Random acts of anachronism: How to carry on the digital fast
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
At the beginning of Lent mid-February, we invited readers to join us on our Communal Digital Fast, an annual collective effort to restore our cognitive liberty.
At the end of each fast over the last three years, readers related their experiences, which we shared in Reawakening to the Freedom of Limits and How to Restore Rhythms that Make us Human, and Beyond Digital Fasting: Staying the Course.
Although fasting from devices and certain forms of online activity are often experienced as beneficial, one of the downsides of digital fasting is that the benefits often don’t last beyond the fast. As observed by Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen in The Distracted Mind:
...there is no evidence that extended tech detoxes actually work. Sure, you might feel better for an evening, a day, or even a weekend, but when that detox time is over you are right back to your information-foraging behavior, frantically dividing your attention to catch up with all that you missed out on while technologically disconnected. Just like short-term diets and drug or alcohol detox programs, unless you work to change your environment and routines, it won’t be long before you return to the same old habits.
And not only that. The authors point out that digital detoxing can lead to digital splurging as we try and catch up on everything that we missed during the fast.
If we want to maintain our fast for the long term, then we need more than a rule about what we don’t want to do. As Gazzaley and Rosen point out, we must work to change our environment and routines. Like monks and hermits, we need a new structure for how to live, one that replaces what has been removed with a pattern of life that accords with our human creed.
Peco and I have written previously on how we can create an Architecture for a Free Mind in our immediate environment. Today we share the highlights from past Communal Digital Fasts as well as a Visual Guide of Random Acts of Anachronism to help inspire you to maintain a free mind.
Would you like to debrief, ask questions, or simply connect? Annual paying subscribers are invited to join me for a 40-min one-on-one zoom chat. Simply send me a direct message to set up a meeting!
Clarence the Seventeenth “Watching my online usage still feels like meditation to me. Set my focus. Mind drifting. Distractions happening. Then notice, and pull myself back. Wash rinse repeat.”
Noah White “Attempting to extricate myself from omnipresent digital technology is a tall order. There is irony, hypocrisy, and frustration at every turn. I twitch like an addict. I compulsively reach for my wife’s phone even though I’ve intentionally left my own at home. I do okay in the morning, furiously cleaning but grow antsy as soon as I stop.”
Rachel Teresa “The first and biggest benefit I’ve seen has come from deleting social media. Instagram was the main cause of frustration and stress for me…I could tell I was getting addicted, scrolling hours each day…Pintrest (and Instagram) show me all the great things that I don’t have and cause me not to realize the good things that I do have in my life.”
Carinn “I do feel that these small changes I made have allowed me to be more present and really enjoy my children more. I can also tell that my base level of anxiety has lowered. I feel that when I am not using my phone as an escape I have more patience and can get back to being myself more quickly.”
Daniel Joseph Petty “I spent a week just working in silence and that was far better than the radio. I found myself remembering things I should be praying about. Things I should be more grateful for…I found that in the boredom and silence my imagination and creativity were jolted.”
A Way Forward
Derek Petty “Overall, this digital detox has been a wonderful stepping stone on a path I believe, in some ways, will last the rest of my life.”
Gretchen Joanna “I want the freedom to be more creative at every level, and not at the mercy of my scattered thoughts.”
Rachel Teresa “I know that I don’t want to go back to what I was doing before, with unfettered social media use on my phone and all the frustrations that came with it…I have found so much joy and life in this challenge so far, despite it not going exactly as I planned. Living life intentionally and taking every moment to appreciate what God has given me is something that social media has taken from my life, and this month has taught me that I can have that fullness in my life again!”
B. Bratrud “This detox was the real first step toward chucking my “smart” phone and living free from its ghastly addiction.”
Random Acts of Anachronism: A Visual Guide
For one of our previous digital fasts, Peco and I invited readers to contribute their photos of anachronistic practices so that we could create a visual guide of “Random Acts of Anachronism”. We hope that you will enjoy this visually rich feast of “the real” and maybe be prompted to adopt some of these ideas into your life !
In addition to the visual guide below, the Seed Catalogue is packed with wonderful ideas to feast on reality based on hundreds of responses from readers to Sowing Acts of Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private, and you can download a printable note-taking pdf version here:
Simple Acts of Sanity: A Seed Catalogue
This is a follow-up post to Sowing Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private.
