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The Price of Connection
Sometime in the mid-2010s, there was a chorus of researchers who began to seriously consider the long-term effects of modern, digital social media on our personalities. At this point everyone with a mic, pen, and laptop had already waxed lyrical about the positive and negative impacts of online networks invading every corner of our daily lives. The foundation of the dual life – of your actual person and your profiles on digital platforms – had long been consolidated. Facebook was the dominant player (and remains for now as the most utilized site for connecting), essentially ubiquitous among younger demographics who had grown up with technology at their fingertips. Even youth who were living in poverty could afford simple flip phones where they could access the basic Facebook mobile interface and messaging services – something I witnessed working with children in rural Uganda back in 2013.
These researchers may have been motivated by the unexpected and anecdotal rise in social isolation, especially among youth (early adopters and heavy users of large social media sites). MySpace had been an experimental precursor where the potentially harmful effects of social media may not have made themselves apparent. The rise of Facebook, a digital party for all your acquaintances, with a constantly updating feed, and Reddit, which allowed a window into the general zeitgeist and its flowering subcultures, led to increased critical scrutiny of the underlying infrastructure that was fast forming our new social connective tissue.
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Whatsapp and over in China, WeChat and QQ, were also fast becoming relevant in the workplace. Links to each began to be embedded not just on webpages designed for entertainment and fun, but also for professional use. There are still vast swathes of industry in East Asia where an email or mobile text may not be exchanged during an entire workday; instead, interactions on a single platform like WeChat may be all that is needed to accomplish daily tasks.
These researchers did surveys, looked at all publicly available data, and spoke to industry experts, users, promotors, and critics of social media platforms. They quoted twentieth century intellectuals such as B.F. Skinner, Bertrand Russell, Alan Turing, and Norbert Wiener in their search for an answer to the question: should we be worried?
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Weekly Picks – January 28, 2024
This week’s collection:
- Around the globe, the politics of the war in Gaza [are] local
- What Are Intellectuals Good For?
- What’s Next for Histories of Climate Change
- Life Inside the Fiction Factory: Dan Sinykin on Conglomerate Publishing
- Israel’s War Within
- The Potent Pollution Of Noise
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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47 Years (or, Thoughts on Retirement)
“Who was the first man to look at a house full of objects and to immediately assess them only in terms of what he could trade them in for in the market likely to have been? Surely he can only have been a thief.”
– David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
I have been on this planet for 32 years. That is the equivalent of two thirds the amount of time a working adult will spend laboring in their life. Sort of.
Not everyone lives a full life and not everyone needs to work to support themselves. Here in Canada, people can retire at any time, but most are compelled to a decision between the ages of 55 and 70. The vast majority spend ages 18 to 65 chasing the dream of freeing themselves from labor. A reprehensible 47 years. Not reprehensible because of what they are doing, choosing to do, or the fact that they are working. There is nothing inherently wrong with work, with occupying yourself in a profession to serve yourself or others, or with finding value in it. Reprehensible, then, because nearly all who work do so primarily to survive – to ensure basic needs, pay off debts, support others, or secure a modicum of leisure. Participate or suffer.
But I digress. This particular post is not about that aspect of how we set up our economy. Instead, it is a rumination on retirement. The end goal. Call it what you will.
I am 14 years into my 47 (or more likely, 52 or more). The sad truth is that retirement may be a fantasy for many individuals moving forwards. There are a variety of statistics that confirm how little Canadians are saving, or how many are aware of how little they are saving, or of those foregoing retirement because they must. Fewer and fewer are earning enough to afford the fast-rising costs of homes; the biggest chunks of paychecks ending up in the pockets of landlords small and large. Increasing inequality, unfettered inflation, reliance on resources dwindling our breathable air, and a financial system that incentivizes greed and excessive growth, not helping in the slightest.
Of course, with a social welfare system that hedges the worst outcomes, Canadians are fortunate. More fortunate than most in the world who have no vision of an old age free from labor, enjoyed on sunny beaches and shimmering shores. There is something to be said for selling your life and soul for a limited time rather than having it wrested from your grip as a child never to get it back.
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Weekly Picks – January 21, 2024
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece. Click on this post’s title or “read more” to ensure anchor links below redirect to the appropriate hyperlinked article.
This week’s collection:
- On policing and state violence:
- On smuggling sand plus its creation:
- On the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict:
- Other pieces:
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A Well-lit Darkness
The Sun’s rays break through the clouds above Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda.
(Not farmland. Not dark. Likely hiding many a firefly.)
Eight years ago, I co-authored a blog with a friend. It was our attempt to get into the habit of writing regularly. We were students in different hemispheres with an intermittent connection. We published a few posts before our enthusiasm for the exercise was overrun by the demands on our young lives. She was navigating a dual major in Science and Fine Arts, while I struggled through a dissertation on language education in East African settings.
The blog ran its course fairly quickly. I had no patience or time to frequently journal and both of us were short on inspiration. Writer’s block compounded by the mental exhaustion of finishing our respective degrees and preparing for the next chapter in our lives; a blind preparation as we hurtled towards uncertain careers.
