NoFap and it’s relationship to what media technology is currently doing to humans.
Many of us come because we’ve identified the effects that technology has had on our brain, and how it has distorted our reward mechanisms. Underlying the negative effects of masturbation are causes created by the explosive advancement of science and engineering in the last century, which in turn created convenient ways of producing, and eventually mass producing, media. The camera, the telephone, the radio, the television, the computer, and finally the internet. We’ve come to a point where the media is seconds away, ready at our disposal for use. Most of us here have seen what it can cause with masturbation: anesthetization of life. But what about the other ways in which technology shapes how we act and who we become?
“Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman addresses that question. The book is an incisive criticism of what media technology is doing to humans, and the consequences it has had on politics, education, religion, and a slew of other areas of our lives. It was written twenty years ago so the main medium criticized is the television, but it still holds for a lot of the media that floods us everyday. If read in conjunction with “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, anybody would be cautious and concerned about the negative effects technology could have on our ability to both absorb and analyze information. Both are relatively short reads as well, and I recommend them wholeheartedly.
During my time here I’ve seen several references to the Matrix. Particularly, that after engaging in NoFap it has felt like being unplugged from the Matrix. This is no coincidence. To solidify the connection between the negative consequences of technology that I’ve mentioned above, here’s the foreword of the the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, in which the author compares the dystopian novels of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley:
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, Thoughtful americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal deomcracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
Be we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another–slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of the autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account mans’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984 Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Don’t stop at just masturbation. I urge you to become skeptical of the effects technology is having in other areas of your life. As a person whose planned career depends upon my productivity and the way I absorb and process information, I tread with caution before I accept to adopt use of technology.
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