The purpose of the technology:
The main purpose for which humans have developed technology is to make life easier and simpler. So, by making tools man has tried to fulfill his daily needs in the most efficient manner. It is much easier to cut a piece of meat with a metal knife than with a stone knife. It’s much easier to make a call from your mobile phone than to go to the telephone box outside your home. People want the comfort and security we get when we have predictability over our lives. It’s normal, we are limited beings and therefore we need resources all the time. If we have the necessary technology, we feel that our needs will be further met, but if we do not have such tools at our disposal, then we feel helpless in the face of our limitations and therefore out of control.
But why is technology so addictive?
Technology becomes addictive because it is not used maturely, and unfortunately, there are very few people who are truly mature or even willing to mature. Instead of being used for what it was intended to be, technology very often becomes a form of relief for the suffering that arises from our emotional childishness. Cars are only needed for transportation, after all, they are cans on wheels. But when a car becomes something that indicates your value status, or you find yourself caught up in an addiction to the intense thrill of high speed, these cans on wheels become unhealthy ways of compensating for our lack of inner meaning. The machine becomes something that lowers the quality of life instead of raising it. The mobile phone is a very useful device for being able to make calls from wherever you are, but when the need to be connected to others comes to dominate you because you are unable to be with yourself when you are alone, then yes, this device is a form of addiction. The Internet was founded to network computers between universities. The idea was to facilitate the exchange of information between several research centers. However, when you spend many hours of your day using the internet, stimulating yourself through social media, music, news, etc., information becomes something that imprisons you instead of liberating you. This phenomenon occurs because you can no longer cope with life without being constantly stimulated by information, and this is because through that dose of information you feed the illusion that you control reality, that life is predictable, and this is not only immature, but also very sad.
Five things you can do to get rid of technology addiction:
1. Always ask yourself, am I using technology or is technology using me?
Always remind yourself what the real purpose of technology is. Life is a gift and therefore the time you have is something worth making the most of. So technology, if it is used properly, should increase the quality of your life, and allow you to make the most out of the time you have to cultivate your real development. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up considering technology more valuable than the simple experience of life, only to waste the time you have and become fascinated by the illusion of technological control. So, do you control technology or does technology control you?
2. Don’t seek to become a slave to comfort by equipping yourself from head to toe with technology. That will only complicate your life instead of simplifying it!
Comfort is good. It’s good for pregnant women and women with young children. It’s also good for sick people who are suffering and need support and assistance. It’s good after a hard day’s work or a busy week. Comfort is good! Rest is sublime! But when all we crave is comfort, we become unable to progress and if we don’t progress, we regress. When I say progress I don’t mean anything extraordinary or miraculous. Maintaining a minimal routine is progress, even if the routine is something very simple. To hold on to something is to progress in that thing, to let go of it is to regress to a state where you just exist, you only vegetate. Because that place in your life that has been left deserted, emptied of whatever it is that you have stopped, will summon chaos in that free space. Seek also the effort, seek also the burden, otherwise you do not progress. The real world has no remote control, and you have no access to any magic wand to make all your comfort fantasies come true. With such a conception, you will morally blind yourself, become a slug on the level of conscience, and end up a social parasite, instead of contributing also in turn to the well-being of others. By seeking to find a piece of technology for your every desire for comfort and relief, you will fill your life with machines that will make you into their slave. Rather than being able to enjoy the little things, allowing life to become enough for you in its simplicity, you will progress ever further in the extravagance of your self-indulgence. Notice: paradise is not full of monitors or diffusers!
3. If you feel that technology is already controlling your life, seek to accept this and take real action.
You may already be controlled by technology, and it’s taking up a lot of your time. If you admit this and are willing to take real action, things are not lost, on the contrary, they can become much better than they were before you were captured by technology. Accept that life is growth and transformation. Accept that effortless comfort is something that destroys you. Accept that you can’t control the world through devices. If you exclusively seek to experience a sense of predictability through technology, you will find yourself agonizing over the lack of meaning and being overwhelmed by the feeling that you are wasting your life instead of living it. Identify what kind of technology controls you. If it’s the computer, seek to understand what it means to you and why you seek to waste so much of your time with it. Then make a program to manage your time on the computer and give someone an account for that. Let yourself be known in your addiction, this will help you find release because it will inevitably weaken your sense of control.
