I don't know when it will happen with shows, but I'd say it has happened with content on social media, although it's not Game Of Thrones quality of entertainment but it's world class quality of rage bait, guilt bait, fear inducing, anxiety inducing, jealousy inducing, desire inducing content. I think today, if you wanted to, on all social apps you can easily scroll over 14 hours a day of shorts, pics, notes which offer a cocktail of emotions.

And now, with more content generated by bots than humans, with higher persuasion skills and overengineered phrasing and analytics... any weakness you have, will be farmed. And this is as bad as they ever going to be at it (that's a blessing in disguise btw, like a virus that's too deadly to spread, it will become more and more obvious, maybe, hopefully.)

So, unless you find a way to stop buying into this or a very good reason not to scroll, this could very well be your life; either scrolling through endless see of exactly the right content to hit these attention grabbing notes of guilt, fear, fear, desire, shame, fear, or... feeling vaguely unease without your phone?

That got me thinking. There must be people who are immune to the pull of social media and doomscrolling. What are they like? What do they believe or... refuse to believe? I've talked previously about fear of death, so that's a big one and few things are mixed in there. It's probably worth expanding on.

Common theme in todays zeitgeist is "what skills to learn to be futureproof", maybe it's less about new skills and more about letting go of some things which are demonstrably untrue.

1. You are innocent.

I have noticed a shade of content that my wife and our friends who are parents are all bombarded by their algos: parenting tips, tricks and videos. They induce guilt, shame, fear. It's all about scale. What happens when amount of genuinely great new (and ones you forgot) parenting tips will be more than you could consume in 24h, released in such quantity each day? If this is what you will give your attention to, this is what algo will show you. Talk about manifestation, fear and The Algo will have no choice but give you what you fear!

Solution? Humility. Yes, you will never be a perfect parent, in any regard or dimension. Yes, there will always be better ways to do everything you do. There is no end to improvement, it's an asymptote. As long as you believe you should be perfect, that your kids deserve perfection and can get it, algo will show you ways to improve, proving to you, post by post, how much you suck, which will make you want to improve more.

Do you see how perverse it is? How will you feel about it in 5 years from now, when for every human written post, there will be 10000 bot ones (each making money from you reading) and giving really good advice? Where do you draw the line? In such world you have to either draw the line and say: I am imperfect and that's ok or keep scrolling and improving or pretending to improve every moment. Wonder what would our kids prefer?

We are innocent (we didn't even touch free will, maybe another day), don't be gullible and believe what these posts and your interest implies. It's OK, you are OK, your kids are OK. Give them a hug and eat ice cream and get interested in their stupid toys and stupid cartoons and boring birthday parties. Read a book or two and stop. And if you fuck up? well this is what therapists are for.

2. Objective knowledge is impossible.

That one was difficult for me to accept because I am naturally curious and love to learn new things. You see why it's an issue today?

Luckily there is a cure to this greed and fomo. Mostly two things : knowledge and progress, same as improvement as a parent, is an asymptote. We are always closer to the beginning of our journey than the end. I could very easily spend the rest of my days, learning something that's genuinely interesting and new, served in exactly the way that I like it.

But if I accept, that everything I will learn today, tomorrow will be proven wrong and replaced by closer to truth yet never true new version, I fall out of love with knowledge. I still learn how to do stuff or develop skills I want but I don't see a point in learning for knowledge.

There is one thing that we can be 100% certain is true: "Sentio, ergo sum". I perceive, therefore I am. Everything else is based on belief and impossible to prove. You can measure things, perform repeatable peer reviewed studies, but they never fully explain their nature (because knowledge is an asymptote, you will either say 1) its magic 2) keep going deeper into rabbit hole) and can never claim to be hardcore objective, not like Sentio which each sentient being can verify in their own home lab.

We def need to live out lives and pretend we know a lot about the world (and i'd say the experience is generally more pleasant if we do), but when you press hard enough, there is little difference between science and religion - both require belief at certain level.

So yeah, if you know Sentio you pretty much know everything there is to know. No need to watch that 47 minute Veritasium video on how magnets work. You are welcome.

3. There is nothing you can identify with.

This one is for the raging lunatics that hide in each of us once the Algo serves a post that puts one of our identities in danger. Same story, if there is any identity you sub to, it will be used against you in the court of infinite rage bait content strategically placed to keep you scrolling the longest amount of time.

Ok but how? How can you not identify with anything and not get offended on any level and never take the bait, tell me how god damn it?

I told you already, it's Sentio, ergo sum again. If there is one objective truth which is that you are, and everything we know is untrue (as in a fat fucking lie), then how can anything that you identify with be true? It's all make belief, "a fugazzi, it's a woozy, it's a wazzi, fairy dust". You get offended in defence of concepts which are not true but real to you because you believe you are them. Your nationality, your gender, your sexuality, your job, your finances, your function

You don't need it, give it to me, it's ok just for a second, see how much lighter you are? How do we believe all of this and get so heavy with it and how incredible it is that these machines abuse and make money out of this process. It's so wild how difficult we make the simplest thing we can do - be.

