I wrote a piece last week on the idea of embracing the rush of our lives and how it’s a human condition. While to some degree I do think it’s a sign of our times and not altogether negative, I do see the impact it has made.

In school I read about the effects of coffee on the industrial revolution. The idea was that the widespread use of the stimulant allowed shift workers to operate all hours of the day and night.

Of course, we, in the modern day, have benefited on the backs of their labor; however, we have also learned from the negative aspects of that society. At least in this country, we no longer employ children, we have tougher safety laws, and regulation.

Back to my point of embracing rushing, I was wrong to take it on from a single standpoint. Through this past week I have searched out resources to learn more about the effects of our gadget driven world and what it has gotten us.

I titled this post “Start with why” and it’s a rip off from a great book of the same name by Simon Sinek.

That book focuses on sales and challenges sales people to start by asking why someone would want to buy their product/service and then shape a solution around that.

However, he also speaks about the current state of our society and it’s character.

If we could sum up the modern First World in one word it would be addiction and not just to drugs.

Many in my generation are addicted to our phones, our streaming services and our reliance on same day delivery. We can order anything, watch any show and contact any person in the world. In an odd twist of fate I can get live tweets from our current president and tweet him back.

As a current digital addict I tend to look at others and see it as normal.

When I am at the park I tend to not use my phone and see that others are. As a result I figure I must be balanced.

However, first thing in the morning I check my phone and look at my notifications. If you were to follow me on a social network you would see that I don’t post a ton. In reality I tend to not think I have much to say that is important for the world to know and I limit my posts for food recommendations while in new cities.

However, I check all the networks multiple times a day. I get updated on the latest coffee from the person I had 10th grade English with and also get to see the latest from our President.

It’s an odd time to be alive.

Why do we do this?

One reason is dopamine. It is the same drug that opiates release and it’s triggered naturally when we see activities or people responding to our posts. That’s why we look to see the comments, the likes and the re-shares.

It’s also why we tend to get worse over time with our usage. We need more and more dopamine to feel good.

I wrote all of this to say one thing.

Maybe we shouldn’t always embrace the rushing and start with the why.

Why are we doing this; who do we care about; why are we not happy.

Image credit: Ksayer1

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2018 at 1:15 am and is filed under Personal Growth, Ryan's Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: addictive, behavioral addiction, challenge, social media, Twitter, why
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