[HN Gopher] Impoverished Emotional Lives
___________________________________________________________________
Impoverished Emotional Lives
Author : imartin2k
Score : 77 points
Date : 2022-10-01 10:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconvivialsociety.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconvivialsociety.substack.com)
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| One (of many possible) ways to characterize the article is that
| social media, and our online lives, have restricted our emotional
| repertoires the way junk food has restricted our dietary ones.
| This resonates with me. A related phenomenon I've been thinking
| about -- or maybe it's the same exact one -- concerns limited
| emotional range.
|
| Hypothesis: people still apply all their emotional machinery to
| the very restricted emotional universes that modern life
| presents, as they did to the full gamut of emotional experiences
| that people were built to deal with, but which modern life rarely
| elicits.
|
| The implications of this hypothesis are unclear to me, but one
| candidate is that small and relatively unimportant issues that
| would hardly have been recognized in the past, become magnified
| so greatly that they can bring a group to the point of civil war
| or dissolution.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > restricted our emotional repertoires the way junk food has
| restricted our dietary ones.
|
| /me wonders if you've read a little book "Digital Vegan" [1] :)
|
| > Hypothesis: people still apply all their emotional machinery
| to the very restricted emotional universes that modern life
| presents,
|
| Is modern life flattened with respect to emotion? Incendiary
| Twitter traffic and torrents of "hate speech" everywhere would
| imply otherwise. Perhaps the intensity has gone up, but the
| range and nuance has shrunk?
|
| Interesting development I saw; Royal Marines started
| introducing "emotional intelligence literacy". Unsurprisingly
| the recruits hated it and thought it was "politically correct
| sissy stuff". Upshot was a measurable decrease in losses and
| incidents resulting from hot-headed decision making, poor
| judgement in the heat of anger etc. Emotional Intelligence now
| features highly in selection.
|
| It may be that the highest "EQ" self-exclude from social media.
|
| [1] https://digitalvegan.net
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| The digital vegan idea is interesting and I hadn't heard of
| it -- thank you. I think physiological metaphors have much to
| offer in thinking about online life. A sort of 'emotional
| hysteresis' akin to insulin resistance is another one I reach
| for frequently; and, like with IR, fasting seems to be a
| surprisingly effective intervention for the digital version
| of the pathology, though of course you have to apply it
| repeatedly to counter the 'dietary' excess.
|
| > Is modern life flattened with respect to emotion?
| Incendiary Twitter traffic and torrents of "hate speech"
| everywhere would imply otherwise.
|
| Maybe an example will be helpful to make this less abstract.
|
| Most Westerners are far safer, physically, than they have
| ever before. They are less likely to starve to death, get
| eaten by a bear, be murdered, die of exposure or of an
| infected hang-nail. And yet, I suspect that even in the midst
| of this relative luxury and safety, we are just as miserable
| as when danger from all causes was drastically increased.
|
| Put more mathematically, I suspect that people react
| emotionally to a problem of magnitude 4 as people 200 years
| ago reacted to a problem of magnitude 9, because progress has
| skewed the distribution of modern hazards so radically that
| the far ends of the scale are almost never experienced. So in
| a world of small problems, the largest small problems feels
| large because the brain is bad at absolutes.
| Klinky wrote:
| 200 years ago the western world reacted with magnitude 9 to
| the thought of an independent woman or African American, or
| a homosexual. Shockingly some westerners still do. While
| we've moved further towards a post-scarcity world, forced
| artificial scarcity to prop up 200-year-old economic models
| has become problematic. Perhaps you now have this potential
| access to more "luxury"(education, healthcare, housing,
| transport, communication), but no way to actually afford it
| without massive debt. You end up with a lot of people
| feeling insecurity about their future & the end goal of
| society as a whole.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > people react emotionally to a problem of magnitude 4 as
| people 200 years ago reacted to a problem of magnitude 9
|
| A most interesting thought that I'll reflect on. Thank you.
| Anecdotally, I've seen adults turn pale, silent and shaky
| at the prospect of a lost smartphone.
| bckr wrote:
| I think this article is insightful, but I am compelled to short-
| circuit the conversation it would start, by offering a rude
| injunction:
|
| Go touch grass.
|
| Really, stop using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and their ilk.
| Restrict your use of media like Reddit.
|
| OR you are doomed to be caught up in the mass emotional-
| intellectual toilet-circling that these platforms are a vessel
| for.
|
| One of several quantum leaps in emotional vibrancy I've
| experienced over the last few years was refusing to scroll
| through Facebook anymore. It is right up there with not calling a
| toxic family member and taking an antidepressant.
| coder4life wrote:
| My cheap self-enforced act to stop using Facebook for a month:
|
| Every time someone come up on your feed (which you watch
| constantly you crazy bastards), hide them for 30 days.
| Eventually, within 5 days, barely anyone is going to be on your
| feed. You'll get to see that rarely seen message
|
| "You are all caught up for now"
|
| And thanks for writing this. It's been a year and I need
| another small break
| namaria wrote:
| You know, deleting your account is way more effective.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Same.
