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Pico Iyer: The art of stillness

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

We need to take time to think. We need to avoid external stimuli and spend time with our thoughts. We desire to move and to achieve which drives the economy forward at the cost of forgetting to give ourselves times. The talk explores time and space. It also explores the popular concept of going offline to recharge.

In my experience moving from one social network to another has the same impact as taking a social media break but this after 20 years of trial and error.

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Walking With Worn Shoes

Byrichard

At the moment I am walking with worn shoes, not because I do not have shoes that are not worn, but because I do not want to walk with shoes that have good tread at this time of year, due to the mud that gets stuck in them. When I walk with shoes with treads I collect mud during my walk, and I bring it up the stairs when I walk up, and I drop it off when I run back down. This leaves a mess, which, if I was a child, would be forgivable to some degree, but as an adult may be seen as immaturity.


The alternative is to take the lift, but to take the lift is to show a degree of laziness that I am not ready to show. Lifts are slow. I prefer staying healthy by running up and down stairs. The issue is that people in this building do not walk in mud so they leave non behind, but also that they take lifts, rather than stairs. This means that if I leave a trail of mud right to my door people know that it is me. There is a chance that the only people who know this, are the cleaner and me. I don’t know whether other people walk up stairs. I do not often cross people walking up or down the stairs.


Worn shoes do not collect mud, and if they do collect mud then an ordinary doormat can wipe them clean. With deep treads you need a screwdriver or some other tool to coax the mud out. I don’t want to do this too often because I feel that it damages the shoes and wears them out faster than if I just left the mud, to be knocked free as it dries.


We have a few more months of mud, so for a few more months I will have to be more cautious with the evidence, that I leave, after going for a walk.

Nid-De-Poule and Yerba Maté

Nid-De-Poule and Yerba Maté

Byrichard


French speakers are familiar with the term “Nid-De-Poule”. It is a term used to describe potholes in French. This is a term I heard regularly but due to modern farm practices you don’t see these when they’re made by chickens. Chickens usually live in chicken coops and they don’t have the time to dig their little holes in the ground. 


As I walk by free range chicken on a regular basisI get to see chickens sitting on wheels, running towards people, or away from them, and I see them sheltering from the rain on a rainy day. What you don’t see so often is chickens that have built a nest. They dig a depression into the mud or soil and then they sit and watch the world go by. 


When I saw the chickens in their nest this time I thought that they look like entrenched soldiers in their foxholes. If you think of the first world war with its trench warfare, to the Vietnam war, and the mentions of foxholes, then you also think of Ukraine. It’s because of trench warfare in Ukraine that I thought of this point of view with chickens. 


Yerba Maté


Heading in the opposite direction recently I was reminded of maté. I found an option to make maté in Europe. 


I first had Maté in Valais by a climbing wall. One of the climbers, a South American had brought a gourd and shared the maté between the climbers. I liked the experience so finding a way to repeat the experience at home is nice. 


Origeens Yerba Maté Kit


What I like about this drink is that you place the leaves into the gourd, you pour water in, you drink, and then you pour more water in and drink again, until the taste is gone. You share it from person to person. It’s a nice drink to have at the side to a climbing wall. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQZeosAxvQ

Social Media Glossy Magazines via Facebook and Twitter

Social Media Glossy Magazines via Facebook and Twitter

Byrichard

Recently I spent time on Twitter and Facebook and I was reminded of that horrible feeling you get when you’re looking for posts and tweets by friends, to interact with, and see crappy adverts instead. Imagine if you walked into a pub or conference and instead of having personal conversations you were harassed by marketers rather than human beings looking for a human connection.


The reason I dumped FaceBook and then Instagram is that I got tired of not only feeling that I wa wasting my time, whilst making myself feel lonelier, but on top of that someone else was making a profit from me being lost in the time wasting corporate social media landscape.


