Comment on Reading is consciousness-altering and a bit toxic.
Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe 9 months agoI don’t deny the utility of the shared symbolic thing, be it the precise scientific engineeringly version or the rough common version. It is quite beside my point.
My point is the way of looking that reading involves and the habit that we fall into. That fixation upon the little screen in my head where symbols play. To narrow my attention to that screen permanently is a kind of chronic crouch, and to mistake that screen for reality is insane.
For the sufferer of this disease all of the senses dim while the screen grows brighter and brighter.
I get your point but you’re taking the symptom for the disease.
Like every addiction (which this depicts imo), the system around it is the problem. The vast majority of people uses their devices massively to escape the bleak capitalfascist reality for some time.
We also have dismantled nearly all well working alternative systems under the disguise of “freedumb”.
You can trace back nearly every problem currently to that source. We need to get rid of it. Then the screen addiction goes too.
Whether you enter this state of “mental screen fixation” through personal preference or pressure from outside forces makes no difference, surely.
Pandemanium@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Why would you think that state is permanent? What do you do when you get to the end of a book or an article? Do you not ever stop reading to eat, sleep, or take a walk?
Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe 9 months ago
Well it does tend to stick. So if you repeat the process within that sticking period then yes, it becomes the normal permanent mode. And memory of any alternative is lost.
But sure, not necessarily permanent.