At some point, you need to decide what’s worth being here for.
Is it to click and tap on shit? To babysit notifications and earn digital points? To mainline an infinite drip of pleasure chemicals decided by algorithms?
Obviously, I want you to answer no. But shit… it feeds a human desire. Dicking around on screens is engaging. What makes scrolling travel photos much different than traveling? Isn’t sampling new experiences, new food, etc. just another form of novelty-seeking? Is the dopamine or adrenaline drip from a screen any different?
So, the answer may actually be yes, being human might be about clicking and tapping on shit. Many people choose yes. It seems like more people are choosing yes, choosing to receive experiences rather than create them.
Anyway, at some point, you must decide.
But maybe there’s a difference in what these experiences do to your capacity for future happiness. It’s like the difference between eating a meal and learning to cook. Both fill your stomach, but only one expands what’s possible tomorrow.
If you choose the harder, more visceral path — the one that demands presence and effort — you’ll need to develop an immunity to distraction. Because focus isn’t just about what you pay attention to, it’s increasingly about what you refuse to notice.
“Those rats back in the sixties, the ones that learned to stimulate their own pleasure centers by pressing a lever: remember them? They pressed those levers with such addictive zeal that they forgot to eat. They starved to death. They died happy, but they died, without issue. Their fitness went to Zero.”
~Peter Watts, Blindsight (Book)