Groundhog Day

Each morning I wake up and proceed with my morning routine. I keep expecting to hear news that our new President-elect Joe Biden is recognized as our next President, but so far that hasn’t happened. It’s now been several weeks since the election was held and it appears Joe Biden won decisively but apparently that’s not clear to others. The person in charge of the GSA who is responsible for announcing who won the election just made her first public statement in a tweet today that reads “Dcccf Rex zzz @#z@smann anaNN”. Where am I? What is happening in America? The world seems to have gone mad. The election should have been called weeks ago and a virus pandemic continues to rage out of control. I see it every morning and evening on the news, day after day after day, like a scene from Groundhog Day. We have never been more divided as a country, each seeing the other side as a threat to democracy itself. How have we come to this point? I think it can partly be explained by the bubbles we live in with our social media accounts, each of us living in his or her own Truman show. I recently read a book by Jason Janier, “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts” which was very persuasive, but I did not delete my facebook or instagram accounts. How would I share this article with you? How would I share my paintings with you? I find I am a hungry ghost wandering through a dystopian landscape where corporations mine my attention at every turn. I hardly know if I have agency or free will any more. We all crave connection and receive rushes of dopamine when we do, but our virtual connections have become strange and often toxic. Young people live for these social media connections but what happens when that connection occurs with a third person acting behind the scenes monetizing the encounter? The whole project becomes suspect. Communication then takes place in a culture of manipulation and deceit. Just imagine what a dictator or a demagogue could do with such a medium! In my Zen tradition we take certain precepts to be accountable and to behave with integrity. The fifth precept is to not give or take drugs; to proceed clearly without clouding the mind. We can all probably agree that certain hard drugs such as heroin, crack or opioids cause serious addictions and suffering. But what about the less obvious sources of addiction such as our attachment to the identity-self or our addiction to social media. I have to be honest. If someone says they’ve tagged me in a photo, I’m likely to click on that. If someone likes my painting or leaves a nice compliment about what a wonderfully gifted artist I am, I’m going to click on that. So by all accounts social media is leading to serious problems in our culture and in the world. Social media is connected with increased levels of loneliness, unhappiness, depression and even suicides among young people. If a product leads to this kind of suffering we regulate it, so why don’t we regulate social media? Because social media is operated by very large and powerful corporations. And their operating business model is to profit from clicks no matter what the cost. I practice meditation in my daily life and I do think mindfulness can help one have a meta-awareness of one’s experience, but we’re talking about a very powerful drug here. The only people that speak of their clients as users are drug pushers and social media empires. So I have no easy answers here. My questions seem to lead no where in an endless loop like Groundhog Day. I’m hoping I wake up from the movie soon. @2021 Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse