Imagine All the People Living Like its 1989

Living for today, living life for freedom; and freedom means ditching big tech.

It was my genuine hope that as technological advancements progressed, we would enter a world without hunger, without poverty, without sickness. That we might witness AI and the like doing our laundry and dishes, so we as humans could be freed up to create and express our uniqueness. Yet, I am consistently left disappointed. While medical breakthroughs have occurred and made more things possible, I don’t see that they’ve made things more accessible. What good is applied knowledge if it’s hoarded?

For me, the road we are headed down with AI becoming our source of soulless entertainment and social media sites becoming a soap box and indoctrination tool for billionaires, is incomprehensible. It’s also unconscionable. Never did I, or most of us, ask for a future built on the dismantling of humanity.

This is why I’m ditching most social media sites, limiting my exposure to the internet and media, and acquiring a phone that uses minimalism as its playground. Meet the Light Phone 3:

I’ve never owned a minimalist phone. Since the invention of the smart phone, it’s basically all I have owned since. It’ll be strange to turn back time and live in a life where I don’t have infinite answers living in my pocket. It’ll be strange to not get notification after nagging notification every few minutes, all day long. Strange, but also I suspect, wonderfully relieving.

It’ll be like turning back the clock 20 or even 30 years. Heading back to a place where the internet was just a thought. A time when if you wanted to make a call, you picked the receiver up and dialed numbers known by heart. A time when news was delivered via papers, from certified journalists. A time when socialization relied on parks and pools, restaurants, and social gatherings. A time when we all felt togetherness because we were, indeed, together.

That’s the worst of all, isn’t it? Compassion is slim and withering now that there’s this chasm of separation between us all. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, you could believe different things and still see each other as people. Now, division is used as a tool of the wealthy, as a distraction from the transgressions of the oppressor. Hatred is at an all time high, and I believe it has to do with the divisive rhetoric and our obsession with labels. Labeling leads to othering, and othering leads to separation. Separation invites the divide between us which makes it easier to see someone as a label instead of a human. I was hoping with this big tech boom around the world that we might be able to mend these chasms, but I’ll be honest and say I’m not surprised we are going in the opposite direction.

At a certain point, one struggles to feel effective. Sacrifices made for the greater good turn to dust no sooner than you’ve built it all. At this stage in my life, I’ve had to downsize my radius of do-gooding, and stick to myself and my immediate community in my quest for meaning. What use am I to the movement if I’m nothing but a husk at the end?

This is where the phone and the minimalist approach come into play. If I cannot change it, I can change the way I engage with it. 

Instead of worrying and ruminating over a news article or fear-mongering social media post, I can look to and nurture nature. Instead of fearing that they’ll destroy the earth with fracking, pollution, and PFAS, I will tend to and water my own gardens. Instead of living a life of anxiety and despair, waiting for the big, orange, dementia-riddled evil to make our lives inevitably and immeasurably worse, I can cultivate spaces of safety and joy all around. It isn’t perfect, but it’s what I can do without martyring myself to a losing battle.

Life is meant for us to explore, to create, to share, to love. Right now, I don’t feel like the internet or our phones or our endless notifications align with any purposeful way of living. Can you imagine what would happen if we all just stopped playing the game? If we all went back to our roots and entrusted ourselves with our own survival? Can you see the thriving communities built on partnership, cooperation, and love as I see? The wealthy are only wealthy because they exploit the working person’s labor. What if we all just stopped laboring for them, and labored instead for ourselves?

And maybe, just maybe, that revolution begins with abandoning the brainwashing machine, and getting a new phone.