|
| It took working at a social media company on ad ranking to make
| the thing stick; I saw how much effort is going into putting
| stuff in front of my brain that is sorted in terms of the
| likelihood that I will react to it.
| rexpop wrote:
| And, have you got any _positive_ prescriptions to offer? The
| social institutions that Twitter (and, let 's be honest,
| television before it) replaced _have since atrophied_ , and
| there's not much of a society to return to. Or, at least, it
| would seem from a certain "impoverished" vantage point.
|
| So, please, without mockery, offer some _positive_
| prescriptions? Once one has "touched grass," then where are
| they to go? Join a bowling league?
| nicbou wrote:
| Join nicer (online) communities, and aggressively filter out
| the rest.
|
| I'm down to Hacker News, a handful of subreddits, and
| literally nothing else. I forget about the toxic internet
| like I forgot about the internet without an ad blocker.
|
| I don't think that most of it needs replacing. I meet friends
| and friends of friends, and occasionally strangers, and I get
| plenty of interesting interactions that way. Twitter and the
| like were never a substitute for that.
| bckr wrote:
| Sure thing.
|
| I get most of my social interactions through alternative
| spirituality groups I belong to.
|
| Bowling league sounds great. I'll be attending a runner's
| meet-up this week. Can I run? Barely, but I want to get
| better.
|
| I have weekly phone calls with long distance friends.
|
| I have dinner / go to concerts with a cousin who lives 45
| minutes away about once a month.
|
| I have a domestic partner.
|
| There are a number of other social pursuits that I want to
| take up, like using coworking spaces or makerspaces, and
| starting to cultivate a network of people interested in
| coliving.
|
| It's challenging. I put effort into it. It's always top of
| mind for me to be cultivating my social life. It's very much
| worth it.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Never got on Facebook, fortunately. Quit Twitter last May. I'm
| still on Instagram because I get a lot of good recipes,
| exercise tips and underwater scenes - I guess it seems lot more
| positive for me than the others, but possibly that's because
| I've been careful about who/what I follow there.
| raydiatian wrote:
| " "It is the emotional register that accounts for the Pavlovian
| alacrity with which we attend to our devices and the digital
| flows for which they are a portal," I observed in 2017. "
|
| Stroke your own dick harder. You lost me at this nonsense.
| nicbou wrote:
| This is when I thought "this person needs an editor". This
| article has many flaws.
| CliffStoll wrote:
| Slightly paraphrasing Donald Knuth: The Internet
| is a great way to stay on top of things. But I want
| to get to the bottom of things.
|
| Understanding, compassion, and emotional depth require
| reflection, concentration, and time ... a quiet walk in a garden
| does more for me than an hour of social media.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > a quiet walk in a garden does more for me than an hour of
| social media.
|
| This is to me a weird way to put it, as we're probably doing
| both, and for different reasons. We all have different goals
| and expectations regarding social media, but I don't think
| compassion and emotional depth are the first and formost reason
| most of us are here for instance.
|
| On the "social media" label, HN is one, but it works pretty
| differently from the others. Same goes for MMORPGs, drawing
| sites, reddit gardening communities etc. Putting all of it in a
| single basket makes the discussion a lot harder I think.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > a quiet walk in a garden does more for me than an hour of
| social media.
|
| A quiet walk in a garden does something positive whereas an
| hour on social media would leave me feeling very negative and
| depleted - there's an inverse relationship between time spent
| on social media and how one feels. The more time spent there,
| the worse one feels. You could say this is "by design" -
| outrage increases engagement.
| bigyikes wrote:
| I hear this repeated a all the time. I can see how this might
| be the case, but I just don't get it.
|
| My social media is overwhelmingly positive. I see
| celebrations, beauty, fun, and love. Social media makes me
| happy and more connected.
|
| Maybe it's because I've deliberately curated my feeds and
| follow few people? If I see something I don't like
| repeatedly, I unfollow.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Maybe it's because I've deliberately curated my feeds and
| follow few people?
|
| Maybe. I guess I could say my Instagram feed is like what
| you're saying to some extent - mostly exercise tips,
| recipes, underwater photography, pics of friends having
| dinner, etc. But twitter on the other hand was terrible. I
| quit twitter in May as it was just becoming an outrage
| factory. Maybe I've been more careful with who I'm
| following on IG? Maybe IG isn't as amenable to political
| discussions and thus tends to stay saner? I'm not sure.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Twitter is fine if you very meticulously curate who you
| follow and list tweets by chronological order.
|
| But yeah, I sometimes accidentally click a trending
| topic. That makes me a bit sad, mostly because there
| clearly are a lot of people out there who aren't getting
| the help they need.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Just this afternoon I was reflecting on how, in many case, N
| hours of internet feels like nothing in your mind. It's a long
| stream of nice actions that rarely lead to a worthy memory. On
| paper it's great, you have free, high grade information.. but
| something is missing.