4. What is true can not die. What is untrue never lived.

If there is only one truth and its Sentio, you and I my friend are also not true. There is only consciousness. That's difficult to see and harder to write about even thou much has been written on this subject. Funny thing I am not really a religious person, I just don't see a logical flaw in these arguments and can't help but see how everything is fundamentally the same and one thing, only thing which stands a chance to be true: consciousness.

Well, here it is, my attempt to at least lower your intensity of guilt and shame, greed, rage and fear. Wish you all best.

But why is it, that it is so valuable to us? Why did these giants of tech land on doomscrolling?

Reason is humanity needed it since before we’ve discovered fire and listened to stories by it’s shimmering warmth. We crave to be entranced by stories and sense of connection (even if artificial and malnourishing).

But why? Why crave distraction?

Because what is underneath. What the undiluted, undistracted mind can’t help but see clearly is... death. It all comes down to death. Fear of death. Alone, cold, everlasting dark night. It’s why it’s so uncomfortable to be without the phone. To sit in silence with our thoughts. To get bored. To walk a forest with empty pockets and no watch.

So it makes perfect sense to use. To scroll and lower the friction of the mind on the tracks we are all tumbling on. There are many ways to distract, some “better” than others. Sport, work, love, media, art, sex, drugs, food. When you answer honestly enough, why you do any of these; if you do them out of need**, the need will be either distracting yourself from, or postponing, your mortality.

How surprised I was to find extreme discomfort when I dropped all my distractions, I thought I’ll be light, creative, excited to tackle any of my grand ambitions. What I met looking at me behind the curtain of my addictions was fear. Crushing really. We were addicts before doomscrolling was invented. It is the apex predator amongst the superstimulus competing for our attention and satisfying our need to take the edge off.

First step is to acknowledge this and approach doomscrolling with respect it deserves. We are outmatched and to break free requires something ridiculous. The genius of doomscrolling is the innocence of it and absolute social acceptance, even necessity in some ways. To break free you need to dissolve your sense of self.

The genius of doomscrolling might be it’s biggest flaw - it’s just too effective, my feeds are full of advice which signals desperate need and craving of a way out of this loop and need to keep desensitizing one’s self. People see what it takes away, want to get out of it, and that need is just recycled into more content that keeps them trapped because only thing more insane than wasting your life on scrolling is letting go of all identity. At least it feels this way before you do it, after that it’s pretty awesome really. Have you ever eaten an apple for the sake of eating an apple?

To sum up and make sure we are on the same page so far. Here is our current situation. We will die. Our minds can’t stand this fact directly for it’s fear inducing hence we distract ourselves with many of life pursuits. Tech giants exploit this and produce free doomscrolling that satisfies the need for free, safe, distraction in ultracompetitive way, creating modern social media which are blatantly flattening depth of life.

Now, as long as you need to distract your self from fact of your death you will use social media and doomscroll your hours away (or do any other thing for this purpose) in perfect desensitization and in effect all you do will be tainted by the motivation of escape from fear. You will never taste an apple for the sake of tasting an apple, it won’t be enough, you will never know enough for nothing can satisfy the ego insatiable need to feel safe from death.

That’s why distractions make perfect sense, you can’t feel safe when present if you fear death, you can’t be identified with anything and not fear death.

It all would be terrible and quite depressing if it wasn’t possible to see that ego is not you. There is nothing you can identify with that is true. This will feel like a brain dump but I will just lay it thick on you here. If you made it this far there is a reason for it so here you go. Each of these we could go deeper into but you are absolutely able to think on any of them and get back to me if you disagree.

What are you? You are not your thoughts and you don’t author them, they simply appear. You can’t claim certainty of free will. You are not your mind or body, you have them. You are not your functions you perform them (parent, husband, child, teacher, driver etc). You are not your nationality, you are not your gender, your political views, hobbies or any other way you could assign your identity. There is nothing you can identify with.

Yet here you are, there clearly is something like to be you. What’s left is consciousness and the last bit of mental gymnastics, which will lose most of you reading here, is that you (and everything else for that matter) are consciousness, but also the part of you that immediately tries to identify with consciousness is something that you have, not are. You can not put your finger on what you fundamentally are, but you can see that anything that ego can identify with is not it, because there is more underneath and you remain you after the ego dissolves. Words are the worst way to talk about this, but we don’t have a better way.

There is no way for me to accurately put it in words for any words are themselves approximations and only outline the truth you can see for yourself. That’s topic for another day; there are no outside authorities on this one. Maybe I am full of shit, only one way to find out. Sit in silence, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself: what am I? Maybe write it out.

I can only tell you of my experience and what it took for me to see clearly the uselessness of social media and doing anything out of fear of death. I love the elegant saying ”We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”** What I am pointing at is we all get two lives, and the second begins when we realize untruth of assumptions that allow fear of death.