Is total mediation your goal?

Written by Gabriel Shapiro
Graphics by David Higgins

I see the minds of every generation being destroyed by
       over-mediation, craving hysterical unconscious,
roboting zombie bodies on empty echoing quests
        looking for a meaningless fix

                                                                                          — with apologies to Allen Ginsberg

Our lives are finite. (Some religious beliefs refute this, so I’ll add: for our present incarnation, here on Earth.) We live. We die. That’s it for Earth time.  If you subtract sleep time, work time, toilet time, baby maintenance time, meal time and so many other life requirements, most of us have only small amounts of free time. Understanding its limited nature, we should put heavy thought into how we allot this precious resource. 

Mortuary tables tell me that most of my Earthbound time is gone, never to be reclaimed. I’m in the sixth or seventh inning. I have done a lot of ass-backwards things, but I realized my existence’s finitude early on. I can’t remember why I started feeling it so viscerally – perhaps after seeing others die or reading a philosopher’s words – but I am lucky to have heard my own clock ticking, and loudly so.

Last week, I attended two memorials within four days, and a good friend who I have known for four decades died too young during that same week. The hammer drops on us all. I know we all know this – but it bears repeating to keep that vital fact at the very front of our brain pans. I know that I know this vital fact, but I still positioned the photo of the man whose memorial I attended today above the kitchen counter where I will see it every day: not just to remember him but to bring to mind my future ending.

All day, every day, I see that finiteness callously disregarded. I do it, too. I know many people – including the university students I used to teach – that cede their free time with no apparent struggle, seemingly with no real regard, no deep thought. During a 10-year span, I surveyed about 200 students and the vast majority complained that they were “Too busy!” – yet virtually all of them self-reported using entertaining media more than five hours a day. Perhaps that explains why they had “no time” – most of it was deeded to streams of electrons emanating from smartphones, TVs, tablets, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The Combat Zone

Go almost anywhere in our noisy culture and the media interloper is front and center: audio pumping in the car; ear pods planted far and wide; phones shining up at our faces; screens blaring in restaurants and bars and workout centers and gym dressing rooms – even from gas pumps. I have been in many venues where multiple media meet in indecipherable cacophony amid the patrons. Some days, I pay close attention to the intrusions and cannot find a gap in the media wall.

Most days, the only way I can remove myself from the mediated world is by going outside – where more media will sometimes head my way, radiating from outdoor speakers or whatnot. Dave Higgins, who read a draft of this essay so that he could start to create the graphics that accompany it, wrote me an email: “One thought is pity for the poor wage slavies at the mall crap store who listen to the same easy-listening Muzak every hour of their shift.”

Sometimes, I go vigilante on the aggressor. In the gym locker room, I regularly turn off the nearest of the eight television screens simultaneously raining down gooey fluff on the damp heads of naked patrons, some of whom, ostensibly, came to the gym to “get away from it all.” Decades ago, while an off-campus student, a roommate and I employed a broomstick to terminate the tinny 24/7 flow of shopper music from a storefront that easily penetrated our third floor apartment. While with my wife and son in a hotel breakfast room, I noticed that the only other person dining was not watching the TV blaring out inanities at 7:20 in the morning, so I walked over to the electronic altar and pushed the OFF button. No sooner had I done this then that same diner lowered his Wall Street Journal to say, with shaky fervor, “Turn that back ON!” Perhaps the pulled media nipple showed him not so much a lack of decipherable content but a general quiet – and it was grating and horrible!  

I am not Amish. I do not categorically eschew mediated diversion. Like most, I love music, comedies, good books, and I take in the news, but must we have a near-constant infusion of mediated load?

And it’s a big load

Reputable studies say that the average U.S. citizen imbibes about six hours of media per day, with many people consuming nearly double that amount. How much of the day are we consciously present/aware in our actual/physical world?  I tried to make this point to my son several years ago by asking him, “Would you rather take a hike in the woods or on a computer screen?” Nine-year-old Arthur gave me every verbal and physical indication that he thought my question and underlying thought were inane.

I swim once or twice a week, not only to keep my spine in tune, but to find some peace as I paddle along. Must I hear the Red Rocker belt out his aggressive tunes as I part the waters? At my current indoor pool and at most of the other pools I have swum in for the past four decades, music blares almost incessantly. Especially in an age of personal devices – even waterproof earphones – must tunes be institutionally supplied to the masses?

Most of us become self-aware in our teens. We begin to recognize that we are unique, separate beings. That’s when most of us gain more freedom from parental oversight, becoming freer to decide how to fill our free time. Let’s say we will likely live another 60 years after our teenage years and that like most others we use our devices about six hours per day. That leads us to some important math: 60 years x 365 days x 6 hours of device use equals . . . 131,400 hours! That equates to 5,475 days or 15 years! Why not restrict media ingestion to 1.2 to 2 hours per day and thereby only cede 3 to 5 years?

I do not want to exist in a near-constant state of overstimulation. How about you? Could the near-continuous hyper-provocation of our senses be a large part of what is making us tired, on-edge, prone to over-reacting to real-world stress? To make us “have no time/are so busy”?

The life unconscious

Activities done with virtually no thought – brushing our teeth, for example – is when we do things almost automatically. We do not operate then in a fully conscious way; it is hard to have deep sustained thought and self-direction. I have no quarrel with that as I would like to retain my teeth, and one can consider things even while trying to undermine gingivitis. I think of mediated involvements as very similar, consciousness-wise, but they do not fulfill basic life needs. While imbibing from the electronic umbilical we are mentally and often physically subservient to the devices; I’m okay with some of that – but it is a matter of degree.

