Why I Gave Up my Smartphone
In May, I gave up my smartphone. I purchased a flip phone. It can send texts and make calls. It has a rudimentary camera, a calculator and an alarm. It does have modern touches like a touch screen, so you aren't forced to use T-9 style texting. It has bluetooth capabilities, and it can be used as a hot spot. That's pretty much it.
It's been about six months using a flip phone, and essentially divorcing myself from the social media environment (which has become for better or for worse, the modern day public forum). Downgrading to a flip phone was a personal choice that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to everyone. But for me it has made a tremendous improvement in my life, albeit with a few small inconveniences and shortcomings. Despite the annoyances, I refuse to go back to a smart device. Becoming virtually offline has given me a freedom I didn't know I needed. Unfortunately, there are some unexpected consequences to choosing to exit the media circus, and I have some issues about my purchase of a new device that don't have satisfactory answers. More on that later.
If you are reading this, you may also find yourself wishing you didn't need to use your phone. You're probably exhausted by the doomscrolling, all the world's ills beamed into your eyeballs, every unstructured moment of your day. You probably mourn all the time you're wasting on the phone when you could be more productive with your life. You're not alone. People seem desperate for meaningful change in their lives. Apps, QR codes, 2-factor authorization, cloud services, all these things have made our lives effortless, at a devastating cost. The ill effects of copious screen time have been reported to death. I need not list every single finding here.
A small but growing group, of which I find myself a part of, agrees that ditching smartphones, or at the very least rolling back the virtually mandatory nature of smart devices, might be the only way to save ourselves. While imperfect, I tentatively support the tiny movement to de-tech our personal lives, especially as the tech surveillance state continues to strengthen its stranglehold on us. Personally, despite all my criticisms and skepticism, I really do love having a flip phone. I could never ever go back to a smartphone.
It's Catching On
I've started to notice that the notion of switching to a "dumb" phone is catching on. Videos about so-called dumb phones and "analog" living are becoming more common. I daresay its becoming...trendy. In seeing this, I have to believe that there are more folks like me out there who are tired of the vapid trends, of the stupidity, of the manufactured outrage. Recently I traveled to New York city for the first time in a few years. I noticed flyers for a website advertising dumb phones. It seems people are tired of the endless spiral of infinite scroll. So of course it follows that more people will hop on the bandwagon. But I don't think everyone who tries a flip phone or something equivalent will necessarily make such a replacement permanently. Most people will probably never bother to even try. I imagine people vicariously watch this sort of content, fantasizing about this elated Offline Life. And then just keep scrolling.
Why? The most obvious reason is the sheer inconvenience. Like I said earlier, smart phone usage has become essentially mandatory for so many basic functionalities of life, that for many a clean break from a smart phone would certainly negatively impact their ability to navigate daily life, find a job, even taking public transport sometimes requires a smart device. The switch simply won't be feasible for many people, and this is very much by design. It is what it is. Of course I will not be quick to wholesale judge people who choose to keep a smart device, as that would be ludicrous.
The other big reason, in my opinion, why some people who hop on the analog trend may come away disillusioned is, well...you can't run from yourself. You may ditch the smartphone and get that flip phone or trendy "dumb" phone, and still find yourself miserable. People may find offline life boring, or get major FOMO, or look around and realize they are unable to truly enjoy life without documenting it or taking a phone break every so often. Some of this can be chalked up to what I can only describe as a genuine addiction to social media/scrolling. I am sympathetic to those who find it difficult to get off their phone...to an extent.
To be clear, I don't look down on anyone from my high throne of flip phone ownership. It's not our fault that we're attached to these devices. The modern smartphone environment is literally designed to keep you hooked. We aren't offered much choice in the matter. Our lives are built around smartphone use. Many people depend on smart devices for their employment, local public transit, paying bills, accessing a bank account, and so much more. I recognize there's a certain amount of privilege and luck that I have that allows me to abandon using smart devices entirely. Even I still have my old smartphone (shoved in a drawer somewhere) in case of instances where using one is necessary. Sadly that's just how our world is set up now, and I'd encourage anyone considering getting a dumb phone to keep your smart device somewhere accessible just in case.
