The Luxury Of Thinking One’s Own Thoughts

When people think of luxuries, they think of things that rich people can afford but they can’t. And as it happens, the luxury I’m talking about today fits into that category. I’m hearing reports of very rich people enjoying this luxury, while people of lesser means find it unattainable.

I suppose it’s best to start this conversation very directly, even though it may be a bit jarring. Nonetheless, the following statement is true, and we all know it’s true on some level:

The greatest thought-disruption system in the history of mankind is the combination of the smartphone and social media.

I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but it’s true all the same, and I’ll make the case for it by giving you some slightly edited passages from Johann Hari’s books, Stolen Focus and The Anxious Generation:

• A study at the University of Oregon found that if you are focusing on something and get interrupted, it will take an average of 23 minutes before you regain the same state of focus.
• While getting phone calls and emails, a person’s IQ drops by an average of 10 points.
• Professor Earl Miller at MIT believes we’ve created “a perfect storm of cognitive degredation, as a result of distraction.”
• If you see the world through fragments, your empathy often doesn’t kick in, as it does when you engage in a sustained, focused way.
• The more you let your mind wander (undistracted), the better you are at having personal goals, being creative, and making patient, long term decisions.
• We are creating an arms race that causes companies to find more reasons to steal people’s time.
• Children are being deprived of the chance to develop intrinsic motives.
• In 2017, the President of Facebook asked, “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?”
• I’ll add to this that, on average, Americans check their smart phones 205 times per day.

The Luxury Of Thinking One’s Own Thoughts

And so, the luxury I’m addressing today sets us free from ruinous distraction… ruinous in the short and long term.

Back in the 1990s, I trained my friends and business associates to contact me via email, and I did that for one simple reason: Email didn’t distract me. I might check it ten times a day, but those would be times that I chose, not times which were thrust upon me and which interrupted my thoughts.

I did that because I had earlier noticed how badly distractions and interruptions ruined my work, and I very much needed to remain productive in those years. For a long time, in the years before email, I worked at night and slept during the day, because it was worth it to think unobstructed thoughts. I got a lot more done.

An Easily Attainable Luxury

Obtaining this luxury is easy: Turn in your smart phone for an old-style flip-phone. It’ll do just fine for phone calls and you can even receive and send texts when you need to. This will make you functionally smarter and more creative; it’ll even save you money.

The only real cost involved is that of letting people think you’re weird. Or, perhaps, breaking your addiction to the phones. If that affects you, you have my condolences. And please remember this little phrase: Smart phones and Facebook are the new smoking.

It wasn’t many years ago, of course, that no one had smart phones, and we survived it just fine. Not too long before that we had no mobile phones at all, and we survived that as well.

And so, this particular “need” is artifical, not essential. And if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll be happy that you ditched the thing. You’ll love being free to think your own thoughts. (That said, breaking the addiction can be very hard. I escaped that part.) 

Last Thoughts

So often it’s seemingly mundane, real-world events that cement things in us. For me, that moment came during a taxi ride. I settled in to the cab and one of those new screen systems flipped on and started showing me ads. I asked the driver to turn it off, then added, “I want to think my own thoughts.” And I really did; they were far more fruitful than being subjected to uninvited hucksters trying to pull money out of me.

And so I think this makes a nice model for all of us: Turn the thing off and think your own thoughts.

Your own thoughts will serve you far, far better than thoughts that are implanted in you by paying strangers… and by people whose income depends upon addicting you.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemandsperspective.com

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