Digital carbon monoxide

Real life isn’t fooled by your dopamine shortcuts.

Life is what you pay attention to. Increasingly many of us are immersing into virtual worlds and spending less time out in the real world. We are attending to digital realms.

Everything it seems is going online, from shopping to entertainment to work. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by the slow creep of technology.

Our entertainment is digital and our social networks are found online. For increasing numbers this may be their only connection to others.

Even work is becoming unavoidably remote with Zoom and comparable tools now standard fare.

The digitization of life continues apace. As a result, we are present in the real world less and less and this cannot be altogether healthy.

Many benefits

There are obvious benefits to our new digital world.

Thanks to the internet much has become convenient and easy. We can access a wide array of goods and have them delivered for a small fee.

The scale of the options is impossible to beat. The real world could not possibly provide the options on display. We can peruse virtual warehouses with everything. No bookstore is as big as Amazon.

The post-Covid world accelerated aspects of digital adoption, particularly video-based conferencing and other virtual tools. This is now ubiquitous, particularly in work settings.

One-click ordering and fast delivery makes everything else seem unreasonably tedious and complicated. It is a hassle going to a physical location to buy clothes or books or food when you can pay a slave to deliver it.

But people sense they lose something with digital tools even when it is convenient to not travel or leave home. It is not the same as face to face. Importantly it brings the world into our homes, so we cannot easily escape.

Other less visible changes are apparent too. We seem to socialize less. We go out less often.

We dine in and often by having unhealthy food delivered, all chosen and prepared by others. The appeal of going out and mixing with strangers is waning.

Behind this is a gradual bureaucratization of everything as we are continually reminded of external dangers; germs, extreme weather, domestic terrorism, none of which are likely to ever touch us but we are told are ever present. These require interventions we never get to vote on but affect us nonetheless.

The safety-obsessed post-Covid world wants you at home where you are safe and sound. Digital tools have proliferated to serve this need.

Just enough of real life

The attraction of digital technology is that it mimics just enough of real life to seem like a replacement but jettisons the unnecessary elements.

A video call from New York to LA works great and avoids the hassle and expense of plane rides and waiting in airports.

It is good enough for transactional parts of life. It makes sense in a work setting especially.

But we kid ourselves that it has no downside just because it infers some benefits. This is true of all technology.

It is human nature to home in on the reward, to take the path of least resistance, and this mentality drives much of our technological world.

Drugs and pharmaceuticals reflect this approach. Researchers attempt to extract only the active ingredient. It sounds ideal.

Root ginger is a well-known anti-inflammatory agent and muscle relaxant. Ibuprofen, which also has these properties, is derived from ginger. You don’t need to cultivate the ginger yourself, process it, chop it up or cook it. It is now supplied in a convenient pill form.

But we now know ibuprofen can cause heart damage in some, unlike ginger which is universally tolerated. There are components within ginger we do not understand. The whole package is needed to reproduce the effect safely.

This extraction or isolation mentality dominates everything. We can remove the unnecessary and deliver a streamlined, focused and more efficient version without all the flannel.

The digital world has adopted this approach, and it too overlooks the cost.

Online shopping removes the hassle or the hustle and bustle of being in shops, but we miss out on casually spotting something new to buy instead. Browsing of this sort is more difficult online. No bumping into old friends and catching up either. No physical exercise walking around huge department stores.

Food is delivered by couriers using an app. No cooking, no burned dinners, no washing up. But also no control over ingredients, no sensible eating. No culinary skills cultivated over time. It becomes thoughtless.

The extreme ease of one-click eating bypasses steps we traditionally used to control what we eat. Buying the ingredients, thinking about it, preparing and cooking, trying variations on a recipe. All act as hurdles and produce higher quality.

Something is always missing in this shortcut world we create.

Although some shortcuts are worse than others.

Virtual painted ladies

Visual pornography aimed at men is a celebrated example of the shortcut phenomenon. Minimal effort and immediate, guaranteed reward.

A constellation of attractive babes are on hand to mimic just enough of the transactional element of sexual relations to make it work, at least from the more ejaculatory male mindset.

And yet it is a costly affair. The low effort just means the front-loaded hassle to court women is absent.

Men can remain as they were and get some of what they want without the necessary changes real life demands.

No chat up lines, no buying dinner, no sixpack required. You don’t even need to cut your hair or iron your shirt. To top it all she always looks great and is never late. She won’t even argue back or have mood swings, and none of them will key your car or burn down your house for perceived transgressions you failed to attend to.

Surely a bargain? Better than the real thing.

And yet the price paid is often high when we take everything into account.

Young men addicted to porn are reported to becoming impotent, a physical effect of masturbating frequently. Real ladies cannot compete with the strength of a closed fist, so to speak. The loss of sensation is reversible, but it is a worrying sign.

There can be a psychological cost too. Compared to always-compliant online babes real women can seem unusually chaotic and unpredictable. Their behaviour may not be understood anyway (hence the attraction of porn in the first place), so porn addicts move ever further away from reality when they find out real women have minds of their own and are not walking sex bombs always ready for fun and games. You must take them places and keep them occupied; you need some presence and be able to hold down a job. Disappointingly, almost none of them dress like whores.

The effects of porn are known. We already see a backlash, often from mens’ rights groups. Things are changing, but it is just a subset of a broader range of attractive, addictive and unhealthy things the online world can deliver that we would be wise to avoid.

Get a sixpack in one week!