...There's a Catch
I am very hesitant to sell my pitch of ditching smart devices as a silver bullet to all of society's problems. Getting rid of my smartphone hasn't made me that much less miserable. Unfortunately, I am a citizen of this wacky world and simply logging off will not shield me from the sheer lunacy that we all find ourselves in. I have not necessarily fundamentally changed as a person. And yet, paradoxically, I feel so much better overall. I could say that I've been able to unlock much more of my potential, but at the end of the day I'm still me.
Getting rid of my smart phone was not necessarily some overnight magical sensation that fixed me forever. Despite the immediate sense of relief and freedom, I'm not suddenly running 5ks, scaling mountains, or starting charities. My life is mostly the same, except I've gained lots and lots of time back, along with my patience and ability to think without distraction. I'm able to be fully immersed in movies, games, books, and so on without the tempting distraction of a device that exacerbates your mental illnesses (and probably gives you new ones). I'm no longer tethered to a vampiric device that I depend on for everything, and as such demands my near constant attention. There's a true palpable freedom that I've gained in my life, a psychic liberation if you will.
Let's talk about some of the more unfortunate aspects of my downgrade. The flip phone itself is powered by a lithium battery. The lithium in my phone was undoubtedly sourced through downright evil means: exploitation of the global south and child slavery. While I assert that owning a flip phone has done me, personally, material good, I am aware in the irony that my luddite-approved phone is not good for the planet. Such is the trap we as workers are all stuck in. On a large scale, we need to more responsibly source and manufacture our technology through the least environmentally harmful means possible, with fair compensation, safe work practices, and dignity for all involved in the production of the devices we have come to rely on. I have no more to say other than that we are all caught up in labyrinthine systems of extraction and production that will take a lot of effort to dismantle. We as a society really should have started investing in green energy and eco-friendly battery chemistries decades ago. There's no individual action that can be done to dismantle that.
I'm also not under any naive assumptions that my individual action of rebelling against smartphones will singularly make a huge difference, and certainly it's not a magic fix as I've stated before. All that being said, as flawed as my method may be, we have to start somewhere in order to save ourselves and our minds. There's been enough evidence that being constantly plugged in is disastrous to your mental health. People need another way to live. I just hope that my flip phone ownership has showed people that the option to say "no, thank you" is there.
So, has this whole experiment been a fluke? If my life is mostly unchanged, why go to all the effort of introducing so much friction in my life, insisting that I go against the grain? Is it really worth the benefits I'm seeing? And aren't I socially isolating myself by staying off social media entirely, in such an extreme way? Was it just to make a political point? I say that the friction that has been introduced into my life has been just fine. Healthy, even. I'm still able to maintain my friendships and acquaintances. I'll be the first to admit it's an imperfect solution that can't be universally applied. I do feel a bit "out of the loop" but I have no FOMO whatsoever. Let me try to explain myself.
How I Got Here
From a fairly young age, I loved using the family computer. It became a hobby. I often spent my time browsing the web playing flash games, visiting virtual pet sites, browsing forums for TV shows and video games, and watching animations. I remember as a teen using sites like Quizilla as sort of a proto-social media. I chatted with people from other countries, provinces, religions, races, sexualities and genders. The internet was a window to the world. I grew up in a time when the internet was a place. We had whole rooms dedicated to our computers. Bulky desks fitted with dense shelving, housing CD-ROMs of encyclopedias, games, software, music. You turned on the computer, sat down, and were logged into The Internet. When you were done, you stood up and you walked away. Now, the internet is omnipresent in our lives.
Before smartphones, the internet did not come with you in a handheld device everywhere you went. Social media did not really exist until the very late 2000s/early 2010s. The popularity of smartphones, and their eventual integration into mandatory public participation, drove the death of websites in favor of apps: walled gardens that discourage further browsing and searching. Everything is content. Everything is an advertisement. Short flashy video clips dominate the social and cultural environment. Nuanced and complex topics are flattened into bite-sized consumable information packets. Reactionary thinking is rewarded.
I won't pretend that the internet was once some bastion of peace. There has always been bad actors taking advantage of the miracle of the world wide web. Shock sites, viruses, misinformation sites, neo nazi radicalizing forums, other such ills have been around as long as the world has been using the internet. I have stumbled upon things I didn't want to see myself. And let's not forget that the internet itself started as a military project. It probably comes as no surprise that I'm no fan of the military-industrial complex and the harm it has done to the planet.
