2025 Update

It has been a long time since I posted anything on here – the last post was July 2024, over a year ago. When starting this post today, I noticed that I had actually started typing several posts during the last year and never finished them, perhaps I’ll look into them and continue them in the future. The reason I suspect for this is that I have fallen into a trap of constantly being distracted, the result of which is that I did not spend enough time sitting and doing nothing, which is when I normally have ideas for something I want to write about.

It feels like a lot has changed in the last year on the internet. A year ago I didn’t notice any major difference compared to before, but in the last year it feels like the internet has become a digital garbage can where you can’t go anywhere without encountering some AI generated trash – this includes Google. Google search now yields significantly less useful results than it ever had in the past, to the point where it’s almost not even worth trying to use. As you already know if you read my previous posts here, I am not a huge fan of the internet or social media, but this recent “enshittification” (of the internet) as they call it has made much of internet usage wholly intolerable for me.

It feels like almost every time I go online, regardless of how productive my intentions were, I end up encountering a lot of pointless and stupid content or random stupid people’s opinions, which I do not want to see at all. It makes me understand the value of a book publisher – they are a sort of quality control preventing stupid and pointless stuff from being published (at least up to a certain threshold). Now any idiot with a keyboard is able to spread their nonsense online, myself included (though I doubt anyone will ever accidentally end up here without looking for it, luckily).

The reason I decided to write this post today is that last week I started intentionally turning off my phone for hours per day and limiting my usage of chatting apps, since those are normally the ones that end up distracting me on my phone. During that time without using my phone, I ended up finally having the motivation to take out my notebook and write, and ended up writing 7 pages, which is possibly more than I have hand-written in the last year total. The topics addressed in those pages, which I will attempt to somehow connect and relate to each other in this post (which may end up being long), include the following: writing as an extension of cognition, writing and its influence on the experience of time, lack of stillness and contemplation in life, the effect of being easily reachable at all times, the hollow allure of chatting online, and questioning my introvert/extrovert status (and the effect that such a self-imposed label has had on me). Let’s jump right in.

When a mathematician sets out to solve or explore a math problem, he undoubtedly has a pencil and paper in front of him, and is able to deal with the complexity of the problem by storing information on paper and being able to refer back to it. This is not limited to only mathematics. Pen and paper can be valuable tools for all kinds of thinking. This is not only because it helps us remember and refer back to the things we were thinking, but also because it creates a physical representation of ourselves outside of ourselves that can be interacted with. When you just have a thought, it can easily be ignored and disappears on its own, but when you see it written on paper, it is something that needs to be considered and addressed. This makes it easier to address potential problems in thinking and work through mental problems.

When looking back and reading my journal entry from May 21, 2022 (my physical notes about my week of digital detox), I realized there were so many thoughts and experiences during that week that I had totally forgotten about. One example is a detailed description of how I felt while watching (and truly seeing) a butterfly that passed by me when I was exploring the mountains. When reading those pages, I had a feeling that it was such a long time ago. However just a few weeks ago I remember thinking that the nearly five years that I’ve been in Taiwan have flown by. Five years feels short, and yet 3.5 years feels so long ago when reading about it in my journal. This makes me think that the act of writing and reflecting back on details of our experiences later in life can have an effect on the way we perceive time.

This reminds me of The Scent of Time by Byung-Chul Han and his discussion of Vita Activa (life of action) and Vita Contemplativa (contemplative life). He suggests that the modern experience of quickening and fragmentation of time is caused by our modern obsession with constant “doing,” which leads to a shallow experience of life and time. In contrast would the vita contemplativa, which involves more inaction and more time to linger on individual experiences, bringing a sense of fullness to time. I think smartphone and internet usage are major barriers to living a vita contemplativa.

I will not say that phones or the internet are “bad,” but I think we as a society have lost the balance. Smartphones are no longer only “useful,” but have rather become the primary thing that is holding people back from spending their time productively (making them largely the opposite of useful). Many of us have dreams of creating something during our lives or with our lives, whether it be art, written works, music, a family, a legacy, or something else. The act of creation is like an expansion of the self into the physical world, rather than containing it completely inside yourself, and I think it is an essential part of being human. On the contrary, excessive consumption is putting the world into you and making you more like other people rather than like yourself. Is it any wonder many people nowadays don’t even know what they are interested in anymore aside from scrolling the internet or watching videos?

A few years ago I saw a documentary called Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski. I don’t remember that much from the documentary besides one quote that really stuck with me. Szukalski, renowned for his original style and ideas, said “If you want to create new things for this world, never listen to anybody. You have to suck your wisdom, all the knowledge, from your thumb. Your own self.” This was an unusual idea for me at the time because I had previously heard many artists talking how most artists are inspired by other artists, which I think is why many creative people now believe we must spend a lot of time consuming content to find inspiration for our own creative works. This raised a question in my mind: Do we need to consume content to find inspiration to create?

