Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Tag: psychology

  • Androidless

    It’s been five months since I have dumped my android phone. It just now occurred to me that my unplugging, though inadvertent, is an odd thing in a world embracing increasing connectedness and immersive technologies. Suspecting that this could be an important milestone of my life, I reflect here on how this change came about and has played out so far.

    It started when my phone screen died and unlike the last time, would not revive by tinkering the LCD flex cable. I was told that I’d have to have my screen replaced and should not expect to find a cheap or an original one. The idea of a pricy, unoriginal screen for my phone put me off so much that I postponed the job altogether, and decided to use my Nokia set for all practical purposes until I found a way out. Leaving the mobile repair shop without my phone fixed felt like I was botching my entire life over a silly Quality concern (yes, Pirsig’s voice from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been a loudspeaker in my head over these past couple of months – more on that later). But like a lot of my life’s decisions that I have taken against my better judgment and that have taken me places, I decided to venture into the great dreaded unknown of the android-less existence anyway.

    Since my workplace applications run on internal servers and networks, it didn’t hurt professionally to not have a handheld device 100% of the time. With no professional obligations at stake, I realized my life was not that botched as I had thought after all and the practical purposes the Nokia set was to suffice were not coming out of Pandora’s Box either. Soon the day’s routines were being met through good ol’ messages and calls. What followed from there was a gradual, convenient resettling into old, familiar ways. Considering that I had bought my first android phone in 2015 which I was also robbed splendidly of the very first day, I didn’t have decades of addiction to feel substantial withdrawal symptoms. Though I now felt ’emptiness’ at times, it only led me to think more independently; something that I now realize I had hardly been doing anything of lately in the notification- and ad-driven frenzy that even a tech-conservative like me was not totally immune to. At the risk of sounding like a tech-cursing twentieth-century ancestral spirit, let me just say here that life is not a dopamine-fueled dragon ride all the time and one must learn that at some point in one’s life.

    Have I become a tech-hater now? Absolutely not. I think that tech has helped us understand and solve complex problems, reduce social disparities and elevate lifestyles in general, and to discard it altogether because of its latent dangers would be unfair, at best. Instead, a more sound approach would be to approach technology in a selective way. You pick all that’s good and leave out all that’s not. For that, you need to analyse what works for you and hence, is good for you and what doesn’t, and hence, is bad. For me, immersiveness is the true villain in the tech-story. As long as we are at the wheel, technology can be a pretty exciting and empowering friend to have. The whole problem of tech is its control issues because it doesn’t let you be at the wheel for long. Soon a notification pops up here and an ad there, and poooof, you’re an Alice in Wonderland. Once you remove mobile phone from the context, you take away half the tech’s immersiveness, making it an acceptable bargain.

    What difference has going off-the-grid made for me? I think this is an important question and I am still crafting a reply to it. Without a phone, I have loads of time on my hands that I’m still figuring out how to use constructively. Connectedness is going to be the chief challenge, I guess, since I am still struggling to keep in touch with people I really care about five months out.

    But I am certain I’ll find a way.

  • Purpose

    While doing a quick round up of the eminent theorists from some major schools of thought in Psychology, Dr. X told me why he thought Viktor E. Frankl’s psychoanalytical system left a “working” space for religion, not just a symbolic, sympathetic one, as you might find with his more popular counterpart, Carl Jung, and his brethren. I was familiar with the growing fascination among boys over Frankl but wasn’t able to read him before. Dr. X’s eloquent synopsis was something that came in handy.

    He said that Frankl’s system was unique in a way that it would begin to treat a patient by stressing him more instead of trying to relieve him of it. And it worked as miraculously as the tenth century Chinese inoculation where they injected the patient with the same virus they wanted to protect him from to immunize him from future viral attacks of the sort. However, the way in which Viktor E. Frankl stressed his patients was surprising. His psychotherapeutic method began with insisting the patient to find a meaning in life, hence his best-seller book, Man’s Search For Meaning (Have you read this book yet? Please do. It’s enlightening!).

    That brings me to my topic. At some point in our lives, we all wonder if there is any purpose to this meticulously elaborate drama of life. We ask ourselves, for example, where do we fit in the grand scheme of universe? What does it mean if we lie on top of major ecological chains as ultimate beneficiaries of all that universe has to offer – why exactly does this universe seem to be at our service? These questions have substance and they demand answers just as substantial. Everything that matters hangs delicately on these questions.

    We, as human beings, have an innate tendency to find our answers – to know the reason of our creation, to shake sense of all that is out there in relation to our own self and its connection with the universe. We are sometimes referred to by the evolutionary scientists as the only intelligent design that inhabits the universe. Of several hundred million different species of Earth and counting, it’s really flattering to know this but it has its downside: we can’t just wake up in the morning and leave to make a living unless we have figured out what is it that we want to live for. Even a jackass is smarter than us in that it just grazes away when it has to and doesn’t really need to grapple with this conundrum.

    During my discussions with people, i have discovered that the very term “purpose” induces great anxiety in most of them and they don’t want to pursue the discussion any further. While they might have their own reasons to do that, the reason I’ve been frankly cited at times is that purpose, in its own cold, calculative and mechanistic manner, tends to kill freedom. And its totally understandable. If you wake up in the dead of the night hungry as a wolf and aim for the fridge with a clear purpose in your head to eat something, you definitely won’t be much amused with a Santa Claus, should you find one, standing in his chariot blocking your way. In fact, you might as well walk right through him! That’s the case with purposes. They block a significant number of exciting possibilities from entering your life. But then, you have to ask yourself what’s more important after all? Finding your destiny or living ‘one hell of a life.’

    The decision, ultimately, rests with you.