I gave my head a break last week, I turned off all of my notifications. I am happy to report to you that it was a wise and necessary and very healing thing to do.
I learned a long time ago that technology can be a loving friend or relentless enemy, depending on how one lives with it and thinks about it. The tragedy of technology is that it always – always – gives something and takes something away. I once read about a small upstate New York town that put in high-powered street lamps for use at night to thwart crime. The crime rate dropped, but the trees on Main Street all died and the birds all fled.
Facebook gives me readers, it takes away the soul sometimes, message by message.
There it is, the cautionary tale.
In my life, I have notified myself about this idea.
Be thoughtful about technology. It’s like dieting in a way, absolutes don’t work, you have to find a cruising speed.
I can no longer live without technology and simply turn it all off, I can not let it dominate me and live inside of my head. I gave myself a spiritual gift last Sunday, my day of quiet, my own Sabbath and turned off all of the notifications on my Iphone, Ipad and computer.
The inside of my head was instantly different. It was a great gift. I no longer have to know that Betty had mentioned Peter on a comment made by Joan to Harry, or that Zabriske commented on my status, or that Patty was ranting on about something I wrote a year ago to her friends. I don’t even need to know what my status is.
Is this need unique to being a writer? Maybe. I live inside of my head. The more time and space I have to think, the better I will write. My notifications were becoming mind thieves and creativity vampires, they suck up the blood of thought. I suppose, like everyone else, I thought I might miss something, or perhaps I was too weak-minded to turn away from something everyone else I knew was doing.
I didn’t need the outside world to tell me things I did not need or want to know scores of times a day. I don’t need to know who I ticked off the minute they get angry, I can wait a few hours to learn about who shot who, or biew up what market, or what inane thing a politician says.
Mark Zuckerberg will live in history for changing the world and make many things possible – I have 45,000 likes on Facebook, a boon from the heavens for any mid-list writer. Do I dare to give that up?
Every morning, scores of people I do not know, and some that I do, send me this message: “How are you?” Am I really supposed to begin my day in this way? And why is it anyone’s business how I am? If I took the time to answer them all, I would not be fine, and soon.
Is this Mr. Zuckerberg’s notion of Utopia, a sort of Rainbow Bridge for human beings chatter endlessly on about nothing, and where we tell one another that we are fine all morning for all eternity? If I am not fine, you will hear about it, from me, and in my own time.
I see that Facebook can be very good for the haters and cowards of the world, where else could they be heard so easily and cheaply? And the greedy merchants of bad news are ecstatic, they are raking it in as we lose our sense of peace and hope. They are feasting off of our goodness.
But is all of this notififying always good for everyone else, like Mark Zuckerberg claims? Don’t we all know better, if we think about it, which few of us now have time to do? Do we need to share all of the time? Will we remember to think for ourselves, or ever learn how to be alone with the inside of our heads?
Mr. Zuckerberg may have billions of dollars, but he doesn’t get to say what part of my life I must share or get inside of my head all day and night, or what part of the world I wake up to. Facebook can be a powerful personal or professional tool, it can also be a spiritual and psychological nightmare, invading privacy, promoting anger and grief, pulling people away from the pretense of thought, insidiously spreading like some sort of benign cancer through our consciousness, binding us together in what is often a soul-killing way.
The great secret of Facebook is that it promotes billions of messages every day that are about nothing at all, that is perhaps the saddest thing about it, it makes all of us banal and reflexive and anxious too often. It is, for many, an addiction of the shrinking mind. I now know a frightening number of people who are Facebook all day and all night, answering every message they get the second they get it. They give up their very consciousness to the idea that they might be missing something, they very rarely are. I do not care to be one of them.
Technology sometimes disqualifies the claims of dignity and peace of mind. Driving home from dinner one night recently, I got a notification that Diane had commented on my decision to raise money online for some new photographic equipment. It turns out she thought I was lazy and worthless, and did not work as hard as she did for her money. Her purpose in writing was to make me feel bad.
I thought later how ludicrous this message and the resulting exchange was. I did not know her, she did not know me, nor did I know the many people whose responding comments about me resulted in more notifications about my decisions and morality? Did either of us benefit from this idea of notification? Was anything achieved?
Turning off my notifications – HBO and CNN and the Weather as well – has already paid off in demonstrable ways. It is easier for me to read, to think, to talk to Maria, to sleep. I am not looking at my phone a hundred times a day to see messages I don’t need to see and often, don’t want to see. I need to know how I am in the morning, not everyone with a computer.
I am a creature of moderation, of life in the middle lane. That is where I like to drive, that is where I like to live. I have no need of quitting Facebook, it is my responsibility to learn how to live well and rationally with this new kind of hydra. I never thought I would fight for the idea of the telephone. Facebook has done that for me.
The space inside of my head is precious, it is the one space no one can charge me for, invade wantonly, peek inside, regulate, at least not yet. Facebook shares many things, but it does not share peace of mind or true insight or the space one needs to think or have any kind of a spiritual or truly creative life. That comes from within.
What I put inside of my head is sacred, it is my very identity as a human being. It is who I am.
I cannot tell you what to do, but I will share this idea of mine with you. Life lives on life, not someone else’s very profitable idea of connection. Living on life has been going on for billions of year. We live on impulses our conscious selves are not remotely aware of, and the impact of things like notifications on sensitive souls like those of humans is profound.
Our world is becoming angrier, more distracted, more tense, less spiritual, at least the world of messages and notifications has for me. I do not miss the notifications, not a single one. If something important happens, I will hear about it. If someone really needs to speak to me, they can telephone me or send me an e-mail.
How wonderful to wake up on Sunday, my own Sabbath, to the best notification of all. I am fine, I told myself today. I got this idea to write about notifications.