Why do people always have to reinvent the wheel?
Just do Zazen, my dude.
Men who stare at walls
281–290 of 346 posts
Re: Men who stare at walls
#282Why do people constantly have to reinvent the wheel?
This is just Zazen but with less thought put into it...
If you're tired of corpo meditation, go to a Buddhist monastery and learn how to do the real thing. You don't need to pick up the religion, just learn how to reach the kind of deep concentration that leads to joy.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#283I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
It's called default mode thinking. Or the default mode network [1]. And I agree, not letting your mind do this from time to time results in higher stress and less ability to focus. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
At some point on William Gibson's now defunct micro blog*, he's about to embark on the book tour for Pattern Recognition (so circa 2003).
I'll butcher his insightful phrasing, but he remarks to the effect of
> I think I'm going to stop blogging. The act of sitting at a laptop and writing these posts seems incompatible with my life as it exists on a book tour. The only free moments available for it to occupy would be ones where I'm sitting, momentarily caught between two scheduled activities and staring off into space. I have a suspicion these moments are crucial for my soul. So, until we meet again.
The comingled ambiguousness and specificity of the observation stuck with me.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20070123212506/http://www.willia...
Re: Men who stare at walls
#284OP mentions they are a coffee drinker, and use caffeine a lot to fight tiredness and brainfog. While the suggested methods to refocus are great, maybe there is some improvement potential by looking at root causes? As a former heavy coffee consumer, I experienced varying degrees of tiredness over my workday, and inconsistent sleep patterns. Ever since I stopped drinking it, my energy levels have been far more predicta…
Do you have any advice on how to quit? I would love to try not drinking caffeine but it just seems too hard.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking? Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
Read while walking, I live in a walkable city. The pedestrian way is safe. I stop reading when I arrive at any intersection then start again once I cross. Even as a kid, I'd rush to open any magazine I bought before I got back home and would read them while walking.
I live in a walkable city, am safe, but others dont appreciate me bumping onto them. And I want to reach the destination without bumping into walls. Or stepping into bike lane or car lane.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#286I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
While I don’t want to downplay the toxicity of smartphones, couldn’t the same be said for books and newspapers?
A smartphone, at least with a connection to the internet, is always new. There is always something new to see and hear.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#287I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
While I don’t want to downplay the toxicity of smartphones, couldn’t the same be said for books and newspapers?
I think it can. In extreme cases (say grad school) I've had books and "book learnin'" suck the life out of my life.
"All I can do is read a book to stay awake And it rips my mind away but it's a great escape." - Blind Melon
Re: Men who stare at walls
#288I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
If I've had enough I will go inside my own mind and daydream involuntarily. It's as inevitable as taking a breath.
I can have the phone in my hand and my eyes will choose the wall instead. Only a call or text could possibly bring my attention back to the phone.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#289Is the title a reference to "Men Who Stare at Goats"? If so, I think few people got it.
I was thinking of Three Body Problem
Re: Men who stare at walls
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." -Blaise Pascal
I thought that was Einstein, Lincoln, or Keller :)
It is from Pensées, 139:
> Diversion.—When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.
> But on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.
> Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
> Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
> Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
> Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
> The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
> This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
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