Progress and the Cost of Freedom

There is always a price for convenience

This morning as I drank my coffee, I read the latest newsletter put out by the School of Traditional Skills. It talks about the loss of our dignity to data, and I agree with that sentiment. The article mentioned a quote by Stella Morabito:

““Privacy is a prerequisite for liberty”

Without privacy, Big Brother plays God, and we end up with a society where we can’t enjoy life,

People will say things like, “if you weren’t doing anything wrong then you wouldn’t care,” which is a grave error in judgement, a lack of discernment, an acceptance of distortion in the same way onlookers film incidents where someone is hurt and in need of help, but no one does anything. I’m sure when they are fined for trying to collect rainwater, they may finally come around to understand the invasion of personal sovereignty, privacy, and liberty as human beings…. not human objects.

We are meant to work with nature not destroy it in the name of progress, not blame it for our inability to understand it, not use it as something to command. When we harm nature, we harm ourselves, these are not separate.

The increasing scams in the digital realm are making it more and more obvious that we’ve got to get offline from artificial technology and in-line with our human technology. Like the airport scanners invading your body with EMFs and loss of privacy, we’ve got to opt out of the scanning, tracking, tracing and opt in to the melody of the earth’s song.

The price for convenience is usually a negative consequence.

If we examine the cost of comfort and convenience, we can contemplate if it is worth it?

Wired Phones meant we stopped writing letters and started gossiping more, losing focus on dreams and responsibilities, we reached into the neighbors house via a windy cord sold as magic and dreams. As a teenage girl, I dragged the long cord to the bedroom, shut the door and scrunched down on the floor for hours to talk about boys and, honestly, I’m not even sure what else.

Fast food meant the nights together at the dinner table dwindled and meeting at the Pizza Hut, which seemed exciting, was the beginning of the breaking apart of the family …piece, by pepperoni, piece.

TV dinners were an invitation to microwave your meal and your mind. Days were not your own…and, now, neither were your nights.

I remember when I didn’t need a GPS. I had a map in the car and my stepfather would help me map out directions when I was going out of town as a teenager…turn right at the old corner store, then 3 stop signs later turn left, but, remember, just past the turn there’s an old red broken down tractor on the side of the road and a service station on the other side… if you get to that you’ve gone too far. Now, my GPS can’t even get me to my own house, glitches constantly and is another mechanism for dumbing down society. There are so many indicators that the artificial world is incompetent. The greater your inner GPS (intuition), the greater your ability to navigate the direction you are going without outside assistance (or interference).

The popularity of Netflix and chill, the tiny computers in our hands, and emojis as the modern-day caveman like hieroglyphs has us in a conundrum of doldrums.

These things aren’t nostalgic, they are reminders of the joys stripped away in living simply for the false hope and promises of an easier life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love traveling by car instead of wagon…but the reliability of a horse is probably better.

So many examples that could be listed and maybe you’re already thinking of the ways your life has transformed under the label of progress, all the while becoming more challenging.

Everything is a subscription. You can’t reach a human in customer service and if you do, they can only read a script.

Privacy is stripped away every time we agree to the propaganda of convenience…wi-fi enabled lightbulbs, refrigerators, coffee pots, doorbells…. the “for your safety” tagline engrained in the subconscious of the masses normalizing these things as necessary for modern life.

Every call comes with a disclaimer, “this call may be recorded”…why? Seriously, why does every call have to be recorded? Are we so incapable of conversation, customer service resolution and general trust that everything has to be recorded or have we mindlessly bought into the lie. These calls don’t even give you a way to opt out, they use the “facade” of training purposes when it’s all about protecting the corporation, not its people, nor its customers.

Can we live in a world where we don’t need “proof” something happened because its not on the internet or photographed on a digital device? What is the underlying reason for this impulse? Is it lack of self-trust, responsibility and individuation? Is it that the mass agreement to Big Brother’s thumb has finally reached its moment of glory?

All of this promotes the blame game and takes us further away from resolving conflicts as adults without the need for an intermediary or authority “figure.”

The true price for freedom is inconvenience, yet it’s worth every penny…we just have to stop and remember how to SLOW DOWN. We don’t need to be wired in 24/7 so the data thieves can send us more unsolicited text messages and emails. We don’t need digital “meters” spying on us in our bedrooms and making us sick.