Despite all that, I believe in the promise of a world wide web. Call me an idealist, I think being interconnected on a global scale is ultimately good for humanity. Bad actors have used such a promising tool for profit. This has poisoned the internet. I think in order to fix this we need to rethink our relationship with technology and our internet usage.
What Made Me Switch
Your hands and your brain are connected. It's probably why we feel the need to scroll, check notifications, refresh. The constant dopamine hits keep you hooked. Smartphones are kind of like the perfect fidget toy, which is what can make them such a time sink.
Looking at my phone in bed was always my worst habit. I couldn't stand how I had become physically and mentally connected to my phone, how it had adulterated my relationships with people, my ability to sit with myself with no distractions, how it made me so anxious and enabled me to waste so much time scrolling. Since about the beginning of the 2020s I had become quite bored with social media and the internet at large, and I longed for an age of a fun, lively internet that was never coming back. The computer dork inside me withered away, and I wanted to walk away from it all. I decided to start doing just that.
At first I just got rid of all social media apps. Easy enough, right? At this point I was barely active and engaged anyway. I kept Youtube so I could continue fall asleep listening to streams or white noise (I'm a tired old crone who likes to fall asleep to TV, my fellow 30-40 something year-old geriatrics will understand what I mean). I didn't have much else except the "essentials" like email, GPS apps, bank apps, things like that. This sort of worked for a time. I had much less screen time overall, and wasn't really online much. After all that, I still kept finding myself reaching for my phone, and still spending way more time fiddling with it than I wanted to.
Even after I abandoned social media entirely, I found it tempting to mindlessly scroll through Youtube, or check my email, or refresh Peach (a now defunct private social media site). And of course, endlessly looking up random bullshit all night (which is way more fun and engaging than scrolling but it still kept me awake for no reason!) In my most anxious moments, I would log onto the browser version of tumblr and scroll for a few minutes, until I inevitably felt numbed out/bored. The anxious impulse to reach for my phone and scroll and fidget when I had even a micro second of free time was becoming more and more apparent. Why was I still itching to use my phone when there wasn't much there to look at anymore? I was starting to think: maybe it really is the damn phone. The impulse to reach for my phone and check it juuust for a second. And then suddenly I've scrolled myself into tomorrow. There was a physical link there-between my phone, my hand, and my anxious brain- in which I had to take a brute force approach.
One day I simply decided enough was enough. I refused to be part of the circus any longer, I wanted off the ride. In spring of this year I began seriously looking into smartphone alternatives, hoping for a straightforward flip phone as opposed to the trendy and odd "dumb phones" that I consider to be overpriced and unnecessary. Sunbeam phones kept coming up as a modern flip phone still being manucfactured in 2026. To be honest, I was shocked that there were still flip phone manufacturers out there. The day it arrived, I took out my SIM card from my smart device, popped it into the flip phone, and that was it. I ditched my smartphone. It was immediately liberating.
What's the Difference?
For the first time in quite a while, I was truly bored again. Instead of reaching for my phone, I realized I had to get more creative. I now had to be more intentional about how I choose to spend my time. And sometimes that means I get really high and listen to music while staring at nothing, for hours at a time.
So no, I wasn't suddenly inundating myself with constructive hobbies, or learning a new language, or taking a class. (That being said, I have taken up journaling and sketching again, which is something of a miracle as my depression and phone usage made it really difficult to engage in those passions again.) So yes, even after going "analog" I'm still kind of a lazy fuck. So if you're looking to ditch the smartphone to become more productive, all I can say is that the inclination to be more productive has to have already been inside you. Personally, I don't mind so much that my laziness isn't exactly "cured" because I kinda like being lazy sometimes. I just like being a bit of a couch potato on my weekends sometimes. So what? Even so, I am objectively more active and productive than before the switch, when I would scroll most of the day.
I feel so much more at peace. The time I spend with myself, thinking about the music I'm listening to, thinking about life, and enjoying myself with no outside input, is truly a healing experience and a wonderful way to spend one's time. Even if it's not exactly a productive activity, it's a billion times better than doomscrolling. I read all the time. I feel like I'm thinking more clearly than ever, and my life overall feels rewarding without really sacrificing my ability to be social or connected to the world. Albeit, life feels slower in a way. And I've found that I have a tendency to miss calls or texts. Friends have forgiven me, because they know that I am in a different mode of living now. I've found it easy to spend whole weeks away from my computer.