4. Fill the meaning void with something meaningful
If technology is completely absorbing your life, you’re bound to experience moments of boredom and emptiness. You can’t bring meaning into your life just by abstaining from that particular type of technology that is problematic for you. Just simply denying an obstacle that’s holding you back can’t make life an affirmation, it’s just not that simple. You need to orient your life towards something higher, something that gives meaning to it. Technology addiction is born from a lack of tolerance for the unpredictability of life, and depriving yourself of that form of comfort that technology brings will increase your sense of anxiety. Therefore, you need to actively engage in a new direction. Volunteer, learn a new language, take up a sport, do anything, just don’t let that empty space, that the pleasure given by technology that you now no longer have, take you by surprise. Be prepared for the battle ahead!
5. Seek to make peace with yourself and prepare for death
It may sound a little silly to some. I mean such thoughts are for the retired and the dying, not for people who are young and full of life. It’s true when your body is healthy and strong, death is something you can’t conceptualize, you don’t have a counterpart for it on a psychic level. But that doesn’t mean that there is no death in your life, the death that you are not aware of. So what does it mean to prepare for death? It doesn’t mean, by any means, to come to a stop considering death a tragedy. What it means is becoming able to accept the possibility of death at any moment in an honorable way. Recognizing that you are limited and there is not anything you can do to change that, but what you can do in the time you have is to live a life that in the end involves as little regret as possible. Technology feeds you the illusion of omnipotence, some even believe they will manage to copy their consciousness into a server somewhere and thus become immortal. But by this opinion, they hold regarding who they think they are, they prove indisputably that they are not ready to die, that they do not live, and that they have the death in their world. Why do I allow myself to say that? It is because they naively allow themselves to assume that their real self is the consciousness of their psyche as individual body memory. So this feeling that they are them, in the way they feel it in their existing body, may also be put into the other container. However, instead of honoring the wonder of their being, they are always living in fear that they will lose this feeling that they cling to their existence. So instead of receiving the gift of each moment, they fearfully seek to find new resources to sustain this feeling which they somehow know waits for death. They have death in them, simply by not accepting that they are mortal. They therefore seek to control life instead of gratefully receiving it for being given to them, and technology feeds these deceptive feelings and amplifies them.
Conclusion:
So what you have to do now is to see if technology serves you and your life, or if it parasites your life and empties it of simple happiness. Don’t hide from death behind devices, death will find you anyway, and if you fill your life with objects, you will find that meaning will have no place in your life. Comfort has its place after effort and never before, otherwise you will become limp and weak-willed. So when you open yourself up to new forms of technology, always think about whether you are making your life easier, or more complicated in the long run. If you do realize that you are addicted to technology, don’t despair, just as you got into addiction so you can also get out. Accept the powerlessness in your life, seek to understand why you do what you do, and take on the discipline and struggle, along with accountability from a supportive authority. Seek meaning and the things that make life real, and when I say that I mean serving others, healthy goals for your development, or anything else that involves cultivating truth and beauty in your life. Finally, I invite you to accept your death and the limitations that your life implies. Only in this way, aware of life’s fragility and vulnerability, will you come to terms with yourself and live an honorable life with as few regrets as possible. Otherwise, you will always fall into the trap of controlling your life through technology and find that you are not free to enjoy life in its simplicity and sufficiency. You will realize, perhaps when it is too late, that you have been a slave to the desire to control your life to make it predictable, instead of celebrating it as a gift as it truly is.
Dare to step beyond the illusion of technological convenience, there is life and there is life to the full even without turning every activity into an efficient and controllable process!
