Trying something new
Since the beginning of the year, I have made great progress in my goal to having clarity of mind. I was feeling so overwhelmed with changes to my career (AI disruption of software engineering) and overstimulated by social media. I decided to delete all social media from my phone for a month. As you can guess this was extremely rejuvinating. I started reading, writing and reflecting much more often. It is hard for me to avoid YouTube and Twitter, so I opted to use them on the browser only, with extensions to block as much stimulating and algorithmic content as I could. It has been life changing.
Now over 6 months later, having read several books and written enough personal essays to feel comfortable enough writing more publicly. Reading and writing seemed to me like a luxury of the young or old, not something working dads could benefit from. Now I realize, it is a necessity at all ages. In practice, I have yet to find that technology improves your ability to think clearly. It just provides you with more data. I think we are discovering that more data is not a great thing for our minds. I am an active AI user and love shiny new tech, but the past 6 months have greatly shifted my relationship with technology. I value “old ideas” much more. I think the ancients (Aristotle, Seneca, etc) have a significant amount of value to us today. Especially so in this era of rapidly advancing technology.
People are largely the same. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. The ancients knew this and we should too.
There is a base level of context that you need to have in order to frame new wisdom that you then add to it - Chris Williamson
written by a human