I confess from the start that I’ve been against “Smart phones,” from the beginning. I look out at our cultural wasteland & the armies of zombies hypnotized by their phones, and it depresses me deeply. Americans are reading less & less and they’re communicating less & less even though they believe they’re more in touch with friends than ever.

 

People don’t even like to leave voice mails any longer but prefer leaving text messages. Forget about critical & analytical thinking skills, that requires close reading, reflection, & exchanging thoughts with your friends. Instead, we are drowning in oceans of images & truncated messages of 144 characters or less via Twitter. Why do you think Trump used Twitter so much?

 

Because it’s the perfect format for morons who are like him & can barely put two coherent thoughts together. Chopped, little blurbs designed to rouse people’s emotions not to help them understand the complexities of modern life.

 

I look around & it’s becoming ever clearer that the visual has definitely overtaken the written word. And we can thank the public relations industry as well as the advertising industry for this general dumbing-down of the American public. The introduction & spread of television played a major role in creating our world & fertilizing the soil in which creatures like Trump could grow.

 

Some scholars argue that we’ve entered a “post-literate world,” and I’m more & more inclined to agree with them. How else can we explain the frightening phenomenon that a third of the American public don’t believe scientists & doctors but do believe Trump is their champion?

 

I have spent my life enthralled in my pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, & hopefully peace so perhaps you can get an idea of how painfully depressing modern life in America is for me? I have only met a handful of people in my life who could see beyond a purely utilitarian perspective regarding knowledge. In brief, most people only value knowledge that is going to put more money in their pocket.

Moreover, our never-ending pursuit of money & material possessions is a major factor in why we are facing global catastrophe environmentally & the ever-present possibility of some nation accidentally or purposely initiating a nuclear exchange. Donald the Dunce repeatedly asked those around him why he couldn’t use our nuclear weapons. Yep! I’m not bullshitting.

 

Those of you closer in age to me, may recall that Silicon Valley & the gurus of the New Age tech revolution originally sold us on these gadgets with promises that it would bring us closer together i.e., Facebook’s Zuckerberg but when the money started rolling in, he sold us out & followed a simple “business model” of using algorithms that spread false & hateful posts because people enjoy being scared & hating others whom they believe are behind their hardships & they’ll stay on a “social platform” far longer. Posts & platforms that talk of love, peace, solidarity, etc. don’t hold peoples’ attention long. And the profit is tied to the length of time people are on a page.

 

Furthermore, this all dovetails like a hand in a glove with Smart phones. After all, Smart phones are de facto portable computers. In my opinion, the very labeling of these phones as smart shows how stupid people are because machines can’t be smart, stupid, retarded, intellectually challenged, etc. People have forgotten the basics; it is the human mind that has created all this technology i.e., the smartest beings are human beings. And yeah, I can hear the hardcore & devout high-tech acolytes protesting that robots are already thinking independently, etc.

 

This perspective glosses over the myriad aspects of what it means to be human. And in their zeal & dreams of a future run completely by robots, computers, etc. they are losing sight of their humanity & the millions of little things that are part of the true joy of life. Most notably our human/social interactions. We are social creatures & we need each other to thrive not only on the physical level but the emotional or spiritual level as well.

 

As I was saying earlier, this technology is causing us to become more socially isolated from one another as we withdraw into our own fantasy world bubbles. We’ve all witnessed scenes where a group of young people walk in & it appears that they are a group of friends but within seconds, they are all staring at their smart phones & interacting with others on their phones but not their real or physically present friends sitting next to them.

 

I have long argued that these “social platforms” like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are de facto anti-social, not social tools that bring people together. We learn by interacting with others & comparing ideas, emotions, etc. In a nutshell, we are destroying ourselves from within & with a smile and confident that we are normal, healthy, & well-balanced individuals.

 

I could go on for many pages tackling one point after another in an attempt to persuade you to get rid of your smart phone, but I realize the almost total futility of that. Instead, I’ll just point out a few of the most egregious flaws & falsehoods.

 

First of all, almost all of the “wonders” of your smart phone can be reduced down to the fact that it’s basically a fancy calculator that can make computations at amazing rates or speed. Big deal! Life is about quality not quantity & we should all bear in mind G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) In other words, your phone is only as good or accurate as the people who programmed it. And what our ever-dwindling powers of critical & analytical thinking skills is showing us that instead of becoming more intelligent as a result of our obsession with computers, phones, etc., we are becoming ever more dumb, vulnerable, & gullible i.e., Trump as president of the most powerful nation on Earth.

 

Here’s a personal anecdote to help illustrate my point. I was enjoying a conversation with a young man in a tavern & he pulled out his smart phone & he repeatedly would break eye contact with me to look something up on his phone. He never bothered to say excuse me & I became more & more pissed-off and finally just got up & walked away without saying anything to him as to why I was angry.

 

I was tempted to get in his face & say, I was interested in talking to you not your phone/computer. He like countless millions of other young people don’t have a clue as to why someone like me would find this behavior extremely rude & disrespectful. I can drink at home for a lot less money, but I go out to public bars to socially interact with other humans not their fuckin’ phones!

 

To be honest with you, I am tiring of attempting to reach others. I have spent hundreds of thousands of hours pursuing knowledge over the course of my life, but I see the love of knowledge going the way of the dinosaur. I feel more & more like a fool, like a modern-day Don Quixote chasing the windmills of my mind. And I’m tired of the laughing behind my back, the smug smiles, & casual dismissal of nearly everything I’ve believed in & treasured throughout my life.

 

Perhaps I’m morphing into a bitter, disillusioned old hermit and am becoming a misanthrope? At the ripe old age of 69, I now have one good friend who attempts to keep up with the things I ask him to read & gives me some feedback. And I have another friend whom I’m not that close to, but we maintain a semblance of a friendship that has stretched over a half century.

 

Without a doubt, the highest point or achievement of my life was meeting & falling in love with my wife, Jeri. And just below that is the joy of developing a friendship with the planet’s friendly & loving defender, Noam Chomsky.

 

So, when the mental midgets mock me, the reassuring words of encouragement that Noam has shared with me over the years comforts me & I know who the true fools are!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Dec. 19, 2021

 

P.S.  I’m inserting several videos & links to relevant articles because as much as I’m tempted, I can’t seem to shake the glimmer of hope that resides in my spirit. That prayer that we can save ourselves & the planet from our stupidity.