| nicbou wrote:
| Perhaps leave some time for contemplation. It's getting
| really hard to just be alone with your thoughts; a whole
| industry is devoted to replacing it with more scrolling. It's
| still worth it though.
|
| I love going on long motorcycle rides, because I get to let
| thoughts resurface, and to chew on them for as long as
| needed. I can't chase them online unless they persist for
| hours. I have to just think about stuff unassisted.
|
| I often return from longer motorcycle trips with a sense of
| clarity that's hard to describe.
|
| The same applies to long walks and hiking, if I can resist
| using my phone.
| bumby wrote:
| Your motorcycle riding reminded me of Attention Restoration
| Theory, where spending time in nature recharges oneself in
| pert due to the loosely held attention (as opposed to
| directed attention, like when we read or spend time
| online).
| nicbou wrote:
| It's basically an extended shower thinking session.
|
| I started adding tea breaks to my work day and it helps
| too, if I can force myself to sit idle on the balcony.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Good comment - time to put the phone away for the day.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Real engagement, not passive. Even discussions like these
| aren't always memorable. It's like driving the same route to
| and from the office for years, at some point you start
| arriving home or at the office with little recollection of
| what happened in between. You weren't asleep, but you made
| few new memories if nothing out of the ordinary happened
| (days I remember: Seeing a red truck on its side off the
| road, the days deer or antelope cross the path, the time a
| cow decided to turn up on the road, etc.). So what are you
| doing on the internet? Just reading? Is it creating new
| memories, new connections? Sometimes, but how frequently?
| What if you try to actively engage with the material, make
| summaries, try out the ideas in a small project, _anything_.
| agumonkey wrote:
| right, thus I wonder about two things:
|
| - disconnected events even if passive, like contemplating,
| or having someone around, doesn't cause the same kind of
| void
|
| - being genuinely active on internet is hard, your brain is
| constantly battling the possibility of a sweet distraction
| in your browser tab
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I think the essay does not share my understanding of emotion.
| Emotions are a complex but transient physiological+psychological
| state in conversation with and reacting to events and thinking.
| The essay describes months of mourning as if people don't still
| grieve for months; the performative aspect of mourning constantly
| for months has gone out of fashion. People still grieve for
| months and years after the death of a loved one and the thought
| that somehow the internet has caused a shortening of grieving is
| a claim that would require much more than a substack essay for me
| to believe.
|
| All emotions generally last at most 10 or 15 minutes. An
| emotional state can refresh due to rumination, current
| circumstances, etc. Losing my dog causes me to weep over multiple
| days, but it's not like I'm crying constantly. Instead, I cry
| when I would normally walk him. I cry when I would normally feed
| him. I cry when I go to bed by myself, without the sounds of my
| friend settling in too. On the same day I feel happy when I hit a
| new high at my gym. I feel hungry when I skip breakfast. I feel
| annoyed when a car booming music passes me by. It's not like I'm
| sad all the time even though I am grieving.
|
| There is a conversation to be had about how social media affects
| the rhythms of the multiple transient emotional states humans go
| through regularly as part of normal behavior. But I don't think
| they _shorten_ emotions specifically, because emotions are
| already pretty short phenomena. I would speculate they instead
| add in additional stimuli that affect what emotional states
| humans enter and how often they enter them.
| wpietri wrote:
| Interesting points, but I don't think it goes deep enough. The
| rhythms of social media contribute to people's emotions, but they
| are also a function of people's emotions. There's a ton of
| parallel evolution in social media because it's seeking the
| intersection of capitalism's incentives and what people respond
| to.
|
| I think it also ignores that social media creates opportunity for
| both emotional stunting and emotional growth. One of the reasons
| I'm still on Twitter is that it allows me to get perspectives on
| the world that I would never normally encounter. People all
| across society, people with very different experiences.
| Personally, I've grown a lot in the broadness of my empathy
| through years of frequent encounters with people just talking
| openly about their lives.
|
| To make that work, though, I need to avoid spiraling down into
| many of social media's traps, like doomscrolling or pointless
| argument. Which in turn requires stronger emotional regulation
| than I had before. So used correctly, I feel like social media is
| an opportunity to practice the sort of intellectual and emotional
| skills that lead to good self-regulation.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Karl Marx predicted this. See: Estranged Labor (1844)
|
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Karl Marx did _not_ predict this. He predicted estrangement
| from _labor_ - from being emotionally dissociated from the
| results of your work. He didn 't predict being estranged from
| (or worse, because of) your non-work interactions with others
| through media.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| > our emotional lives tend to be impoverished in an online
| context
|
| When you realize that when you pay attention to something and are
| getting negative results, then you become very selective about
| what you pay attention to. You just have to select and curate the
| things that excite you in a positive way, and nurture that. This
| applies online as-well as IRL/AFK.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-02 23:00 UTC)