Quickly refuted with healthy, human solutions

Mizzou scientists discovered that cell phone separation can have serious psychological and physiological effects on users.

Their study demonstrated that our phones are capable of becoming an extension of our selves such that when separated, we experience a lessening of self and a negative physiological state.

What’s most fascinating to me is the questionnaire itself. Because so many of the line items can be easily and quickly refuted with healthy, human solutions.

Allow me to share a sampling of the questions, along with own reflections.

If you didn’t have your smartphone with you, would you feel disconnected from my online identity?

If so, then maybe it’s time to find real freedom by shifting to an internal locus of self. To ground your person in concrete reality, rather than how the virtual world perceives your avatar via social networks. It’s amazing what level of freedom that offers you.

Would running out of battery in your smartphone make feel weird because you would not know what to do?

If yes, then maybe it’s time to reengage your sense of wonder to replace and cure your boredom. To approach the world as a humble and receptive student of its analog curiosities. It’s powerful how much rich learning is available to you.

If you could not use your smartphone, would you be afraid of getting stranded somewhere?

Good. Maybe that’s what you need right now. To be trapped and left to your own human devices that don’t require chargers. To have an opportunity to form some original thoughts, rather than just reacting to other people’s reactions all the time.

Would being unable to get the news on your smartphone make me nervous?

My theory is, you would feel the exact opposite. Because all the news does is flood your mind with outrage porn and seduce you into patting yourself on the back for being the most offended. Maybe if you weren’t so addicted to congratulating yourself on how upset you were, you wouldn’t deprive yourself of making meaningful real life relationships and commitments.

Would you feel annoyed if you could not look information up on your smartphone when you wanted to do so?

That’s understandable, but becoming someone who doesn’t trust their resources to solve problems and figure things out for themselves, that’s inexcusable. Playing an always on status game through our always connected phones is simply soul withering.

Ultimately, phones may or may not be a legitimate addiction. It doesn’t matter. The bigger theme is our rising inability as human beings to recognize what an amazing world we live in, and how technology exacerbates that dysfunction.

Louie said it best in his recent standup special:

We’re constantly right on the edge of existence and nothing, and we live in total disrespect of that. We live an amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots who don’t care. People say their phone sucks. No it doesn’t. The shittiest cellphone in the world is a miracle. Your life sucks around the phone. You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something.

Next time you leave the house without your phone, because you start going into withdrawal, challenge yourself to keep going without out.

You might be pleasantly surprised what you notice.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What if not having a phone wasn’t taking you away from life, but freeing you to enjoy it?