Living life a screen based stupor. why not??? !

amother

White

Thu, Jan 04 2018, 7:31 am

I doubt very much that cold weather is affecting my brain but I was wondering -

Seriously what would be so bad to sink into a screen based zombie like state where you spend most of your life surfing the internet, watching tv, playing video games? Ok your are not doing positive mitzvos, but if you aren't doing negatives either maybe that counts for something? We spend so much time striving for things we can't achieve, and even if we do achieve it's so fleeting. Honestly - why bother if you can be happier living life as a zombie?

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 04 2018, 9:14 am

Read Virtually You https://www.amazon.com/Virtual.....40546
Other books that have come highly recommended are The Shallow and The Big Disconnect https://www.amazon.com/Big-Dis.....82434

This is not frum talk though the greatest frum personalities are focusing on these issues over the shmutz. Rav Aharon Feldman, shlit"a, bemoans what technology does on our ability to focus. The time wasted on technology is probably the biggest issue, and one that I myself really have to work on.

I just read a paper, sorry can't find the source now, about what technology has done to communication and information sharing. There was a sense of community. We knew who to contact when for which kind of information; everyone in the community shared their areas of expertise. Now we have everything at our fingertips and don't have to communicate.

More.
When we talk to people we make ourselves vulnerable. It's a risk we take as part of society, and we used to be prepared to take it. Now, we don't need to communicate with people. Or we do it under avatars, with assumed identities. We can go back and edit so every word is a pearl. Believe me, I'm all for the positives technology offers us, but we fool ourselves if we think it's an absolute substitute for real communication.

OP, if you've read this far, kol hakavod. You really need to have the subtext addressed, which I'll do in a separate post.

Oh, and a P.S. for why a screen-based life isn't healthy. While I've been typing this I've been eating some delicious mezonos from my freezer. Too close and tempting... Not good Very Happy

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 04 2018, 9:28 am

amother wrote:

OK, let me actually answer some of the points addressed here, and based on the fact that you're getting likes, maybe this will resonate for other people too.

Rabbi Uri Zohar, shlit'a, when he started keeping Shabbos used to sleep through it as much as possible so as to not be mechallel Shabbos. Just thinking about this gives me chills. While we might think, this isn't Shabbos, what incredible zechuyos. What courage to make this change. But he knew that this wasn't the way he hoped to keep Shabbos the rest of his life.
So somehow - and I guess I should reread My Friends, We Were Robbed (Waking Up Jewish in the original printing) - he got from point A to point B. We can all learn from him.

I'm not sure how you define achieve. I've had the tremendous zechus to hear Tammy Karmel, who should have a refuah shleimah (Yocheved Tamar bas Ita Baila) who talks about how we have our own toolkits, shouldn't compare ourselves to other people, and how we can serve and connect to Hashem under all circumstances. She has ALS and described how demoralizing and dehumanizing her hoist felt. Then she realized, she can serve Hashem from her chair, and she can serve Hashem from up in the hoist. It's the micro, not the macro.

I also had the zechus to hear transformative shiurim on the six constant mitzvos, as well as read the Artscroll book by Rabbi Y. Heimowitz based on the shiurim of Rav Yitzchok Berkowitz. Instead of focusing on grand achievements, we can endorse ourselves for utilizing the opportunities presented to us.

And more than that, we can offer a kind work to someone. We can say a perek Tehillim when asked. And when not asked. Rabbi Avigdor Miller would take walks, and sometimes, on passing different people's homes, whose pressing needs he was aware of, would say Tehillim for the families.

Don't minimize what you can do. Everything matters. You can bring sunshine to the world.

I wish I had a link to a Zits cartoon. Jeremy's up at and 'em and proclaims, "I'm gonna carpe the snot out of this diem." (Then again, I remember a h.s. teacher writing the words on the board. She asked us what they meant. While I was trying to figure out carpe - I knew diem meant day - someone called out, "Dead fish?")

amother

White

Thu, Jan 04 2018, 4:45 pm

Thanks for the replies. Pinkfridge I see you think this is a bad idea. Mommy3b2c you get it. And ramom yes he empty nice feeling is exactly the attraction. Very interesting statistic about petty crime. Very very interesting. It kind of started like that, avoiding worse things by myself and others. Every time I try to stop it seems like it's better avoid the bad things. And I ALSO spent most of Shabbat asleep when I first started keeping it (many many years ago) because I didn't know the halacha and I was scared to mess up. Not feeling scared now though! Just if something is impossible, why keep trying to do it. Also I heard recently in a shiur (MOST of my virtual time is actually spent listening to shiurim ) that even the fact that we think we exist is an illusion. We are all just vibrations emanating from Hashem's original "vayomers" at the beginning of time. So maybe in truth virtual reality I just as real (or unreal) as "real" reality. In fact maybe virtual reality is here precisely to tell us that reality is an illusion. If you use the virtualness to recognize Hashem, how can you say that is a wasted life?