Beware of the Robot Box

Transcript

So this is how your life is already wonderful.

I was thinking about the robot box. We have a few of these devices in our homes.

Perhaps with lapse of judgement and awareness we might make the mistake of calling them computers or telephones well they are a bit something more than that.

Of course there are many organizations around the world trying to get your attention and they are willing to do what they can to hack your brain, do some research like on dogs to see what encourages the most repetitive behaviors. How can you get a dog, how can you treat it like Pavlov’s dog with the technology of the 21st century and how can you use those techniques and apply them onto humans on a grand scale?

This is the question that some of those organizations are asking and they’re not necessarily doing it on purpose, just a question of strange ways the world is set up. Maybe it is a conspiracy, I don’t even know.

The point is we have to look after ourselves and be aware of our own mind and our own time. I know this happens to me. I gotta be honest, it happens sometimes I wake up and I don’t have a lot to do that day. I don’t have a specific time that I have to be up and I go and pick up my alarm and turn off the alarm on the robot box and then I bring the robot box back to bed with me.

And even though I have deactivated my Facebook account and even though I try to limit my use of social media what happens sometimes on that Twitter account or that Instagram, check it and check it.

So the question, I know Im showing, it doesn’t feel good to admit this by the way but I am showing I am the ugly person in this position. 20 minutes or an hour passes and I’m still checking Twitter.

Then I start to think maybe I don’t need to meditate today. Maybe instead of a half hour I can do ten minutes or whatever it is and you start making excuses.

Not everyone is in that exact situation. There are lots of situations that people can be in but I know you can probably relate because these things are trying to enter into our lives. Doesn’t mean we need to stop using them but it is important to be aware of the robot box to question how are we actually using our time when we are using these appliances?

Are they serving us or are we serving them using our eyeballs reducing our eyeballs to nothing more than clicks for Mark Zuckerberg?

Not really the situation I want to be in.

We do need to…well we can be more aware of our time and ask ourselves. Ask ourselves “what am I going to do today? What am I going to apply myself to on top of regular activities?

How am I going to make this day better? It’s a difficult thing to do. That’s what I am attempting to do.

I go first and try to apply myself to writing down goals and being more diligent and being more present about how I use my time. Hopefully by the time I publish this episode I can put a little addendum and tell you that the enterprise was a success.

I am trying to lead by example here. I am trying to demonstrate to myself and to others time is precious, life is precious.

When we do have spare time we can spend it doing something nice, artistic, productive. We can spend it journaling and reflecting on our lives. We can spend it reading masters or for just entertainment. Which is good, its good to enrich our lives like that by reading a novel and being engaged and transporting ourselves to another way of seeing the world.

We can do all sorts of things. When we do finish using the robot box, when I finish this recording we can press the off button or at least put it in airplane mode and let it go. It can be without us.

Beware, beware of the robot box.