The first kind of disruption is dis-ruption.
Dis as in the double-edged lie we tell ourselves that the obsessive-compulsive, addicting technology behavior we think puts us IN control actually takes it AWAY. We have glorified it as productive, connected, available, and in touch. It is all true.
The dis is, it leaves us completely out of control, unable to produce, connect, be available or in touch with anything we truly value. It leaves us completely lost. It leaves us craving more connection. And we go to the same new drug for the same old answer.
Researchers compare our sense of technology dependency on the feeling that we must be accessible and responsive at any time to that of drugs and alcohol. It’s the same hormonal Dopamine reaction. It runs off attention and desire whether for alcohol, food, sex or technological contact. It tells you, when you get something and it feels good, you want more of it. Compulsive texting, e-mailing and web jumping—these are all dopamine induced loops.
Dis as in the double-edged lie we tell ourselves that the obsessive-compulsive, addicting technology behavior we think puts us IN control actually takes it AWAY. We have glorified it as productive, connected, available, and in touch. It is all true.
The dis is, it leaves us completely out of control, unable to produce, connect, be available or in touch with anything we truly value. It leaves us completely lost. It leaves us craving more connection. And we go to the same new drug for the same old answer.
Researchers compare our sense of technology dependency on the feeling that we must be accessible and responsive at any time to that of drugs and alcohol. It’s the same hormonal Dopamine reaction. It runs off attention and desire whether for alcohol, food, sex or technological contact. It tells you, when you get something and it feels good, you want more of it. Compulsive texting, e-mailing and web jumping—these are all dopamine induced loops.
We are terrified of not keeping up, of missing out, being out of the loop. We are scared our very existence will be outdated, that we will be irrelevant and people will forget us if we are not rebooting our screens of connection constantly.
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But it isn’t this incessant texting, tweeting and e-mail-checking frenzy that’s most insidious, destructive, disruptive. Like any drug, technology addiction is merely the symptom. The real disruption is much more toxic, far-reaching and invisible. It is our western culture of not enough and should be.
Most of our tweets and texts and Instagrams and e-mails are in some way asking over and over and over “Am I doing enough? Am I enough? Are my children doing enough? Am I funny enough? Thin enough? Will it ever be enough?”
We combine this deep-seated sense of insufficiency with a exhaustion-fortified defense about how much we are doing. “I have been working crazy hours. Our weekends are chock-a-block. Kids are triple-booked.”
Most of our tweets and texts and Instagrams and e-mails are in some way asking over and over and over “Am I doing enough? Am I enough? Are my children doing enough? Am I funny enough? Thin enough? Will it ever be enough?”
We combine this deep-seated sense of insufficiency with a exhaustion-fortified defense about how much we are doing. “I have been working crazy hours. Our weekends are chock-a-block. Kids are triple-booked.”
We top off our self-doubt about not doing enough and our self-defense about doing so much with an overwhelming feeling of self-defeat that we are burned out, exhausted and at our wits’ end.
And we follow all this up with a laundry list of what we should do, should be, should have and should get—a new diet, career path, meditation practice, work-out regime, roof, therapist, life. This reconfirms that indeed we are not enough and must do more despite doing it all and being totally exhausted.
Living in this vision of the empire is a closed-loop circuit that leads directly to insanity. We are beginning to see it. If we hop off our self-built, state-of-the-art rat wheel for even a second, the fall-out is everywhere. From teenage suicide and mass homicide to rampant drug prescriptions for depression, anxiety and ADHD.
How did we get here?
Sir Ken Robinson, world-renown author and speaker on education, talks about how we have an industrialized model of education, based on conformity versus complexity and standardization versus individuation. The same seems true these days for our model of being human.
How did we get here?
Sir Ken Robinson, world-renown author and speaker on education, talks about how we have an industrialized model of education, based on conformity versus complexity and standardization versus individuation. The same seems true these days for our model of being human.
We are focused on ETA’s, GPA’s and MBA’s, on LOL’s and ILU’s. We don’t even have time for full words. And yet, we have no idea where or who we are. We seem to be waiting for a message from ourselves but we never get it and we are too busy to check back.