I think many people would say yes, we do need to consume content to find inspiration. However, I think it is possible that this is a subconscious form of procrastination and stimulation-seeking. Every modern person likely has consumed enough content to span several lifetimes – I don’t think that consuming more content is going to give you what you need to create something or even show you much that you haven’t seen already. If anything, doing nothing is more likely to give you the inspiration to create whereas consuming content just keeps you endlessly distracted. The times when I end up having inspiration to write or draw or do anything are usually those when I’m doing nothing, whereas when I’m distracting myself online, that state can go on for hours and hours without ever actually accomplishing anything or having any interesting thoughts at all.

This is a problem that is hard to escape, as we have lost a sense of stillness in modern life. Everywhere you go in a city, you will hear music being pumped through speakers to keep people entertained (and presumably spending money). Even in a café where people go to study, there is always music playing even though most people have headphones in as well, leaving two choices: listen to your own music in headphones or listen to the default music being played through the speakers. Silence is not an option unless you bring ear muffs or noise cancelling headphones and simply play no music. This allows no chance for the mind to naturally settle down, which limits the potential for new ideas and makes it more difficult to figure out existing problems.

I often think of the mind as a pool of clean water. In its natural state it is calm and crystal clear. However, every time you put some stimulus into it it’s like tossing a pebble inside or perhaps stirring around with a stick, and some stimuli are bigger than others. With each stimulus, the surface becomes disturbed and the muddy bottom gets stirred up into murky clouds, but quickly settles back down assuming it is an isolated event. With constant stimuli comes constant disruption and the calm, clear pool remains a choppy mud puddle as long as you keep throwing things into it. When the water is calm and clear, it is easy to see what is happening beneath the surface, and the opposite is true when it’s murky.

I think smartphones and their endless notifications and distractions throughout the day are like throwing an endless barrage of stones into the pool, and needs to be intentionally controlled. Text messaging has recently taken on a problematic aspect (maybe only in Taiwan?) where people expect you to reply quickly as if a text message is something urgent. Text messages were originally intended to be used for unimportant communications like a casual update or something that is not pressing, whereas a phone call is for intentional communication or communicating important matters (assuming face-to-face isn’t possible). Text messages have become a major problem because they are so frequently received, and if you get conditioned by others to think of them as important, then you will be prompted to check your phone at every notification, ensuring you never have a chance to relax into a calm and clear state.

I got my first cell phone (flip phone) in 2003 or 2004. I remember the first time visiting my grandparents after getting the phone, my grandpa described it as an “electric dog collar” or something like that, saying that it is similar to a shock collar used on dogs to control their behavior. Every time the thing buzzes it causes you to jolt and shift your attention to see why the phone buzzed, which over time definitely causes a change in behavior. At the time I thought nothing of it, but now I am seeing that this has drastically changed the way that people exist in the world and interact with others. Luckily, there are still some people who cling to the old ways.

I met an interesting girl in Tainan a few months ago and we kept in touch occasionally since then. I bring this up because she recently told me she has mostly stopped using Line (a texting app) and she has been enjoying being mostly unreachable. This resonated with me because I spent several years not using any form of social media, and also frequently not having my phone with me, and had a similar feeling. This has changed since I moved to Taiwan, though, because I’ve found myself influenced by local people who seem to use their smartphones constantly and almost never sit and do nothing. On public transport here, it is uncommon to see anyone not using their phones or with headphones on. Even in restaurants it’s common to see couples sitting at a table together each staring at his/her phone, or even entire families eating together and not talking at all with every member looking at their own phone.

I didn’t notice the extent of my phone usage until I went back to the US in July and noticed almost no one around me was on their smartphones in public places. Even when I was sitting in the DMV in my hometown I noticed many people just sat there doing nothing or chatted with each other. I find the pattern of smartphone usage in Taiwan to be quite problematic and feel regretful that I have allowed myself to be negatively influenced in this way, which is why this week I started taking steps toward using my phone less (turning it off for a few hours per day and deleting distracting apps).

An interesting thing to me is that when I think about my phone usage, almost all of it is me texting or communicating with people, and very rarely scrolling or consuming any sort of content. It seems the reason spending time texting with people is that I want to arrange to hang out with people, not that I enjoy texting. In fact, I would much prefer to text with my good friends just a few times per day at most, and be free to just make a phone call if I want to talk or if I have a time-sensitive matter. Sadly many people nowadays are uncomfortable with making or receiving phone calls due to online conditioning.

My ideal model of online communication would be that email is used for longer and more in-depth communications or updates that are not time-sensitive, text messaging is used for random updates or unimportant things that are also not time-sensitive, and phone calls are made for general socializing, making plans, and anything important or time-sensitive. This model preserves mental peace because there is no need to actually check your phone, since anything urgent would be communicated through a call (and you would hear it), and anything else can just be checked whenever you’re free. However, the reality is that many people do almost all of their socializing and communication through text messaging, rarely make phone calls, and perhaps have forgotten that emails even exist (like a relic from a bygone era). To make it even more problematic, in Taiwan work communication is done through the same app that people use for social texting, meaning even in your leisure time it’s hard to keep your mind off work due to constantly being reminded of it when seeing work-related texts.