Even if you can escape the dopamine rush and doom scrolling, you have to be willing to sacrifice convenience and comfort on some level to obtain health and focus on the tangibility of what really matters.

No imagined experience from playing a game or watching a screen can replace the massive benefit from a lived experience that gives change, meaning and wonder to living…. not the illusion of it.

I’m embarrassed at the number of things I’ve purchased on the internet.

In the corporate world I was so exhausted for time that the only way to get “more” done was to buy online and have things delivered to my door. I thought this was “saving time” because “time is money.”

I was lying to myself.

What I needed was the freedom to realize I didn’t need what I thought I needed. Getting up and going to the store to support a local establishment and interact with community is underrated. These tiny acts lead to slow and steady foundations built among genuine connections and open the door of opportunity for meeting people you would never meet if you only sit behind a screen and order online.

As the digital world expands into more chaos, it’s clear that the normalized displays of out of control conduct are like an incontinent conscience. Without privacy, dignity leaves us and without dignity the collective resorts to its animalistic nature, dopamine cannibals eating our own tails, time and energy with no purpose, no fruit, no life beyond an invisible prison built on consent and compliance.

Maybe our grandparents were right, we should be afraid when we go out, not of someone else, not of the howls of wolves under moonlight, but the darkness of our own making…the black hole of wireless tethers creating a thirst that can never be quenched, the time wasted on talking heads that have nothing to say but empty words moving through the ether, the lost skills that take us out of the present – that help us live a meaningful life…and the inability to slow down to remember who we are and why we are here.

If you can’t pick your nose or make love without someone being able to hack in, voyeuristic blackmailers, lost souls, hands wasted on black keys instead of doing something from the call of who we want to be…then what are we doing?

I’m tired of it. And I get the irony of typing on this machine and using a digital phone. I tried to get a wired phone installed and no one would do it. But one thing is certain, I know where my line in the sand is…the internet of things wants us always connected, yet the more we allow these devices, appliances, apps, into our lives, the more disconnected we become.

I know the rebuttal that these are tools that can be use for good or evil…and that’s true…but do you think we’re winning the battle, just look around? I know my own battles with it and somedays I win and somedays I lose. The effects of technological progress and greater ease of propaganda distribution influences physical, mental and spiritual health, it’s not innocent. Even when we use it for good, how are the lights affecting our eyes and skin? How is having a phone with us at all times lessening our ability to navigate the direction we are going, not just by GPS in the car, but by the road we’re choosing…the narrow path or the broad way with more turns to overcome, more highways to avoid, more concrete parking lots, more empty tanks.

The intricate beauty of our world wanes the more we rely on, and plug into, the electrical current of the grid instead of that which flows through our veins, our own energy.

I’m making an effort to limit and resist the urges technology brings that seem so innocent…and easy….by remembering the cost…the price to pay…the long game…because nothing is more important than freedom (and we aren’t free without privacy)!

To not be able to live on this earth without digital surveillance is disheartening and dystopian…When is enough, enough?

Imagine the impact we could have by opting out of SMART technology in our own homes, saying no to QR codes and connecting with others without our phone?

There’s so much of this progress that is supposedly making processes and interactions easier, yet most if it only makes things more difficult. Reality is different than its online portrayal no matter how you slice it and humans have the innate ability to say no to the predictive programming and algorithms attempting to sell something to us from the data it harvested or drive behavior via manipulative marketing…it can never do what we can, but we have to choose. As we’re witnessing the effects in real time, an artificial future would destroy and diminish the human spirit, mind, and skillsets by the technocratic control of convenience and comfort.

The cost of the illusion of progress is a deepening slavery to the machine by sacrificing human privacy, dignity, our unique creative and spiritual gifts that bring life, beauty, and love to the lived experience. If the allure of “new” is too tempting to resist (as it usually is) then everyone will start following the fad without thinking.

Oh Vey! Thankfully there is always choice, laughter, and creativity even in the swirling of madness.

No VR headset for me, though I really wish I still had my old landline and neon phone.

I’ll be on the porch watching sunsets letting natural intelligence paint a picture in the sky. How freedom and privacy are taboo is something I’ll never understand.

With love,

~ Angela

Referenced:
School of Traditional skills: https://schooloftraditionalskills.com/
Cultivate Newsletter: https://cultivatenews.com/

MORE THIS (my grandmother)

LESS THIS