Now when I use the computer, being on the internet is actually fun again. I work on my personal website, play games, talk to friends, read articles or books, watch interesting videos, and listen to music. When I'm all done, I walk away. And I'm at peace in my life. There's no feed to impress, there's no audience to perform for. My life is my own. My mind is also my own. Not to be bought or sold to.
If you are thinking about making the switch yourself, and you're ok with working around all the inconveniences, I would recommend getting a flip phone. If you are unable to ditch your smartphone entirely (which, again, is very understandable), or you just don't want to but would like to depend on your phone less (also just as fair), there are countless tutorials on youtube on "dumbing down" your smartphone. You may find that this works for you the best, and ultimately it is the more ecological option as it would not require buying a new product. (Many of these newly manufactured "dumb phones" I feel are unnecessary and wasteful anyway. If people are so dedicated to ditching smartphones, why not go all the way and get a conventional flip phone instead of creating demand for even more cheap tech ventures to pop up? But I digress.) Regardless of how you choose to go about it, I think it is high time that we re-think our relationship with technology.
Do we really need Social Media?
We all have our opinions on social media. I will hazard a guess and say it's likely the opinions skew negatively rather than positive. For all its faults, social media has changed the world completely. Some try to use its transformative power for good.
One of the biggest defenses of social media is that it has become a way for people to spread information on progressive causes and spread information about protests, current events both local and global. I will not dismiss the value that this brings. I think staying aware of what's happening in the world is good. I do not think that isolation from the world will bring about enlightenment. I did not choose to live "offline" as a means of escaping the world. Quite the opposite: I follow current events fairly closely. I mean to say that in order to establish and work toward a better future, we must go about thinking about the conditions of our world in a more critical way. These critical, varied, and nuanced discussions simply cannot take place on social media. Social media has many unfortunate setbacks and challenges that, I fear, may hinder a truly revolutionary and captivating movement.
After exiting smartphone life, it's impossible for me to not notice that everyone really is always on their phones. This observation has got me thinking about the psychological torture that is the new media environment we find ourselves in. Although I acknowledge that social media has allowed common people to engage in some activist and anti-establishment endeavors, I have some concerns about getting political news purely through social media apps designed to keep you hooked on scrolling through clips that may not even be real, all of which discourages the inertia to step away, to learn more, educate oneself, form community, or make truly bold actions.
Like I mentioned earlier, many activist movements have found social media to be an effective way to spread information. I can't deny that social media has, in a way, democratized the media landscape. Politicians are now being platformed and endorsed by streamers. News stories that are being underreported in traditional news media get attention through short form video clips. The movement for a free Palestine has undoubtedly been amplified through social media posts. Corporate media would never cover the ongoing genocide and illegal annexation of the Palestinians and their land. I still believe in the internet as a public commons and forum for the masses, as idealistic as that may sound. Internet censorship would not be as rampant as it is if it weren't such a powerful tool.
The problem I have with the current social media environment, is that it's potential has been squandered by capitalists, turning it into a tool to keep people hooked onto their platform, fighting pointless culture wars and feeding into meaningless outrage, fueled by reactionary politics that have an algorithmic advantage. Even the most well-meaning people can be put under its spell. I fear that many people who I would otherwise find myself politically aligned have all but adopted an incendiary, anti-social, tribalist approach to any and all discussions. I was once steeped in such unhealthy behaviors myself. I could kick myself for the fact that I sunk so much time into these useless squabbles, whether directly participating or just sitting on the sidelines and watching, as if I were getting a high quality education on progressive politic. And now with the advent of generative AI, much of the content a user says may be entirely fabricated, often without proper disclosure as to the veracity of the content. All these nightmarish forces create a breeding ground for misinformation, stagnation, and de-fanging of true progressive strategies. Even worse, such a mode of public discussion can easily be swayed by moneyed interests and a few simple algorithm tweaks. This should frighten all of us.
I think that social media and the modern smartphone environment (which has become, more or less, a way to access the only semblance of a public commons), absolutely fails to offer an environment for healthy public discourse. The biggest failure being that social media is largely a product. The product is built to keep you engaged and addicted, to keep you from really profoundly acting in a way that will bring about true change. Advertisers pepper your feeds with intrusive product placement. Although I've been "offline" for several months now, I know this has only gotten worse, just from peeking at the feeds of everyone around me.