Similarly, I have noticed that the habit of often checking my messages creates a sort of dissatisfaction in me by constantly reminding me of the existence of friends who are there in my phone. I think this feeling is similar to the one described when people talk about how social media increases feelings of loneliness, like you’re seeing people but you are physically alone. Actually when I am alone and focused on doing something that I want to do (like writing this blog post, drawing, or reading a book) I feel completely content with the situation and have no desire to chat or hang out with anyone. It is only when I start looking at and replying to messages that I start feeling a sense of dissatisfaction with being alone.

This phenomenon of being content when alone and focused on something but dissatisfied when replying to messages seems to have two possible causes. The first is that the feeling of being in touch with others builds anticipation of possibly planning some fun activity later, making the current experience of being alone seem dissatisfactory. The second is that I feel satisfied when I am doing something meaningful such as focusing on something that I want to do, whereas texting with people often feels more like a waste of time unless it actually results in making plans to meet. These factors combined create a sort of stimulation loop where the allure of possibly hanging out with my friends makes me want to continue the texting activity, while at the same time making me feel dissatisfied with being alone in that moment, and later feeling more dissatisfied to think that I spent my time doing that rather than focusing on something meaningful.

When I spend time with friends, I find that I rarely check my phone and am happy to leave it on a table or in my bag for hours on end. This is because spending time with friends is something I would consider to be a meaningful activity, and also is the primary goal of my texting, leaving no reason to continue texting when with other people. Basically, it seems that I primarily feel dissatisfaction when I spend my time in ways that I don’t enjoy or that don’t feel meaningful to me, but due to texting being the primary way that people communicate these days, it’s easy to get caught in stimulation loops and end up wasting my time and feeling dissatisfied by it.

This brings to mind my habit of using various social and language exchange apps to chat with people online. Most of the time the conversations are quite boring and unfulfilling, and the people very rarely become actual friends. I have often wondered why I even bother with it since it undoubtedly also ends up in a lot of time wasted chatting with no favorable outcome like doing something fun in real life. This week I realized it is likely because I am starved for connection in Taiwan, such that no matter how many people I know or see in a week, few or none of those connections feel meaningful, resulting in never feeling socially fulfilled. This ends up becoming another sort of endless circle of trying to meet new people, being unfulfilled, and then trying to meet new people. It’s almost like gambling – the possibility and excitement of winning results in repeating the activity even though experience shows that most of the time you end up losing.

In Taiwan people have often told me I have the most active social life of anyone they know, or the largest social circle. However, I think my time in Taiwan has been a period with very low feelings of social fulfillment, resulting in me becoming hyper-social in an effort to solve the problem. To put it in perspective, in Taiwan I have always lived alone, have no family here, no childhood friends here, people are often busy and rarely initiate plans, and need to deal with culture/language differences at the same time. In this light, it makes sense to feel socially unfulfilled. At other points in life when I had social support and fulfillment (living at home, in the army, living in a dorm) I think I was more reclusive and did not usually take the initiative in social situations, and often preferred to just chill at home or in the barracks rather than do something that didn’t seem that interesting to me. Also due to my basic social needs being fulfilled, I was much more able to focus on doing other things that I wanted to do, which is harder when feeling unfulfilled. It’s like when you’re extremely hungry, all you can think about is eating and it’s hard to focus on anything else.

All of these thoughts recently made me question my previous assumption that I am an “extrovert,” although I will admit that introvert vs extrovert is a false dichotomy and there are many people who fall somewhere in the middle. When I think about myself in the past and when I was younger, I was often shy, quiet, and restrained. In elementary school, I almost never got in trouble for being noisy or talking in class. When I was in middle school I rarely spoke to anyone in class or at school in general besides a few particular people. In high school I opened up a bit, but still did not socialize with people much outside of school besides 2-3 specific friends. After graduating from high school and going to community college, I didn’t talk to anyone in my classes and did not make a single new friend during those years. In the army I was more social, but still felt like I got dragged along to a lot of social activities I didn’t want to go to (such as going to bars), and would have been happier just drinking in the barracks. The years after that I worked on myself and became more confident and willing to speak, but still spent a lot of time chilling at home or at cafes by myself reading. I only started being proactive and organizing a lot of social activities after moving to Taiwan.

I think being told by so many people in recent years that I am so socially active and extroverted made me believe that about myself, which then reinforced my stimulation loops when I got caught up using my phone too much. I thought, “It must be because I’m an extrovert that I feel like I want to hang out with people so much.” In hindsight, it still seems like a valid conclusion, because it’s quite difficult to see clearly when constantly distracted. It was only when I took the time to do nothing and let my mind settle that I started to suspect my behavior was a result of my basic needs not being met, and was not necessarily representative of my basic nature.

It seems like time to make a change. My previous approach of trying to meet people and socialize all the time clearly has been unsuccessful and hasn’t provided many deep connections with others, while also causing me trouble by getting me stuck in loops that waste time. Going forward, I’m going to try to stop texting so much, stop trying to meet new people all the time, focus on my interests, and try to hang out with the same people regularly rather than different people all the time.

Maybe the solution is not more reach and socializing, but rather more stillness and depth.