Shot in the Dark

The Matrix

The other day I was thinking about the ever-increasing forms of information and mental stimulation we are subjected to in the course of a day in America.

I wonder if the modern human species has lost its ability to truly relax and do nothing; and in doing so, can the species achieve a state of mental pause?

I would submit that in order to relax, by definition, we have to shut out all external inputs and information sources:

Television
Text Messaging
The Web
Chat
Satelite Radio
Email
Amber Alerts
Cell Phone
iPod

As unlikely as it is for someone to choose to do so, it is of course physically possible but that really isn’t the question is it? Can we stop thinking about what we are missing if we are not connected? If so, how long does it take the brain to adjust?

Has anyone gone on a vacation recently and actually disconnected completely? Did it work? Was it worth it?

Can we ever break free of The Matrix?

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Johnny Roosh

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27 responses to “The Matrix”

  1. Colleen Avatar
    Colleen

    Haven’t done it recently, but will be doing it leaving tomorrow for a 10-day tent camping trip in Colorado. It dawned on me yesterday how long that will be without checking the “news” and WHAT WILL I BE MISSING?!

  2. Colleen Avatar
    Colleen

    Haven’t done it recently, but will be doing it leaving tomorrow for a 10-day tent-camping trip in Colorado. It dawned on me yesterday how long that will be without checking the “news” and WHAT WILL I BE MISSING?! Aggravation is probably all I’ll be missing (and some amusement!).

  3. noodles Avatar
    noodles

    We took a week trip to Lake Vermilion last month. There is no cell service at the resort and although they have WiFi in the lodge we intentionally leave the laptop at home so we can/must disconnect. The only time we get any news is when we listen to WEVE radio to check the weather report so that we don’t get caught in a storm on the lake. We take this trip every year and it always the best week of the year by far. It doesn’t even occur to us to check email or messages. The world goes on fine without us for a week.

  4. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    Gee, Colleen, I thought you were completely off the grid in your War Road White Power Compound.

  5. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    Mitch, Lido beach on Lido Key, Sarasota. Sitting down with a nice Monte Cristo White. Gazing out at the horizon on the Gulf of Mexico.
    Did it work? Absolutely. Was it worth it? Oh yeah.

  6. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Does covering your efficiency apartment in tinfoil so KKKarl Rove can’t spy on you count? If so, AC is out of the loop.

  7. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Mitch

    Point of order – it’s Roosh’s post.

    But I have duly noted Ledo Key.

  8. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Has anyone gone on a vacation recently and actually disconnected completely? Did it work? Was it worth it?

    My last “vacation” was to Manhattan. Oddly enough, I did totally disconnect – from the internet, anyway. Didn’t check email once. But for maybe one call a day, I didn’t use the cell except for wedding-related business.

    I can’t say it was relaxing, but disconnecting and getting my brain into something else was, oddly, relaxing, in that “spending three days rushing around Manhattan” kind of way.

    When I visit my parents in North Dakota, I rarely check email, and I’m way out of cell range. I always look forward to it.

  9. J. Ewing Avatar
    J. Ewing

    It’s not that hard if you pick a spot like Labrador, or Fort McKenzie. You’ll notice the locals don’t much care what time it is, either, other than “berry time” or “ice out.”

  10. Yossarian Avatar
    Yossarian

    No post is off limits to AC’s unique brand of bigotry and prejudice, it seems.

  11. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    Sorry, Roosh. It’s not immediately obvious who the author was. For you I would suggest Siesta Key.

  12. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Annually I go on a fishing trip with my dad and a few others for a week. We head out to the boonies of Ontario. Often we go far north of where the roads end (fly ins). Up that far north there’s no such thing as a phone, radio station, etc. Even electricity is pretty scarce since you have only solar panels and a small generator, so even the iPod gets left behind and I have none of those implements of mass distraction you mention. When the sun’s up, you do stuff. When it’s down, you can sit around a campfire, eat, and have a few brews, but not much else.

    Time to disconnect and relax: 3 hours, tops. There’s a bit of an adjustment the next morning not to check work email, but after 24 hours it’s absolutely great. Fish, hunt, canoe, drink beer, tell stories. Man time.

    Worth it? I’ve been doing it for 15 years, so yeah, I think so.

