Tag Archives: gadget stress

Emergence of ideas leading to a lack of deep insights

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Decorative imageIn Surrealism, which emerged after World War 1, artists attempted to allow the subconscious mind to express itself and resulted in illogical montages or dreamlike scenes and ideas.  Some surrealists championed the subconscious because they thought it would release society from the oppressive rationality of capitalism.  Anna Wiele Kjaer of the University of Copenhagen has suggested that instead our subconscious has been colonised by capitalism and is being shaped the endless of streams of disconnected images flowing from our phones, which are as incongruous as any surrealist montage.  To decolonise our subconscious and to replenish our creativity many of us need a digital detox involving time away from our electronic devices [see ‘Digital detox with deep vacation’ on August 10th, 2016] allowing our brains to switch into mind wandering mode for long uninterrupted periods [see ‘Mind wandering’ on September 3rd, 2014].  Cormac McCarthy has described how ideas struggle against their own realisation and come with their own innate scepticism that acts like a steering mechanism for their emergence from our subconscious.  He also suggests that all ideas come to an end when they lose lustre becoming a tool, perhaps as a theory, strategy or plan, and you can no longer entertain the illusion that they hold some deep insight into reality.  Many of my thoughts never coalesce into an emergent idea but remain as illogical and disconnected as a surrealist montage and the few that do emerge don’t provide deep insights into reality that I recognise.

Sources:

Anya Harrison, Another Surrealism, 2022

Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger, Pan MacMillan, 2023.

Jackie Wullschläge, Surrealism at 100: does it still have the power to disrupt?, FT Weekend, 27 January 2024.

Image: Ceramic tile by Pablo Picasso in museum in Port de Sóller Railway Station, Mallorca.

Switching off and walking in circles

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Traditionally in Easter week, I go to the Lake District for a week of hill-walking with my family and a digital detox [see ‘Eternal non-existence‘ on April 24th, 2019 and ‘Gone walking‘ on April 19th, 2017]. For the second year in succession, we have had to cancel our trip due to the national restrictions on movement during the pandemic [see ‘Walking and reading during a staycation‘ on April 15th, 2020]. I am still attempting a digital detox but the walking is restricted to a daily circuit of our local park. While Sefton Park is not on the scale of Central Park in New York or Regent’s Park in London, it is sufficiently large that a walk to it, round its perimeter and home again takes us about two hours. It might not be as strenuous as climbing Stickle Pike but it is better than repeatedly climbing the stairs which was the limit of our exercise last year [see ‘Virtual ascent of Moel Famau‘ on April 8th, 2020].  We might not be allowed to leave our locality but we can switch off all of our devices, do some off-line reading (see ‘Reading offline‘ on March 19th, 2014), slow down, breathe our own air (see ‘Slow down, breathe your own air‘ on December 23rd, 2015) and enjoy the daffodils.

New horizons

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Along with many people, I have been working from home since mid-March and it seems likely that I will be doing so for the foreseeable future.  Even if a vaccine is discovered for COVID-19, it will take many months to vaccinate the population.  For the first few months of lockdown, I worked on an old workbench in the basement of our house; however, now I have an office set up in the attic and the picture above is the view from my desk.  It certainly has eye-stretching potential but it is also frustrating because I can see the roof of the building in which my university office is located.  However, the lockdown in the UK has been relaxed and so we are going on holiday to Cornwall where we will be walking sections of the South West Coastal Path and reading a pile of books.  If you want experience the walking with us then I recommend reading ‘The Salt Path‘ by Raynor Winn [see ‘The Salt Path‘ on August 14th, 2019]. Although I will be indulging in a digital detox [see ‘Digital detox with a deep vacation‘ on August 10th, 2016] combined with some horizon therapy [see ‘Horizon therapy‘ on May 4th, 2016], the flow of posts to this blog will be uninterrupted because lock-down has allowed me write sufficient pieces in advance to maintain the publishing schedule.

I noticed that both of the posts cited above about the importance of relaxing were published in 2016, along with Steadiness and Placidity on July 171th, 2016.  2016 must have been a stressful year!