We all want shortcuts. A sixpack in seven days. Win the lottery to get wealthy. The perfect life with no changes required to get it, just a click on a lifestyle app. Like ordering pizza.

We gravitate towards a fantasy and shun the reality. It is comforting.

The digital world seems to be built atop a graveyard of older get rich quick schemes and has learned from them all. It is the Vegas slot machine in our homes, always promising alluring riches, and everything just a click or two away.

Shortcuts don’t work in the real world. No one with a great physique got there quickly or easily. Same for jobs, wealth or a winning smile.

Everything we value takes effort. Careers, skills, health, relationships and experience itself. None of it can be faked well. There are no shortcuts.

This is the great strength of reality compared to fantasyland. Upfront effort is what the online world removes. Push the lever and get the food pellet.

But the real world enforces the correct sequence our nervous systems and endocrine systems are designed to respond to.

It is always a version of this:

• Desire > Effort > Discomfort > Reward

Importantly, the rewards are intermittent; they are not guaranteed.

To the digitally entrapped this can seem daunting and bleak. Where do you start? The effort may not even lead to a result. Why bother when you can just push the lever? The attraction is obvious.

But the best quality life doesn’t seek ease. The satisfied recast their mental machinery to draw satisfaction from the effort itself, not the reward.

The joy is in the relationship, not the porn-like acrobatics. The appeal of work is a job well done, not the job title.

Mastering the drudgery of regular exercise, overcoming the lure of comfort and recognizing the dividend paid is higher energy and strength is the real prize of fitness, not the washboard abs or the toned backside.

Life not only cannot be cheated but a noncheating life, experiencing it as it really is, is utterly magnificent in the mental gifts it rewards us with. All it takes is some grit, the very thing the dopamine-soaked mental maze of the online horror show seeks to dispense with. Why bother when those shiny levers are just sitting there waiting to be pushed?

It is the effort that generates the satisfaction, not the nominal reward on offer, a lesson some never learn and one our digital masters are desperate for us to overlook.

Nudging you into the cyberpen

The online world reflects us. It is not all bad.

Free online encyclopedias, books, art, music, films and other amazing content.

It allows international communication essentially for free.

It is truly amazing.

But it also reflects our darker side. Disturbing pornography, violence and hate. We are not angels. We have a shadow side we dislike discussing and it is all there if you look.

The programmers and their corporate masters know this too. They hire the best behavioural experts and technology implementers. They know what makes us tick and they have the tools to control and persuade and nudge us into their cyberpens.

What the digital realm offers is often too good to be true.

Much of it is designed by experts to bond to our ancient mental routines. Dopamine is just the most celebrated neurotransmitter as it has entered the common lexicon. But cortisol and adrenaline too play an increasing part in our lives, often in response to danger which the traditional media have learned to trigger.

These can all be classed as something like “exciting mental effects” we have evolved to help us by focusing our attention. Their existence assumes a series of real-world phenomenon they are designed to reflect. The sabre-tooth tiger triggers adrenaline and cortisol, for example, just as the fertile young woman catches the attention of men, and tall athletic men appeal to women. These evolved for survival reasons. They are buried deep.

The effects are hackable, and they have been thoroughly hacked by our online manipulators.

Like drug dealers they are selling the high not the dirty syringes or the decline it later induces. They promise ease and comfort and joy at no real cost.

But we can never just get the good bits. In the real world life itself reminds us there are no shortcuts. We always pay a price.

We either pay upfront or as we go. We cannot pay in arrears. You don’t get the impressive physique or the stable marriage without the initial effort.

The digital world is the opposite. It promises instant gratification, and it often delivers.

But the price is paid eventually.

Damaged attention spans. People easily bored with declining thresholds for boredom. Many cannot sit still in a room without distraction, something we used to train children to do.

Adults immersing in a world of entertainment while their real-world skills atrophy. After years of hiding behind a screen some normal human interactions become unimaginable.

We are accumulating damage that is not immediately apparent. But if something is too good to be true it usually is.

Modern technology owns us via an addiction model. But its effect is like digital carbon monoxide. It binds to existing structures designed for something else entirely. It therefore feels natural, but it is really disguised poison, and it is slowly choking us.

The price we are paying is increasing atomization, alienation and exhaustion as we fall into digital black holes and become alienated.

We are not designed for isolation or holding the world at arm’s length and experiencing it through a little glowing rectangle.

We cannot cope with just the good bits. Life is not meant to be all icing and no cake.

We are designed to muck in and join forces with others. We are social animals. Mimicry of this is not enough and we feel it as a deep sense of wrongness about modern life. WhatsApp groups are great for logistical planning and maybe even sharing the odd meme, but they are not the same as a family barbecue.

We are built for the pain and discomfort and our innate attempts to overcome it change us for the better. All this and more is absent when we plug in and download easy stuff online.

In a sense it is all porn. If it requires no effort then you are going to pay in the future.

The internet and its cybertentacles have now been around for decades. The plugged in zombies, the short attention spans, the lack of understanding of the world, the porn, the hate, and the abuse is the price we are being asked to pay for the easy virtues of always-on digital material that prevents us being bored.

Much of what we are drawn to has no bearing on our lives, it simply triggers some ancient routine, so it feels immediate and important. The most famous are the reward systems designed for harsher conditions from long ago, and they are exploited to the greatest degree. The tobacco companies have nothing on our new digital social engineers.

It is all manipulation, and we can escape if we put our minds to it.

Perhaps it is time we each got better at unplugging. Perhaps it is time we rationed the digital carbon monoxide and got some fresh air instead.