  13. Bike Bubba Avatar
    Bike Bubba

    I did it just last weekend, and in a manner of speaking, I do it each night when I go home. It’s wonderful, and all you have to do is turn off the laptop, crackberry, IPOD, and cell phone.

  14. PaulC Avatar
    PaulC

    No hard and fast rules, or else it’s not a “vacation” – but on days off, I generally don’t check e-mails, don’t go online, and don’t even use a cell phone unless I really have to – like to check the hours of the local liquor store. You can’t escape the whole deal completely if you’re still within striking distance of a decent pizza, but you can sure limit what you make yourself aware of.
    I always get a newspaper, though. Just because I hate eating breakfast or lunch without a newspaper.
    It’s funny when I come back from even short jaunts like this – I almost have to re-learn how to type. Ha. It’s awesome – and I find that, if I’ve missed anything, it’s non-fatal. Actually I find that I really haven’t missed jack sh*t.

  15. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    I’ll be going to the House of Mouse for a week in Sept and mostly disconnecting. I will have no computer, hence no internet. We have cell phones but won’t use them except on the one occasion that women go to the Bippity Boppity Boutique, and the men go rent a mini speedboat (or the friend who is pet sitting for us has to call us with an emergency). We don’t text. There are no ipods, no crackberries, no pagers. We will watch TV in the room, but mostly it will be Disney movies when trying to get the kids to wind down for the night, and weather in the morning to know whether to bring rain gear or not. We might end up seeing the occasional news snippet while doing that.

  16. Cindy W Avatar
    Cindy W

    We took a 7 day cruise to western Mexico a year ago. We left the laptops at home and while we could log in to the shipboard computers we didn’t and we left the cell phones turned off most of the time because there was no signal anyway. My son teased me and said that I couldn’t live without the computer, so we made a bet – who could last longer me without the computer or him without the television. It was no contest!

    LL

  17. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    all you have to do is turn off the laptop, crackberry, IPOD, and cell phone.

    That, in fact, is why I stopped blogging for the most part on weekends, probably 3-4 years ago. (I write my NARN promos ahead of time). Gotta be un-wired at least some of the time. Weekends, except for the show, I’m pretty much un-wired.

  18. angryclown Avatar
    angryclown

    Do you guys also go back on the thorazine to keep the voices quiet?

  19. Loren Avatar
    Loren

    We have no need for thorazine, AC. But perhaps if you upped your dosage, you might not be so angry.

  20. Kermit Avatar
    Kermit

    No need for thorazine. CNN runs 24 hours!

  21. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    I suggest a trip to the Boundary Waters. Or just plain go camping out in the middle of BFE and forget your cellphone at home.

    Takes me about 10 minutes to adjust and then it’s great!

  22. Nightingale Avatar
    Nightingale

    I don’t know…as you said, we keep thinking about all of this stuff. And it’s not so much thinking about what we are missing as it is thinking about how that workload is growing…and growing…and growing in our “absence”.

  23. JRoosh Avatar
    JRoosh

    Sorry, Roosh. It’s not immediately obvious who the author was.

    That’s okay. That’s two firsts for me today.

    #1 I’ve never been confused for Mitch before (which is a compliment by the way)

    #2 No one has ever used the word “Fuck” in the comments section of one of my posts.

  24. JRoosh Avatar
    JRoosh

    And it’s not so much thinking about what we are missing as it is thinking about how that workload is growing

    True. Furthermore, I don’t believe there is such a thing as “balance” in life – it’s an overused term. We are always leaning towards one priority or another.

    As such, when on vacation, I find it helpful to take a few minutes at one end of the day or the other (or both) and “check in” so as to not allow things to pile up too much, thereby eliminating the “pile”.

  25. billhedrick Avatar
    billhedrick

    I note that JRoosh does not include regular old radio. We wouldn’t want to miss (even as we are disconnecting) NARN on Saturdays!

  26. Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » Leaving The Matrix

    […] That is to say, my takeaway was learning to be “present” as Pema Chödrön puts it, and I thought the audio CD and another recent experience was relevant to the discussion in my previous “Matrix” post. […]

  27. Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » The Matrix Strikes Back

    […] covered this here and […]

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