When I first started I would go from 12am till about 4am. I wouldn’t even feel tired but I was drinking a lot of coffee. Its been really hot lately and coffee just isn’t an option. Every time I open up a book and start looking at the letters I start to feel drowsy. Even if the text is interesting I can’t seem to stay focused. What do you guys think it can be? It wasn’t always like that though. I remember when I was working and going to school I would wish I had time to read the stuff I wanted. Now I only work like 35 hours and party on the weekends. I have the time but not the energy. I don’t know if this makes sense to you guys.
Happens to me all the time, just a cyclical thing it seems like. Before too long, I’m neck deep in books and projects again.
When I was younger, I was always ‘on’, it was only after 23-24 that I started slowing down. I’ve decided the best thing is to just listen to my body and chill and relax for a week or so, there’s no point running yourself ragged even when you’re feeling at your best.
Iced coffee. For real—it took me like a month to realize I could do that. Now it saves my life every day.
That said, I work out every day to maintain muscle tone and energy and it really works. As a side bonus, the cyclical depression I assumed was inescapable is now disappeared. And most important of all: lots of good clean water, regularly.
I guess I have a huge advantage in always being able to sleep as long as I need to, I should mention that in the name of science.
I really agree with what prunesquallor said, too. I used to have a problem where I’d lose interest in hip hop and then conclude I was about to quit rapping. Now that I’m older and I’ve been through that about 12 times, I realize I’m just interesting in other things, no big deal, it comes back around.
I have the same problems concentrating. Over the past few years I’ve read 3 maybe 4 books front to back, but I’ve started probably over 2 hunnid. I don’t think has anything to do with energy.
Anything I do these days I tend to be really into briefly then lose interest. I started reading House of Leaves 3 months ago, got a third of the way in and haven’t touched it since. Not that it’s a bad book, it’s actually amazing, but I’m just not in the mood. These quick bursts of concentration apply to websites I visit, relationships and work tasks. Combined with my failing memory, it can make my average work day quite a challenge. I put it down to all the clubbing drugs I did in my twenties.
I’ve always been interested in the angle of computer technology being a deliberately designed form of mass hypnotic conditioning, because I find that when I get away from this demon box for a few days, I’m always happier, more focused and less irritable. HOW ABOUT THAT. Anyways, I came across that theory advanced a number of times when I was investigating Willis Harman, and I can dig up some of the articles from those threads if anyone is interested.
Television has a number of experimentally measured and reproduced neurological effects. I have not seen similar research done with computers. I should cop one of those home EKG scanners and do my own experiments.
He [willis harman] was quite specific. LSD was designed and ultimately deployed for only
one reason: to change the world by re-designing people. Those who were
involved were largely religious gnostics who had established themselves in
and around the various intelligence services around the world. They
coordinated their actions and debated what should happen next and who
should do what.
When I asked him how an anti-war activist like himself felt about
collaborating with the CIA (in particular), he told me “At first I was very
hesitant but Al convinced me that the Gnostic truth is now protected by an
armored system.” Hmmm . . . very interesting.
......
But then Harman went on to say something very interesting. Drugs were not
the end of the process of looking for technologies which could
fundamentally alter society. It is fairly well documented that the
original MK-ULTRA (the CIA’s final codename for their drug “experiments")
was wound down in the late 1960’s. The follow-on efforts were not
principally drug related—which is why continuing drug experiments became
very difficult to conduct. The second generation of MK-ULTRA was primarily
electronic, he said. Computers became the next LSD.
It is well known that many of the public leaders of the LSD movement
underwent a transformation towards the use of computers—still to change
the world—during the 1970’s. Leary was very visible. Stewart Brand
shifted from drugs to computers also. From the “Trips Festival” where he
promoted LSD to his first large-scale demonstration of the SRI-designed
windows/mouse user interface, Brand never altered his utopian worldview.
He was still trying to make a better world. They all were techno-utopians
of the first order.
“Better living through chemistry” had become “Better living through
electronics.” The man-machine interface became much more interesting than
zapping neuro-transmitters with hallucinogens. Some, like Harman, shifted
to PSI research (telekinesis and “remote viewing” where “sensitives” would
picture enemy installations from great distances). Others tried to cook up
electronic means to read and even insert thoughts into test subjects.
Electrodes were replaced by microwave beams. Some focussed on UFO’s.
Others pursued ever more exotic forms of artificial intelligence. Some
focussed on computer networks. That’s where Harman’s interview stopped.
