Amusing Ourselves to Death

Sweet Bites for February 7, 2025

Hi all,

Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.

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📗 Book Club

We’re trying an experiment this month where we read a philosophical text and discuss it in Substack’s chat feature.

If you feel like joining, get the app below (or join through the web) and follow along.

To go along with the monthly theme of time, we’re reading Seneca’s famed essay, On the Shortness of Life.

🍰 Mini Bite

One thing we live with now more than ever before is abundance. So many things live at our finger tips through the click of a button.

One of those major abundances that is ever-growing is entertainment. Historically this meant film and television but it’s now branched off into social media and technology with companies like YouTube, Netflix, TikTok, and Facebook.

We live in a world of endless entertainment, our minds allowed to rest and just ingest. We have endless videos to get through, 24/7 news, influencers and celebrities showing us a glimpse of their “life.”

Neil Postman, writing years before any of this took place, saw the impending doom once television grabbed a hold as a form of mass media.

“Our own tribe [writers] is undergoing a vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics,” he wrote.

Metaphors, as Postman pointed out, are meant to link two things together so that when one is mentioned, the other is easily imagined and/or understood.

“By the power of its suggestion, it so fixes a conception in our minds that we cannot imagine the one thing without the other: Light is a wave; language, a tree; God, a wise and venerable man; the mind, a dark cavern illuminated by knowledge. And if these metaphors no longer serve us, we must, in the nature of the matter, find others that will.”

His point was that our mediums quickly take on metaphors that warp our perception of reality and drag us deeper into their focus, providing an allure that never lets up.

“…a clock is not merely an extension of man's power to bind time but a transformation of his way of thinking…”

The medium in which we consume information dictates how we view the world and changes our perception of it.

“Media change does not necessarily result in equilibrium. It sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it is the other way around. We must be careful in praising or condemning because the future may hold surprises for us.“

When Facebook first brought everyone together through network effects, few could see where it would end up. Yet here we are, and with many other platforms that look to take our time, change our minds, and influence our actions on a daily basis.

And it works.

For the majority of people, social media is viewed as television used to be—a thing to do, something to watch and catch up on, a thing to talk about at the water cooler.

But few of us consider the time commitment, which is ironic considering we’re living in an era where productivity is a focal point of so many discussions.

What did you get done today? How did you maximize your time? How are you maximizing versus others?

We’re so concerned with time and getting things done yet how many of us will lie on our deathbeds saying, “I’m so glad I got those emails out when I did.” Or “I’m so glad I got to watch those YouTube videos.”

The Stoic philosopher Seneca reminds his father-in-law in his essay, On the Shortness of Life, that it is in old age, when one is sick and sees death approaching that they become terrified of their own mortality.

“How terrified do they die, as if they were not just passing out of life but being dragged out of it.”

Life is long enough if you use it wisely Seneca argued.

We will always want more when we choose to put off grabbing the fruits of life every day.

This doesn’t mean each day will go our way or that it will all be enjoyable. Rather, it’s about being present within our lives, learning to really grab each experience, good or bad, and have no regrets. The Stoic path is to live, as Zeno said, with a good flow to life, being able to handle scenarios appropriately as they arise.

But when we pour our time and attention into things that do not matter, when we allow companies and their content to suck us in and keep us from leaving, we’re putting off living to another day. By doing so, we not only miss out on the experience of life, we learn to live with regrets that we carry with us to the very end.

Each of us has a decision to make, amuse ourselves to death and live with regrets or grab hold of life, focus ourselves on what matters most in our existence, and learn to live.

There will always be people and companies looking to take our time and attention from us. It’s about understanding the life we want to live and having the discipline to pursue it that matters most.

🧘🏻This Week’s Monday Meditation

🦉 This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom

📚 Wisdom

“So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours … We try to [give the present the support of] the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.”

Blaise Pascal
Source: Four Thousand Weeks

🛠️ Tactic for Attention

How do we choose the right patterns we want for our attention? That’s what computational neuroscientist Mehdi Ordikhani-Seyedlar asks and presents in the below video.

He explores the difference between overt attention and covert attention, and how computers can assist us in understanding where we place our attention and why, and how this can help us for those in comas in the near future.

🏋🏻 Exercise

Check out The Roots of Attention in the Waking Up app.

Think someone you know would enjoy these? Hit below to forward and spread the love.

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

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