I've already written briefly about how I think social media can be a social good. Activist movements worldwide have no doubt used social media as a grassroots method of organizing. Even so, I worry deeply about the longevity of social media. I worry about the security risks, the ever-expanding surveillance state, meddling in the algorithms as well as rampant censorship, often directed by governments the world over. We have seen the algorithm used to sway public opinion in the United States of course, but much more recently in Brazil's elections. Can a grassroots movement prosper when they organize online, in a time where state governments have been floating the idea of uploading a driver's license simply to use their sites? Some places have already implemented such policies. It's a troubling thought. Those who use social media to stay involved in current events should keep this in mind.
The other elephant in the room is the lack of inertia. Staying informed is a noble task. It can be very easy to turn away from the world and indulge in valueless, vapid, algorithm-driven schlock and drivel. It can also be just as easy to think that simply scrolling through the worst atrocities and controversies of the day is enough to be well-informed. It's certainly not. I don't mean to say here that only physical demonstrations are a valid form of advocating for change. In fact, creating a better world will take a multi-pronged approach with multiple tactics, and sound strategy.
But let's be honest, none of this will happen if we keep doomscrolling. I do not think that one can really truly learn anything in real, true intellectual depth from social media. One can be introduced to concepts, but TL;DR posts are simply not enough. This is where complex issues get oversimplified, and dogma takes over. I was once steeped in the reactionary nature of social media "discourse". No matter in which direction the discussions lean, there is often very little genuine thoughtful discussion, even if the participants mean well. Separating myself from the circus of online discourse and controversy has given me unbelievable clarity. We are simply indulging ourselves into oblivion. Maybe it's time to close the apps. We need to act. It's more imperative now than ever that workers of the world unite (I said the line!) against the forces trying to destroy our world. This is not hyperbole. Moneyed interests genuinely seek to leech off the remaining world's resources while we all waste time on these idiotic apps, fighting each other over every single thing.
If I could wave a wand or snap a magical stick ala Obsession, I would reshape the internet to be an egalitarian, decentralized mass media and information platform. It would be treated as a vital public infrastructure. It would be powered entirely by clean energy (we cannot deny the carbon footprint the web currently has). Searching for information with anonymity would be a guarantee, much like how anyone can check out whatever library books they want without their reading history being sold or leaked. There would be no advertisements whatsoever. Maybe the internet would become more boring this way, more utilitarian, and maybe less people would use it. If addictive apps and other tools were outright banned or made useless, I imagine many would turn away from the once shiny dopamine casino. I don't see an issue with that. It is an imperfect model, absolutely, and I know it's very broad. But I haven't seen much talk of any real solutions amongst all our despairing. So I offer up a sample of something to build towards.
Hope in the Face of Hopelessness: Self-Education as Resistance
It's been about six months since I started living the "analog" lifestyle, and I still have anxiety, depression, and trust issues. I still feel stuck in my career and unsure of what to do next with my life. I am deeply worried about the future and everyone I love.
Politically speaking, I have already leaned to the left for some time, but my beliefs have only become more resolute and unshakeable the more I pursue a path of self-education. Where I once had middling, fence-sitting, shallow concepts of justice and freedom, I now see the truth. There is no shortcut: you have to do the reading.
Every buzzkill leftie online, like it or not, is right. We must have a thorough understanding of why capital is going to be the end of us all. We can only understand this by tackling complex topics. This requires reading. We can no longer parrot slogans without understanding the full breadth of our politics, of our hopes and dreams for a better future. Otherwise, we will continue to give in to reactionary habits, getting caught up in culture war bullshit, keep feeling obligated to engage with every asinine "take" we scroll by. We must not fall for half-assed solutions, empty promises, opportunists.
We've seen the cycle before: Nothing gets better. We are outraged. We turn to our phones to shout into the void. We listen to those who point the blame simply to a couple of bad lawmakers, or place all blame entirely on foreign nations, or whatever has been deemed the boogeyman of the day. We never look inward. We never question our way of life. We keep scrolling. This is dangerous. We must abandon our old way of life if we are to save our planet and humanity. We must reject capital. And that means, at some point, we have to put down the phones.