Twitter and People Selling Crap


Most of the stuff that is being sold via Twitter ads is crap now. You look and it’s con men trying to sell cons, from cryptocurrency, to privacy, to other crap. It’s ironic that they would sell this crap in a place where anyone with any decency, would no longer use.


It’s not the Owner, But The Spam


Of course it bother me that Facebook and Twitter are owned anc controlled by immoral people, and I could look beyond that, if I could find pleasant conversations, rather than see ads. What gets to me about social media is that it’s about making money for people that don’t value us as human beings. That’s why I switched to blogging, rather than social media. With blogging I might devote an hour to per day, but rather than make money for people who see me as an addict, I give people a reason to surf to my website. I also get to explore ideas in the process.


A Feeling of Being Used


Several times I have looked through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter timelines but I quickly become demoralised by the ads, the reminders of what my life isn’t and more. It’s not that people are using Facebook and Instagram to converse, they’re using it to broadcast. No one is listening. Everyone is being made invisible by the algorithms, and ignored by those that do see posts. For so little engagement I can write blog posts.


The Apathy of Mastodon


Two days ago noise pollution was making my afternoon hell, and I said so on social media. Rather than empathy though, I found apathy. The beauty of social media is that empathy doesn’t cost anything, whereas apathy can ruin someone’s experience. If we come to social media it’s to find empathy, or at the very least vent, and be ignored.


Networking for Projects


I see people write about using Twitter to make money from the content they create. That’s the wrong attitude. You should be making contacts to work on projects with people, rather than making money from social media. Too many people are utilitarian about social media, which is why it becomes a waste of time for human beings. When everyone is trying to sell, then no one is conversing, and without conversation a blog post would have the same impact, without enriching the wrong people.


A Reminder


I was reminded, while writing this blog post that the reason I became tired with Twitter is that people use it, and the community, rather than participate within it. People are busy promoting themselves and their ideas, without engaging, without investing time in friendships and more. The same people are on Mastodon and the Fediverse.


And Finally


There is a difference between what I want social networks to be, and what others want social networks to be. I will never find social networks that achieve what I want because society labels as social people on the web as addicts, and corporate social media profit from wasting our time in the hope that we will see more ads. I don’t use Facebook for moral reasons. The issue is that it has a monopoly so I am isolated, for not using Facebook.


Today Twitter feels just like Instagram. I know that if I spend too much time on Twitter it will become toxic, so I know I need to moderate how I use it.


Althought the Fediverse is an interesting project I think that the community is still weak. I can go for hours without my timeline refreshing, and when I do engage I am either trolled or ignored.


Some toots did well, but mostly likes and re-shares rather than conversations. What I want to find are conversations.

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Sharkwater – a documentary worth watching

Byrichard

Sharkwater – A documentary worth watching.

If you have one and a half hours of free time I recommend watching this documentary. It discusses the anti-whaling work by the Sea Shepherd, the work it did to combat long lining around the Galapagos and it touches on the shark finning mafia and corruption.

The documentary also looks at the public perception of sharks. It shows that they are not the dangerous animal that they were thought to be until recent history. The film ends with a shot of the narrator free-diving with sharks and being perfectly relaxed. At one point he says “sharks are so sensitive that they can feel your heart beat, if you are calm they will stay but if you panic they will flee”. I paraphrased his exact words.

Another theme that is explored in this documentary is the food chain. He mentions that plankton absorb a lot of Carbon dioxide and that with the overfishing of sharks the ecological balance will be ruined as the apex predators are lost. He pushes strongly for the conservation of shark numbers. We are familiar with the current Save our Sharks movement.

This is an interesting investigative documentary about the economy surrounding shark finning and why it has a negative impact on the food chain. If the documentary was updated it could look at the economic viability of shark tourism that has grown in recent years. Sharks, in some places are more valuable alive than dead. If you don’t have time to watch the entire documentary then I recommend that you watch the last thirty to fourty minutes.

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