The digital era is a pain in the figure – and my inch text is above
While I was grasping peanut butter the other day, severe pain shot through some dark tendons in the thumb, making you shout. A preliminary Google revealed that I had acquired the embarrassing disorder of the 21st century “SMS in the mandate”Also known as De Quervain’s Tenosinovite, who should be reserved for a fifteen -year -old who discovers Tiktok, not a 38 -year -old mother whose text messages are limited to trivial letters as “see you soon”, “sounds well” or “in my way”.
In my 20 years, I sent a message with the vigor of a heroine by Jane Austen, messages of messaging my long and monotonous thoughts on life, love and everything else. Now, I consider “how are you?” Texts with terror, so I had no idea how I suffered an injury related to the text until I realized that I was scrolling the symptoms on the webmd with the thumb in question.
The thumb has increased … in no good.Credit: action
It is a strange and disturbing feeling when our digital worlds cross our physical realities. When our futuristic descendants dig the remains of a human being from 2025, they will be perplexed by our unusually muscle and curved necks. They will ask what possible evolutionary functions were transforming us into ogre, as at that point, I am sure they will have digital interfaces implanted in the brain.
But my “Smaying Thumb” Tenosinovar caused another realization: scrolling through news, social media and Facebook market are my main sources of free time. If I get a break between work, study and small children who need constant and enthusiastic feedback on their Cartwheels and Rolls of Tumb, I slide. I can travel around the world in one session, but I feel I have gained anything, often more restless and less informed than when I started. But it’s so easy. Scrolling is like eating McDonald: it’s fast and cheap and you don’t have to get out of the car.
Arthur C. Brooks Recently written in The Atlantic on how inept we are in authentic free time. “When our work is more demanding, we generally define free time as its opposite: complete inactivity” (Read: Binge-Watching, Strolling Doom, Instagram coils). Brooks claims that leisure is “a serious deal and if you don’t do well, you will never find the full meaning of life”. It indicates the conception of the 20th century philosopher Josef Pieper according to which the opposite of his free time is not work but acedia, “an ancient-strip word that means spiritual or mental sloth”, in Brooks’ words.
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Ironically, one of the most harmful evaluations of your free time confused with mental slothery is the show we are all looking (in my case, the phone in hand while I refer to IMDB): HBO The white lotus. In its glorious “Eat the Rich” tradition, we witness the wealthy people who learn that their search for free time (that is, drinking, celebrating on imaginative boats, who lie next to the swimming pool), often at the expense of those who have paid to provide it, is absolutely insignificant in light of relationships, in the past and occasional murder. In the last season, episode five, the toxic female trio of friends was intended to have “good moment” against their insecurities and their disordered history in a wild evening. Party and hook up with random guys begin to feel useless while their friendship is revealed, one thread at a time.
Sometimes it is justified to scroll through my phone because it creates the illusion of productivity, especially as a writer. Scoring the news remedies is basically a “research” for any story in which I can hammer them, like the piety of a child of a child. But it is a pale imitation of the real pleasure of getting lost in a good book or learning something new; These are more difficult to start, but with a greater payment.
It is useful to see free time as a spiritual discipline – something to cultivate and cultivate, like a flourishing garden. The Christian faith of my family has always taught me the resting power, something that God does not suggest only but commands. The idea of a technological Saturday has always appealed to me, even if I have never had the Chutzpah to implement it.