We are moving at a pace, at a frequency where we cannot digest, process, give or receive joy from anything we do. We exist as a weird collection of attributes and judgments, failures and accomplishments, boxes checked and yet to be made.
There is an alternate empire if we are willing to look.
Michael Brown says,
“We cannot find peace when the war is within ourselves.”
Rumi says,
“The trick is not to seek for love but to seek to find the obstacles you have put in its way.”
We are moving at a pace, at a frequency where we cannot digest, process, give or receive joy from anything we do. We exist as a weird collection of attributes and judgments, failures and accomplishments, boxes checked and yet to be made.
There is an alternate empire if we are willing to look.
Michael Brown says,
“We cannot find peace when the war is within ourselves.”
Rumi says,
“The trick is not to seek for love but to seek to find the obstacles you have put in its way.”
Maybe, we are too attached to our idea of what the plan should be. Maybe, external events, circumstances, happenings that appear to break our big plan, tear apart our vision, burst our dream bubble are there to slow us down enough so we can pay attention to what is right in front of us. Maybe, ironically, disruptions like death, birth, traffic jams and spilled milk are what re-introduces us to ourselves.
We think we know where we’re going, what’s ahead, what we need to stay focused on. But what if we don’t?
Take our collective focus on technology for example. What if, and it’s a big what if…the Internet is a fad? What if the texting/tweeting/e-mailing, Instagramming and next hundred iterations of the technological revolution will soon be obsolete?
What if it is all an elongated trend that will be antiquated in 20 years and dated in ten?
We think we know where we’re going, what’s ahead, what we need to stay focused on. But what if we don’t?
Take our collective focus on technology for example. What if, and it’s a big what if…the Internet is a fad? What if the texting/tweeting/e-mailing, Instagramming and next hundred iterations of the technological revolution will soon be obsolete?
What if it is all an elongated trend that will be antiquated in 20 years and dated in ten?
What if the most successful humans are not the ones who invent the next Google or Twitter or Instagram but the ones who move beyond what our five senses tell us, beyond the three-dimensional limitations of technology into a different conception of time and space? What if the future will not be based on technological and biomedical innovations?
What if it is based inside dimensions we cannot yet understand, dimensions quantum physics and spirituality have been exploring separately for decades? What if screens go the way of the printing press? And communication becomes transmitted through energy and light. What if we discover what the other 93% of our brains are for?
We assume intelligence is a brain function and what we can conceive in our most brilliant minds is what will be. We assume there are absolutes because that is what we have been taught. That is what our economic thought leaders need us to believe.
What if it is based inside dimensions we cannot yet understand, dimensions quantum physics and spirituality have been exploring separately for decades? What if screens go the way of the printing press? And communication becomes transmitted through energy and light. What if we discover what the other 93% of our brains are for?
We assume intelligence is a brain function and what we can conceive in our most brilliant minds is what will be. We assume there are absolutes because that is what we have been taught. That is what our economic thought leaders need us to believe.
What if our thinking IS way off track?
What if the sidetrack IS the track?
The tangents ARE the way?
What if there is intelligence far more universal and connected than our human brains. We know through science that everything is connected, that the earth, nature, humans, all matter and energy are one. So, what if all these irritating obstacles, seemingly in our way, are there on purpose?
What if the sidetrack IS the track?
The tangents ARE the way?
What if there is intelligence far more universal and connected than our human brains. We know through science that everything is connected, that the earth, nature, humans, all matter and energy are one. So, what if all these irritating obstacles, seemingly in our way, are there on purpose?
This empire is more like a fifth dimensional Oz, a rabbit hole into the matrix. It appears as an ordinary flat tire, a tragic accident, an innocuous rest stop on the highway of life.
In this empire, the disruptions that appear to happen to us actually happen for us.
The disruptions appearing as obstacles are actually gifts waiting to be unopened. Learning disabilities, burnt toast, personal loss, missed flights—all gifts in different wrapping.
In this empire, the disruptions that appear to happen to us actually happen for us.
The disruptions appearing as obstacles are actually gifts waiting to be unopened. Learning disabilities, burnt toast, personal loss, missed flights—all gifts in different wrapping.