Apparently, he had told me all that I needed to know.
The only studies on computer things I have seen are related to “video games and violence” but those really don’t ever say or conclude much.
From the time I discovered the man-machine interface, it has caused a dismissal of my spiritual self in many ways. This was not because of the man-machine interface, though, it was because of the state of the world; the interface became a barrier by which I could filter what I wanted to see. In effect, this caused a general spiritual ignorance of the world and lack of motivation to improve the planet or my surroundings. It also seems to put minds in a place of “if I can’t see it, I don’t care” as well as “if it’s not some thing I want to see, I won’t look at it” and also “if it’s not happening to me, it is entertainment.”
Over the past month I have played 2 hours of counter strike and spent days away from the computer. My life always improves on days away from the box and seems to get worse on days when I am on the box for more than 30 minutes.
The funny thing about all of this, is that I prefer the computer to the TV: the TV makes me feel absolutely frustrated and pissed off; I don’t choose what to read and the TV doesn’t say any thing more than the same 30 catch phrases all week long… yikes!
The internet does also suffer from dis-information, false discussions on forums, heated battles over concepts that are not prove-able one way or an other. In using the internet since 1991, I think I can say that I have surely been involved in the “debate” type threads and as a result my ego has constructed to a level that I am slightly disturbed with in that it relies on saying as much as possible with out the need to do so (as in.. nobody asked!) This is seen and reflected in my daily life; I talk in essay format! This is most disturbing and brings down any fun time because the structure is all pre-determined and set up in such a way which prevents arguments; information over-load and tuning out. The common internet response received for about 5 years of my career on here was “I’m not reading all of that.” Too serious, too dry, or just plain off-the-wall unable to be processed/dealt with!
I think you should do it, thirtyseven; hook yourself up and get to collecting data!!
(even if it means you have to take a week off to collect non-use of computer data)
Aggression researcher Bruce Bartholow adds that hundreds of studies have shown that people who are exposed to media violence become more aggressive.
*hm.*
It says “people” but does not give a percentage of people. Granted, I am one of the few people I know who is not affected by “violent video games” in such ways they describe. I can be addicted to video games, just like any thing I can make a habit out of, but I think that’s human nature to a great extent.
Though, I do not defend video games; I think all forms of competition tend to put some males (maybe a great deal of them) in to a negative frame of mind and act poorly to one an other (be it “bragging rights” bullshit, or outright physical aggression.) Playing a fair game with out attachment is fun, after all, but when people get competitive as hard as they tend to, I get a bit freaked out and quit playing with them. Again.. I suppose I tend to be unique in this respect. (of course, if I get on a game and I am in a bad mood, the game does not help that mood out, so I don’t play when I am upset and if the game is pissing me off, I quit and focus on better feelings.)
As the article is also from a major media news source, I tend to automatically have a general distrust for the information.
It would be better to see how the internet, in general, effects users. Preferably users who are not game players; game playing is a whole different pie than what I am after, I suppose.
Aside the agression issue there is another part that is interesting to the discussion. Sorry I ought to had remarked this from the beggining:
Ryuta Kawashima at Tohoku University, found that excessive game playing may stunt development of the frontal lobes — including the cerebral cortex and its impulse control functions. Kawashima compared the brain activity of teens playing Nintendo games with that of teens doing arithmetic. He found that the Nintendo group only used the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement, while the math group had activity not only in the vision and movement areas, but throughout the frontal lobe — including the areas associated with learning, emotion, memory and impulse control. Kawashima argues that the study shows that teens who play video games at the expense of other activities, like math, reading aloud, or even just socializing or playing outside, will stunt their prefrontal cortex development end up more violent.
My wacky intuitions are that jungle and shamanic dimensions are returning through videogames. First person shooters like Quake or Doom are similar to experiencies thah occur in mental landscapes in shamanic journeys --not to talk about the huge psychedelic/new paradigm imaginery throwed in the games of, say, Super Mario or Zelda.
I think media is literaly the huge pool of genetics/memetics going around, like ayahuasca visions were genetic imaginery appers. Last Super Mario Bros commercial goes like “Change of dimension to see it clearer”. Wacky.
^^I disagree, simply because the immersive experience of “shamanic dimensions” doesn’t feel, look, smell or taste anything like watching pixels on a TV screen while you sit there pressing buttons.
Plus the neurology of TV is nothing like the neurology of most altered states...anyways, I did a brainsturbator article on the effects of TV:
