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I am grateful for the internet.

This one may be surprising to those who know my journey with conscious technology use, but I am grateful for it and to be born in a time where it exists. Yes, the internet is often the worst place we visit each day and it is also often the best at the same time (depending how you use it). It is the ultimate paradox of modern living. AND, it is also a marvel. It has become so integrated into our daily lives that I would venture a guess that most of us don’t even really think about it in the context of it’s sheer unbelievability. Even more so than planes and flying (because I’m still amazed that is a thing that exists), the internet is true science fiction come to life. The fact that we have such an immense amount of information at our fingertips will never cease to astound me. It is like the ultimate time capsule except it’s not buried under the earth, it is in our pockets.

I am grateful for it because of how much I have learned and been exposed to as a result of it. There are places I never would have traveled to because I had never heard of them before the internet. There are friends I am in touch with, years after having met them only once or twice, that I would not be friends with if not for the internet. Just in the last year alone, I did an entire 300 hour yoga psychology teacher training online, met people from all over the world, and now have close friends and confidants in three different countries, all of which would not have been possible without the internet. You, reading this, or any of the words I have shared in blogs online since 2007, would not be possible without the internet. Working online, remote, location independent, would not be possible without the internet. So many current fields of career and study would not be possible without the internet. The list can go on forever.

To me, the internet is still like the wild west, there aren’t that many rules, it is still in it’s infancy. We are still figuring out how we want it to be, how we want to use it, what role it will play in our life, and how to use it consciously in a supportive way. Time is a funny thing and it can seem like the internet was always here, but it’s still new in the arc of humanity. We are still evolving our use as it expands our ability to access information at a rate that would have taken hundreds of years to accomplish previously. I believe that it is evolving faster than we are (in some ways), and that is one of the reasons I think it is so important to examine and reset our relationship with it so that we are using it instead of it using us.

The tech giants have taken to saying this trope that, “the internet just reflects society and what is already in society.” Though I think this abdicates responsibility for algorithmic manipulation, and adhering to the lowest common denominator, there is a certain truth to this statement AND I also think it’s missing a huge nuance. That is that, the internet is showing us the shadows of our society, it is showing us where we are unhealed, where we are in deep pain, traumatized, and where we are crying out for our needs to be met. It is, in a sense, a great excavator of the human experience. It’s showing us the good and the bad, it’s bringing it all up to the surface. To me, that means there is opportunity for healing. Whether or not we notice that or take that opportunity remains to be seen as the internet starts to travel out of its infancy.

Awareness Practice: It is said that humans are currently evolved to have about 150 connections (with other people). I keep this fact in my mind when I am living my online life and have recently gone on a digital hygiene expedition through my accounts with this in mind. Aka, I have been unfollowing and de-friending to get my numbers closer to that number. In an age where more followers and more connections seems to be the norm, I am experimenting with how many connections truly feel right to me. How many connections do you have? How many do you want to have? What is the quality of the connections you want to cultivate? What does true connection feel like to you?