This isn't Just About Phones
I started writing this blog entry on August 16th, 2026. On that day, for the first time in weeks, the air was a bit cool, breezy, and mild. My part of the world is normally temperate. We have hot summers, but rarely above 80-85 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate change has turned up the heat. The past ten years have especially affected my community with extreme dangerous heat, terrifying hurricanes that have destroyed homes and lives, and killed thousands. And even so, we who live in the United States, the so-called "first world", have fared better than most of the globe.
This year, the entire summer was unbearably hot. Where I lived felt like a subtropical rainforest (I live far from such an environment). Unrelenting 90 to triple digit degrees farenheight. Wildfire smoke choked the air. Extreme rainforest-like humidity. The air was sticky and thick, even during respites from the smoke. Rain came rarely. When it did, there were flash floods. I remember feeling so grateful for the cool air I felt on my skin that August day. The gentle drizzles that came later in the afternoon soothed me. I fear that these beautiful mild days will only become rarer.
For the first time in recorded human history, it's 90 degrees in the arctic.
A horrific flash flood, waves reaching speeds over 200mph, all from glacial melt swept an entire village in Nepal away. Thousands of lives, an entire way of living, ended in an instance.
The whole summer, it proved difficult to exist outside. I often would stay cooped up. With no phone to look at anymore, I've had to return to old hobbies, including reading. I'll state this again: I firmly believe education is the first step to understanding why we have ended up here. Reading can offer us solutions to how we can get out of this mess. It makes sense why no one in power particularly cares about declining literacy. Truly not a god damned thing on this earth has radicalized me more quickly and efficiently than actually sitting down and reading anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-imperial works. Not quippy summaries or half-baked discussions in comment sections.
The Real Enemy
I realize this blog post about flip phones has gone a bit off the rails, but this is all part of the conversation. I have unfortunately seen and heard many of my peers, who probably are aligned with me on many fronts, parrot the same fear-mongering neoliberal talking points, get caught up in meaningless internet drama, and other such inane internet bullshit.
I will be accused of having a "boomer mentality", but I really do think it's time to put down the phone from time to time. While we're here, let's knock it off a little bit with the concept of generational divides. It's not quite "boomers" to blame for society's troubles. Generational divides are essentially meaningless. The cultures and circumstances that shaped different age groups can sometimes determine different attitudes, sure, but the real divide is the class divide. The working class is spinning its wheels yelling into the void and scrolling endlessly, while the global capitalist class rapes the planet for all its remaining resources. In time, we will be left with a dying planet, with less and less resources to go around. When we finally realize this, then everything else falls away. The discourses don't matter. If it takes ditching a smart phone to get people to come to this point, then so be it.
Workers of the World, Unite
Let's look at an example of how online discourse has negatively shaped our culture. It's not surprising why fence-sitting opportunists (like certain former fox news hosts) have gained a large and growing following. It's comforting to place the blame for a genocide--one that's been unfolding before our eyes on our phones--entirely on a foreign nation state. It further upholds the myth of the good and just United States, who is simply fighting for freedom. These people who follow along with all the talking heads, nodding along without thinking further, haven't studied the history of colonization. And while Israel is indeed a genocidal nation and is fully complicit in this travesty, they did not act alone. The United States and Israel are a symbiotic cancerous organism. Each nation has enacted a genocide of a native population, thanks to the generous funding and backing of colonial powers like the UK. The powers in question, those who are ruining our beautiful planet, are the bourgeoisie. The capitalist class.
Capitalism has been able to metastasize into the terminal bloat that not even Marx could comprehend thanks to the invention of modern racism, and through perpetuating imperialism to keep the brutal death machine chugging, to keep strip mining our delicate world of all its resources so a select few populations can get cheap goods year-round and satisfy all their indulgent whims. All at the expense of the global south and all other colonized peoples. Our access to these expensive phones is very much a part of this.
Division amongst the working class is nothing new, social media did not invent the concept. But social media has been a gift to those who wish to divide us. It's never been easier to send ragebait down the pipeline, funneling it into the eyeballs of unquestioning citizens. It's like the fast food drive through of psyop creation. Let's dive into a bit of what makes Americans so primed for this class division and tribalism by looking at just a bit of the history of class warfare.
