Hermann Hesse wrote in Steppenwolf, written in 1927: "Perhaps one day, with or without wires, with or without noise, we will hear the voices of King Solomon and Walter Von der Vogelwede.
One will find that all this, like the radio that has just developed today, can only make man flee from himself and his purposes, and that he is surrounded by an ever-dense web of amusement and blind busyness. ”
When I first read this passage, the WeChat circle of friends was not as prosperous as it is today. At that time, there were only about 100 people in my WeChat address book, all of whom were friends and relatives around.
Compared with the social platforms such as Weibo and Douban, which were widely open at that time, its emergence seemed to inject new water into the riverbed that had dried up. It's private enough, fun enough, and social enough.
It seems that all the social platforms of the past are obsolete.
When I read Hesse's words, I had not yet begun to reflect on my own state, but was surprised by Hesse's prediction of the future society.
I copied this passage down and posted it on social networks, and every once in a while, I reminded myself.
Once, because of insomnia, I opened my eyes until dawn, and then fell asleep after dawn.
The first moment I woke up and opened my eyes, as usual, I began to constantly flip through the new news that popped up in the circle of friends, wanting to know what had happened in the circle of friends during the hours I had been asleep.
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More than 600 friends, I can't finish my new news.
As my fingers slid mechanically, I became more and more plunged into a great fear. Every time I read an extra message, my fear increases by one point.
Until the end, my whole being was overwhelmed by these huge streams of information.
That day, I decided to do an experiment.
I turned off the circle of friends and wanted to see how long I could not look at the circle of friends.
The first experiment lasted about 28 hours.
At 4 o'clock the next afternoon, after the workout, I did not hold back and ran to open the circle of friends. Then I started refreshing the messages as before.
I was like a man who had walked in the desert for three days and three nights, eagerly reading news that had nothing to do with me. Tired of reading and full, I closed the circle of friends again.
I have to say that at first I was very unaccustomed.
Subconsciously touching the phone in leisure time, opening WeChat, and clicking on the circle of friends, this action seems to have become a muscle memory, not controlled by the brain.
After closing the circle of friends, the position where you click on the information becomes a two-dimensional code. Several times, it wasn't until the box that came out that I realized that the circle of friends had been turned off by me.
In Entertain to Death, Neil Bozeman contrasts traditional reading with watching television.
In the past reading behavior, since reading required a coherent action, you needed to sit there for a long time and maintain the coherence of your thinking.
This is not the case when watching TV, which can present two completely unrelated things together coherently to the audience, and you are not at all annoyed by the fact that one second there is a program mourning the victims of the earthquake, and the next second there is a laughing advertisement.
If you look closely, you will find that the vast majority of the information we come into contact with in our daily lives has nothing to do with our lives.
What is irritating, however, is not whether the information is relevant to us or not, but a completely rigid, passive mode of thinking.
Neil Bozeman put it this way: "That's why a good reader doesn't get ecstatic or can't help but applaud at the discovery of some aphorisms— a reader who is too busy with analysis to take care of them." ”
At the time Neil Bozeman wrote the book, social networks had not yet emerged, and Neil Bozeman's example was only television.
When watching TV, the intricacies and constantly changing information deprives us of the ability to think logically, and social networks amplify this effect.
Because there was no circle of friends, my time began to continue.
After I am tired of studying or working, I will not pick up my phone and reopen the circle of friends. I'll change my head, get up, take a few steps or look out the window.
In the fragmented time of taking the subway or taking the bus, I try to relax my brain as much as possible and stop indulging in the desire for information flow.
The biggest change was that my life became lonely again, and I finally returned to the solitude I once enjoyed. My thoughts, energy, and time began to focus on my own state.
I no longer pursue a deliberate escape. The urban people's yearning for escaping life that they used to carry with them is now gone.
Because even in the middle of the city, when life returns to its own state, this so-called spiritual escape is not needed.
Internet celebrities and Caitou once mentioned in "Fragmented Survival" that they could not read long stories because they browsed too much of the 140-word Weibo.
In fact, before closing the circle of friends, this phenomenon had already appeared in me.
It's not that reading has to be done with the ritualistic act of turning off the circle of friends, but it is true that after closing it, I have re-emphasized reading and writing.
Closing the circle of friends for so long has had both pros and cons for me; but I have managed to put something that wasn't too important back where it should have been.
Author: Ding Zeyu. Source: Reader Magazine, Issue 5, 2017. Editor on duty: Hu Tianyue.