Why 'being alone' is worth its weight in gold

[jrineakter]

Column – Two weeks ago I wrote about ' being alone '. The assumption was that it is becoming increasingly difficult to be alone, based on the definition of Godfried Bomans, made on the island of Rottumerplaat during his week of banishment from civilization. Bomans about loneliness: having no one around you is not enough to be alone. You are only alone when there is no one around you and no one can call, app, knock on the door, ping or snapchat.


The choice for this aloneness is yours. You can end it, but you have to do something for it. Bomans could have ended his week-long battle against being alone on the island of Rottumerplaat by calling for help via the radio and having the boat come from the mainland.

Being alone is becoming increasingly rare
There are many who fear being alone. They see it as a problem. As a shortcoming. As a social failure. As maladaptive behavior. Not everyone will agree with this. However you look at it, the conclusion was that we are actually never alone anymore, never unreachable. In other words: being alone is becoming increasingly scarce.

We record 34 gigabytes daily
It was an article in Medium.com . Among other things, it was about the bulk of information that reaches us. A quantity of 34 gigabytes is mentioned, which we absorb daily. Don't ask me how japan telegram number list this is calculated, the equivalent of 174 newspapers. Youtubend, Instagramming, Facebooking, Twittering, app-end, watching television, reading Vice and Nu we build up the daily consumption of these 34 gigabytes. Like beachcombers we get our survival goods from every nook and cranny of the internet beach. Perhaps with an unconscious strategy as a motivator: time as the greatest antidote to being alone.

On average, we spend more than two hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices.

We collect information in a very fragmented and dispersed way. Smartphone information alternates with delayed or non-delayed television viewing, alternates with real conversations in real pubs. On average, we spend more than two hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices (Flurry, US, 2014). Television time is added to that.

The two networks in our brains
We read more words but don’t make books out of them, we see more images but don’t make movies out of them, we have more sand but don’t make castles out of them. In other words, we spend more and more time absorbing information in a fragmented way. The processing capacity of our consciousness is limited (NYTimes, Aug 2014). Our brains can pay attention in two ways. The first mode is specifically focused on performing a task, the task-positive network. You are focused, you are not distracted, your attention is fully focused on the central task, as neuroscientists call it. The second state in which your consciousness can connect is the state of the daydreamer, also called the task-negative network.