Because we are deeding so much to these devices while in their trance, should we not consider with utmost seriousness and full cognitive intent how much of ourselves/our time/our lives that we want to cede? We must make conscious decisions about how much is enough/too much.

At this point in societal development, most of us are not making a deeply conscious decision on this utterly important question. Most of us are just imbibing, with no conscious limit in mind. We use it because it is there – just as a drug addict would likely snort the enticing powder left on the coffee table.

Most of us make conscious decisions about involvement with other time-intensive activities. Should I learn a new language, adopt a chewy puppy, take up stone sculpting, have another kid, buy an old house, build a wooden boat? What are the time, financial and other costs of the pursuit? Instead, many of us have become roboticized zombies, feeding from the ubiquitous electronics laid out before us merely prompted by commercial directives to have this life-consuming habit. Again, you might think overstatement. How so?  

I recently said this to a person I chatted with – sans mediation – on the street: “No one is making money off our conversation – and I’m sure they’re pissed.”

The world we build

I’m trying to raise my actual/not virtual son in the Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer mold: catching actual frogs, building an actual treehouse, biking on actual ground, consorting with actual pals in the actual here and the actual now – maybe even inducing actual others to paint an actual fence. It is very difficult. The electronic lures, while minimal at home, are dangling in profusion before his eyes everywhere else, and very much even at school. The kids in our ‘hood, like most in techno-infused countries, are deeding much of their real-world play/interaction time to their isolating devices. Yes, some consort with pals on their machines, but that is a pallid placebo for actual here and now socializing.

Virtual media is not even virtual, because it is nowhere near what it’s like to being actually present with an actual person or actual phenomenon. On devices, only two of our senses are usually employed – what about the other three? It is particularly troubling to see the young give away their life time (sic) to inanimate objects, even choosing it over playing with real friends in the real world. One of my son’s pals would not come over to play because we wanted him to put away his phone for a couple of hours.

When thinking about mediation, some people focus on the quality of the media being ingested. But even if it is all excellent “content,” prodigious imbibers would still be living “virtually” instead of actually for a big chunk of their lives. Too much hiking on the computer, not enough hiking in the woods.

Drop it!

Of course, it is not easy to step away from a habit/addiction when it is intensely promulgated by very strong surrounding forces: the commercial world, society, jobs, even in grade school, and known to be addictive in itself. But it is worth the effort. If you find that you are Too busy,  Have no time, ask what reducing by half your entertaining media involvements could lead to in your actual world.

Contemporary medicine recognizes that different people need different curative approaches. Some media diets will work for some, some diets for others. Here are a few things I do to reduce my own screen-staring hours:

— After my son retires for the night, I am exhausted. (He’s a busy kid.) About a year ago, I started relaxing by doing too much YouTube staring. An hour or two would disappear. Now, at night, I stand up to watch YouTube. As it is later in the day, I am tired. I turn the thing off within 10 minutes, because my legs ache.

— Speaking of my son, he now receives his media dose at the library, which is a 1.2-mile bike ride away. We used to host “the drug” a la maison, but too many battles sprung up around the metallic interloper. Now his digital desire only gets filled when he gets exercise – plus the library computers in the kids’ area are filtered and monitored. (I’m no prude, but does he need to be the pornographer’s or sales force’s target at age 13?)

— When I OD on media, I smack myself in the face with a frozen trout until my nose oozes. Just jiving. When I feel sickened by too much of it, I write a simple list in my diary: “Do LESS of / Do MORE of.” For periods here and there, the top of the LESS list is “Less YouTube.”

— If you sometimes feel starved for media when reducing your intake, try storing up media time from days when you use very little. Then you can happily binge on a down day, say to watch “The Best of Youth” (6 hours, 6 minutes long) or to indulge in other lengthy media involvements. Sort of like doing the bloat thing during the holidays. It sickens you, but just for a piece.

— I try to consciously select what I imbibe. That works better on my laptop: better for my eyes and the device is less likely to be in my pants pocket.

— The tried and true: Media Sabbath. No media for a day or two per week. You’ll live.

— After 8:30 p.m., I set my phone to night screen and turn off incoming notifications.

There are many other ways to limit your ingestion (ironic that you can easily find ways to implement this on the net. Or ask your dealer). I find that I need new techniques now and again, because the media drug is a strong and virtually ubiquitous one. However you do it, the fight to give away less of our life time (sic) is a fight worth having, with yourself and your friends and your family.

Coda: One of the best things I have ever heard in my 64 years on this planet: Two years after I said something very similar to him, I heard my son, 11 years old at the time, say to a young friend in our backyard: “Well, would you rather take a hike on a computer or out in the woods?”

I almost cried.

—- – – – –

I am usually somewhat revolted by pedantry, especially my own: Here’s how it be, because I said so. But I felt this piece had to appear. I’ve been thinking these thoughts for decades. When I was in my 30s, my brother was so aware of my media critique that he sent me a book entitled Silicon Snake Oil.

As I finished this essay, a few weeks after attending two funerals and learning of a good friend’s death, as described above, I had another immersion in the reality of Human Finitude: I had my first ride in an ambulance. The doctors figured out I had a kidney stone and a few other probably remediable health issues. As I awaited tests, I sat amongst many others witnessing the limits of human existence.  We need to understand and address who/what gets to siphon away our limited time – RIGHT NOW.

— — — s s l — — —

David Higgins hails from the flyspeck town of Deposit in upstate New York and is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton (1984) and Louisiana State University (1988). He retired in 2021 from Corning Community College, where he taught art for thirty years. David is now a full-time oil painter who specializes in realistic landscapes that often feature tumbledown and decaying homes and factories. Dave is a frequent contributor to Supplement St. Louis.  I appreciate the hell out of him.

Gabriel Shapiro is the editor of Supplement St. Louis.