but at the time, you can never be certain how things will work out.

There are too many factors at any given moment to clearly see everything that's relevant to a given circumstance.