The entry below is a slightly edited republishing of a reflection that was posted to the blog in the summer of 2016. The memory it alludes to now 11 orbits past. It is a fond meditation to revisit. My feeling on the noisiness of life has not changed, nor my proclivity to intimate a greater reverie than the one I had perhaps experienced in the moment. The epilogue also echoes – silence remains a luxury, submitting to sleep still a strain, the perennial pressures of existence ever-present.
As I type these words, the night has settled. Snow rests lazy and comfortable on the treetops. Most are sleeping inside their warm abodes. No sharp sounds puncture the nocturnal. Everything is still.
I invite you into the dark.
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In Dread and Promise
The crowd was mostly young. Bookworms, sweatered paramours, and fans of underground rock slowly filled the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in anticipation of a performance that would end the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival. We sat on the upper tier, far from the stage and yet able to see every nook and cranny. The theatre’s curvature made it appear as though we were on the edge of a concave lens, just a short lean away from tipping ourselves into the hundreds of seats below.
The program read: “Mogwai & Mark Cousins”. We were there to witness a non-narrative film of archived footage assembled by Mark Cousins called Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise. The feature was scored by the Scottish band Mogwai, with many in attendance solely to see them play.
And that is what they did. With no bombast or introduction of any kind, they strolled out into the orchestra pit, equipped themselves, and began the show. Their strides out were greeted with mild cheers silenced quickly by the dimming lights and deafening volume of their instruments. The vibrations reached into our bones as a large projection illuminated the space above the stage. A man’s face appeared. He began, “The government has decided, that in the present state of international tension, you should be told how best to protect yourselves…”
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Weekly Picks – January 14, 2024
This week’s collection:
- Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?
- 2023 smashes record for world’s hottest year by huge margin
- Skipping School: America’s Hidden Education Crisis
- Is Finland’s Housing First really the miracle cure for Canada?
- The geometry of other people
- Acts Harmful to the Enemy
- I Spent the Holidays in Inheritance Capitalism
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Normative Winds
Questioning the collective dream is an act of exercising freedom. Examining the basis of how one should live, who with, and who for, is the kind of amateur iconoclasm that should be widely undertaken.
Perhaps it is – and perhaps everyone is content with coming to similar conclusions. Go to school, get a job, find a long-term partner, obtain a home, bring kids into the picture, fill your physical spaces and buoy your social ones with material things, travel occasionally, and aim for those unceasing milestones. Some of these things are necessary in a world constructed around increasing labor and capital to no end. Others are choices, many subsidized or imposed. By family, culture, governing bodies, and peers.
In this context, it can be exasperating to untie oneself from the common. To face persistent doubts about not being like-minded. To remotely question basic assumptions of what may underlie another’s comfort. As though one has come to naïve conclusions with little consideration rather than reflecting on what defines their own happiness.
Defensive, distractive, dismissive, disinformed retorts – the 4 walls of condescension put up around the ‘other’, in more circumstances than the above.
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The Gravity of the Game
Groundskeepers prepare the field and wicket at Hagley Oval, Christchurch, for a test match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in December 2018.
So optimism was rationed like wartime jam. For most of the day Lord’s was alive with anxious chatter, a jittery, skittery babbling, “what do you think, can they, could they, will they, maybe?”
– Andy Bull conveys the crowd’s temperament during the 2019 ICC Men’s World Cup Final
Lionel Messi stares up at his final peak. Kylian Mbappé prowls in the foothills of greatness. From the Andes to the Alps, from River Plate to the banks of the Seine, our planet unites around its ultimate game.
– Peter Drury invites us to witness the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup Final
The morning of December 18, 2018. Summertime in full flow, a taunting breeze wafting in from the hostel room window. A crucial decision to make.
I have just 64 hours to explore Wellington, on this lap, and the certainty of rain the next day has all but been confirmed. My prepared itinerary mocks me on my phone – the planned indoor-outdoor balance now thrown askew. The sun, shining bright since early morning, will continue to raise temperatures throughout this, my only full one in the city.
I could go, as I had originally desired, to the Basin Reserve. It will be Day 4 of a test match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka. My only chance to observe two giants of the international game, likely for many years to come. If I take this route and the rain falls as promised, I check the cricket box but miss out on many other outdoor sights under a perfect sky; tomorrow being the opportune time to explore the capital from the drier side of the window.
Or I could skip the Basin. Mount Victoria would be a nice hike. The waterfront is abuzz with activity. A nice trip on the cable cars perhaps, followed with a stride through the lush parks on the way to Zealandia. But the age-old duel between bat and ball beckons…
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Weekly Picks – January 7, 2024
This week’s collection:
- The False Link Between Climate Change and Mass Migration
- Why is Gaza so central to the Palestinian Struggle?
- How to avoid the cognitive hooks and habits that make us vulnerable to cons
- Welcome to Canada’s New Gilded Age
- Greenwashing Oil
- Tools to End the Poverty Pandemic
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.