The article doesn't deliver on the headline of why the author disappeared. At no point is the motivation for going to the Galapagos disclosed.
Motivation... it's a cool place for a holiday? See some endemic wildlife?
Wildlife most likely.
Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
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Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#132Ignoring the obvious contradictory nature of the post (a trip to a place that is generally so expensive and time consuming that only the wealthy leisure class can access it yields polite people), what is the alternative to the fast news cycle? I've been toying with different solutions over the years but haven't found anything great. Magazine subscription to something like the Economist? Weekly Sunday paper subscripti…
If you haven’t already, read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and then feel good about disconnecting from the outrage machine.
I get the Sunday paper and that’s most of the news (other than weather) that I ever see. The best part is the crossword that I do with my wife.
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#133Wealthy people have lots in common regardless of politics. Being able to ignore fascists is a privilege.
The main political threat to this world is not from Fascism. Not even close.
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#134Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#135Wealthy people have lots in common regardless of politics. Being able to ignore fascists is a privilege.
The main political threat to this world is not from Fascism. Not even close.
The two of you are most likely not talking about the same thing.
People like the person you are responding to have managed to make the term fascist not mean anything anymore.
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once stumbled upon the idea of calculating the signal to noise ration of "news". Say you consume 30 pieces of "news" a day, you are roughly at 10k "news" pieces a year. How many of those influence a decision you make. Like which job to take, whom to propose to, where to move. The author, Hans Rosling by the way, showed with this little thought experiment, how little signal for our personal lives and our important d…
The big one is voting, of course. It's not like following international politics will impact what firmness mattress I will buy.
But how often would your preferred candidate change compared to which / how much news you consumed? Most people I know are fairly set in their political opinions and already only consume news that confirms their biases
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that exactly what privilege is though? A measure of a person's ability to be part of that self-selected pool, and to shield yourself from issues that affect other people?
Googling it, looks like the trip costs around $6.5k for 2 people for a week. Expensive, but not out of reach for most Americans. I mean we're on HN... if anything we're more likely to be in a wealthy bubble here. On average. There's plenty outside Silicon Valley but this place is a bubble too.
That's definitely out of reach of most Americans. I live in rural America, and am pretty active in my community. I can thing of 2 or 3 couples besides myself who could make a trip like that reality. We are all remote-workers working in software.
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My personal observation is that those with the least engage in this practice the most, partly because they don't have the bandwidth to bother. It's the middle and upper-middle class who are the terminally online cynics. Look at what the people who were living high on the hog due to tax/graft/dysfunction before losing their heads in the french revolution got up to. Look at the rabbit holes minor British nobility went…
You really should give specific examples of what the French elites or British nobility did if you want to use those as examples to write off an entire category of people today based solely on their economic position.
I didn't choose the comparison point because it is nonsensical, I chose it specifically because it is relevant.
The french first and second estates convinced the government to debt spend to high heaven in the proceeding years. And much of this spending benefitted them, the .gov going to war with the english and buying warships made with timber and nails they made money off of for example. They also were exempt from the bulk of the taxation and they in turn got to levy their own taxes to a degree. So a lot of them got quite rich over that time as the normal people got hungrier and hungrier.
It's a very good parallel to how the white collar class in the US peddled all sorts of changes to policy and the economy to their relative benefit at the detriment of the industrial and skilled services economy which either got sold overseas or consolidated and financialized to the benefit of the the professional managerial types and white collar workers (and of course the CEOs and whatnot too) and to the detriment of the common man who winds up driving for uber because the factory that employed him went poof.
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#139But you felt the strong urge to write once you are on the flight back. I bet you were thinking about the stuff that should go into that writing, all the time during that week. You were collecting photos to share. That's not true disconnecting. You should just experience it and not share it. That week should only exist in your own memory.
One of the best feelings is letting things go.
"It sure would be a shame to miss that photo! ... And so I did"
It's an act of rebellion towards a world browbeating you into performance for invisible strangers
Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain
#140Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.
It's lame how a timeless Buddhist principle is derided as "privilege" by contemporary leftists. So closed minded and presumptuous towards something so effective and universally applicable. My personal observation is that those with the least engage in this practice the most, partly because they don't have the bandwidth to bother. It's the middle and upper-middle class who are the terminally online cynics.
You assume too much about my politics…
In what way is hopping on a plane to an island retreat for a week a “timeless Buddhist principle”? And immediately shilling your next commercial project while you’re at it?
Sounds more like a timeless US-American practice.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience - I do agree that the middle class is the most anxious; anxious about dropping lower and levelling up at the same time. Terminally online though seems to be a pretty common thing across all classes - just look at Trump or Musk tweeting every 5 minutes…