I’m clearly not the only one engaged in the MonkeyFight. I recently read the essay, The Joy of Quiet, by Pico Iyer. The title says it all. It’s about the ever-shrinking peace and quiet in most people’s lives and the rising effort to reclaim some of that space. He writes that the future of travel lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices for rooms without internet access.
"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug."
When I’m sitting at my computer losing the MonkeyFight to digital distractions, I’m no better than a rat hitting a lever for a dopamine pellet. I don’t know if rats like dopamine but I sure as hell do. My distractions aren’t even interesting or idiosyncratic. Faced with the endless universe of information at my fingertips, I check my goddamn email and the NY Times website and I numbly scan Facebook, reading status updates from people who have no business being in the front of my mind. (Sure if I had to I could still conjure certain pairs of Jordache certain girls wore from 8th-12th grade, but it doesn’t mean I want daily updates on their kids and the weather in their city of residence.)
In the essay, Iyer mentions the internet-blocking software, Freedom, which is an app I use when I’m desperate to unplug and focus on my work. When I get on Freedom I actually have a somatic response; I literally breathe easier and am immediately more able to focus on my work. I’m not much for advertising here, but Freedom definitely gets the MonkeyFight seal of approval.
I wonder where we’ll be ten and twenty years from now with regard to peace and quiet. Will it get harder to unplug from information and advertising or will the marketplace provide us with enough options to balance things out? Iyer mentions "internet rescue camps" in China and South Korea for internet addicts. The Boy doesn’t live in China or South Korea but I know he’ll be as vulnerable as anyone to the sacred screen. He already reacts to my laptop with the fervor of a malnourished zombie at a fat farm. Denying him access to it is the one thing that is sure to make him cry. I’ve actually seen him handle physical pain with more grace and stoicism than when I shut my computer.
So who cares? What’s being lost – if anything – by the expanding web of distraction? After all, people have struggled with the monkeys for centuries. Is the hand-wringing about digital overdosing any different from the days when old farts recoiled at Elvis' pelvis? This is a debate I run into with friends occasionally when I’m the recoiling old fart at the table. I like how Iyer addresses the complexity of the issue by quoting someone from a very long time ago.
"Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
I can feel annoyingly redundant in my fascination with distraction but I do know that when I've burned time in a mindless online haze I feel bad, and when I'm free from ports and phones and cables I tend to feel lighter and happier. So I'm gonna err on the side of lightness.
In case you're looking for a way to keep score in the MonkeyFight, I’ve devised a system. Simply shut your eyes and try to silently count to one hundred without stopping. The number you reach is your score. I haven’t figured out the grading curve but let’s just say I rarely make it to 50 and occasionally get lost between 10 and 20.
Let me know how you do sitting quietly in a room.