Americans must understand that capitalism and racism are fully entwined. As it stands now, Americans will never accept socialism if it benefits minorities, especially black people. The closest we had to any social democracy is FDR's New Deal. Some may forget that the benefits of the New Deal did not extend to black Americans, among other minority groups. The civil rights movement sought to correct this injustice. Radical black thinkers like Malcolm X. and Angela Davis revolutionized the nation. Finally, black Americans were becoming equals to their white peers. And the years following their success led to the most brutal dismantling of every hard fought victory since. Freedom fighting groups such as the Black Panthers decried the injustices of global imperial capitalism. History has smeared them as extremist terrorists for their militarism. All while the United State stole the Black Panthers' free school breakfast program--an undoubtedly socialist program--and claimed it as their own charitable doing.
The AIDS crisis destroyed a thriving anti-establishment art culture that went hand in hand with these populist, humanist movements. Cultural hubs and their movements became gentrified as the revolutionaries withered away due to government negligence. Political liberation movements became defanged and re-purposed for neoliberal means, watered down to mere identity politics. And by identity politics, I don't mean just the mere concept of inequalities amongst different ethnicities, genders, ability levels, what have you. Unfortunately many on the right have co-opted the concept of identity politics to mean that any social justice efforts at all are ineffective and bad. Let me be specific: I mean distilling all social justice to merely: "well we have women minorities and gays in politics now, so we've won right?" This is how we have ended up with log cabin republicans and Latinos for Trump.
Change is too scary for us Americans. Although many claim to want change, I fear many lack the imagination required to envision a better world. A glimmer of hope is that there is a cultural shift happening for sure. Many people I believe are now finally starting to realize the consequences of capitalism. To tie it all together, I believe this small movement of people ditching smart phones is a part of that broader cultural shift. At the same time, the powers that uphold this unfathomable chugging death machine, its cogs greased by the blood of the working class, seem insurmountable. Let us remember what Ursula K. LeGuin said about the divine right of kings and the powers of capitalism. There will be another way. How do we get there? I fear we must put down the phone. True depth of knowledge cannot be obtained in small video clips. In order to heal, learn, and form community, you will have to say hi to your neighbor, and learn to hold attention onto something for a length of time.
What is to Be Done for a Dying Planet?
We cannot continue like this. We must brute force degrowth. Billions of people with industrial desires under global capitalism spells death for our planet. We must have a system that centers human dignity and care for our earth. We may have to live much more modestly. All the trillions and trillions poured into endless wars must be snatched by the working peoples and spent on clean energy, climate engineering (at this point we're going to probably need to do this, I fear) and equal rights for all. We need to invest in human life over profit. I don't see an alternative.
I know much of this blog post will seem preachy, like an old man yelling at clouds about kids these days. I am not singling out any particular age group. Smartphone addiction ensnares people indiscriminately. I was once someone who would spend ungodly amounts of time scrolling, as a shy closeted kid who had no other way to really reach out to the world. The internet can still be fun, but not in its current state, not even close.
I've grown a bit cynical about phone usage now that I'm on the other side of it all, looking back at that part of my life almost like a sickness I've recovered from. For all its benefits and all of the friends I've made from the internet (and I do not necessarily regret this time of my life for those reasons) I'm more than glad that I no longer depend on a smart device, and that I no longer have to center my social life around such a deeply annoying media environment. For this blog post I've tried not to come off as a lecturing snob, because I understand that smartphone dependency is not entirely our fault. But to be completely honest and frank, smartphone usage has become a crutch, regardless of who is at fault. I'm tired of the learned helplessness that dependence on these devices has created. I do not respect the infrastructure of a smartphone-ified world. We are less secure, less thoughtful, and infinitely more annoying and loud. I'm tired of hearing everyone's short clips being blasted at max volume, all around me, against my will. It terrified me that this is how so many people engage with the world. It is a very stupid way to live. To a certain extent, interacting with the world in such a fashion is nigh impossible to avoid. But my patience is growing thin the more the lunacy of our world intensifies. The car is speeding towards a wall. Two options lie before us: we can swerve and hope to get away with just a couple of broken bones, or give up and crash head on. Neither option is pretty. But I know what needs to happen. I hope you can look up and see what I see.
(author's note: i know that throughout this blog post i am speaking very generally here. i'm debating on coding my own blog page on my personal website so i can provide citations and images there bc i'm limited on what media i can include on the free tier of bear blog. i wanted to get these thoughts down now before they leave me. so, stay tuned for all that...)