Your autonomy is at risk
Modern society is not set up to facilitate a fulfilling life. It is the norm to be bombarded with a volume of information and stimulation unlike ever before on a daily basis. Our brains are not designed to be able to effectively regulate this type of experience, nor does the education system provide any tools to help adjust.
The present-day sources of media we are exposed to are designed to aggressively steal our attention, flood our minds with novel information, evoke emotional responses, and remove the mental burden of us needing to think about what we're experiencing. Media platforms are designed to pacify us and turn us into obedient, addicted consumers who willingly donate their attention in abundance in exchange for mild "entertainment". The companies behind the media are driven by maximising shareholder value and would be stupid to do anything less than employ every trick in the book to infiltrate your mind and feed off your attention like a parasite. The ideal consumer for these companies is one that settles into an unconscious groove of stable consumption and repeats this until they die. This is the type of existence that you're being pushed towards.
You're most susceptible to addiction when you feel an underlying sense of discontentment and disconnection. If these companies can shield you from introspection and self awareness and keep you hooked, then they can create and maintain this feeling in consumers and use it to drive their manipulation. As their rate of usage escalates, these companies are continuously gaining more and more control over society.
In order to preserve individual agency it's essential that we rebel against this type of interaction and take decisive action against these relentless currents that will gladly pull us into a state of unconsciousness.
Gaining autonomy from these pressures is not some grand act of achieving financial independence and moving to a remote island to create some new off the grid community. It is simply a conscious decision to adjust how we relate to the world around us. Although there may be a compulsion to remove oneself from society in light of the hostile conditions, the reality is that this is not a viable option in more cases, at least in the short term. So we need to adopt behaviours and systems that make us more resilient to contemporary life.
How these systems look will vary for each individual and require independent reflection, but here are some principles that that could be helpful:
- Replace high stimulation media with lower stimulation activities where possible.
- Netflix -> Reading.
- When high stimulation media usage is unavoidable, moderate its usage.
- YouTube/X for learning/networking -> Only between 8pm and 9pm.
- Spend time every day doing nothing.
- Take moments throughout the day to decompress.
- Meditate before sleeping.
By employing practices like this, the goal is to create more mental space and capacity to connect with oneself and live a life that is more internally aligned, satisfying, and fulfilling. I anticipate that it will only get harder to maintain autonomy in the modern world as time goes on, so I encourage you to urgently reflect on whether you're satisfied with your relationship to modern media and technology as a whole or whether you'd like to adjust.