Beautifully Broken Issue #33: Baby & Bathwater: Can The Analog & Virtual Co-Exist In Harmony?

IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Happy Saturday! Welcome to Beautifully Broken Issue #33: Can The Analog & Virtual Co-Exist In Harmony. Each week's issue will be reserved for paid subscribers first (but you can obtain a free preview of an issue as a free subscriber). After a month the issue will become free and can be found in the archive.

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IDEAS:  Can The Analog & Virtual Co-Exist In Harmony

I write this issue weekly using my computer. AI helps illustrate the cover according to my prompts. With a family and my publishing business, I couldn't afford the time or money to produce a weekly online magazine if I had to use analog methods. It would take me weeks or even a month per issue. Using modern technology I can do the job of many, something that would otherwise be impossible. It’s human nature to take the easiest path to achieve an objective and all our thinking and systems are designed towards optimizing existence for benefit and convenience. The danger is that in optimizing the tasks of life we miss the experience of living. It’s in this space between efficiency and the experience of existence that we must stand our ground. Digital and virtual tools facilitate tasks and accelerate communication and information, but we risk getting lost in them and forgetting to resurface for air. By air I mean reality. Even if we disconnect from the digital, there’s a part of our brain that’s been stimulated and seeks to reconnect to get another dopamine hit.  

The overarching message of this Substack is one of trying to find a unified life, rebinding that which is broken, but the essential question in this day and age is: can modern technology help us rebind the essential schism in the human mind—the self reflecting consciousness—that separates us from nature? Or will introducing a third, artificial, consciousness only make the schism wider? 

Will the virtual hurt or heal? Or, like most things in life, is it a matter of balance? Can we find a healthy way to do more positive things with technology while still preserving our humanity?

What’s the secret to managing this balance between the convenience and speed of the digital versus the absolute necessity for us to live a physical existence? Some helpful advice can be found in Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 24, Unnecessary Baggage.