Note: the photos are grouped into the general Seed Catalogue categories of:
Technology use (reduced, altered);
self-sufficient, minimalist practices;
embodied & mental practices;
children and family;
spiritual and relational practices.
Benjamin Durdle’s lightphone; one of our walls of books and tech cupboard.
Jared Wyllystakes walks in silence; walking through the snow in our neighbourhood forest; John E. Dobbs’ Black Bayou walk; Frank G.’ sunrise.
Annelise Roberts garden bounty, Claudia Arthur Holmes-Brown grasshopers as garden “co-workers”, Abbey von Gohren Dixie Dillon Lane uses her garden’s flowers to fill the vases at a Ukranian church
Nikki Wagnercollects beans, makes juice, and makes preserves; Abbey von Gohren makes sourdough starter; Annelise Roberts prepares antelope meat.
Abbey von Gohren andAnnelise Roberts’s sourdough bread and buns; Dixie Dillon Lane’s galettes des rois from scratch for Epiphany; Kristine Neeley bakes French patisserie.
Mark Tatlow writes a “millboard”; we made envelopes at a Swiss medieval paper mill; Gregg journals with a fountain pen;Hrabák Zita translates foreign language picture books into Hungarian, writing the translation in the book; Sarah Elizabeth Smith’s collection of handwritten letters.
Our daughter’s typewriter; Ruth’s favorite old Dickens books; Laurareads while her son cruises through vinyl records.
Hrabák Zita makes replicas of medieval tiles.
Rosie Whinray’s Ink drawing with a crow quill (tiny dip-pen nib) and “scrumped cherries”.
Carri’s knitted cotton blanket for friend’s firstborn; Kerri Christopher’s cross-stitch and prayerbook; Ruth’s almost finished shawl; Nikki Wagner’s natural dye;Jacqueline Manni’s knitted socks; Elin Petronella’s “thread-sketching” hand embroidery.
Bohdanna Diduch has learned how to knit which has been a “generative, meditative process”. Elizabeth Wickland “Mend and make your own clothes - What I make isn’t the most fashionable, but it brings me a fair amount of joy to wear what I’ve made and to know that I’m actively choosing to circumvent fast fashion practices with my own wardrobe.”
Rosie Whinray’s small missive envelope; Claudia’s colour wheel of flower petals;Rosalie Haizlett Illustration creates a sketch page “hands doing an activity”; Caroline Ross smashes badger-dug chalk to make paint, using rocks, last summer; Anchorite creates Valentine’s decorations; Nikki Wagner weaves baskets.
Joanna's Gleanings washes dishes by hand;Larque polishes shoes; our boys use a compass to navigate a conservation area.
We had the pleasure of attending a Folk Dance Night where over 120 people (mostly young teens and university students) learned to dance the Virginia Reel and other traditional dances.
Abbey von Gohren’s whittling, writing with water, and playing by the pond; Dixie Dillon Lane’s cookie ramble and snow angels;Larque’s pen and paper games; when younger, our boys enjoyed KEVA blocks, sketching, cartography, and lots of Brian Jaqcues.
Sheep training; Claudia adopts Herald, a little finch; we raised chicks (this is Olive); John E. Dobbs enjoys birdwatching in the Black Bayou; Frank G. “a photo of peace”.
Sascha Luderer uses analog large format photography to create unique pieces of art at ghostography.
Katie Marquette’s photos from a Kodak disposable camera
George Bothamley’s walk into the wilderness
A.M. Hickman"Road-walking is criminally underrated. One sees the balance of the land as they walk a county road, veering from wilderness to farms and hamlets — and moreover, they meet the neighbors.” Hadden Turner adventures to Yorkshire Dale and the village of Dent.
Vespers as “time machine” St. Dimitrija Solunski Macedonian Orthodox Church, Hadden Turner visits old churches St James the Less
If it is our aim to remain fully human with our feet firmly planted in reality, then we will need to actually translate our ideas into tangible actions. From our individual actions we do not need to expect sweeping societal change, but we have to start somewhere. Fasting from the virtual while feasting on simple, anachronisitc actions is a tangible beginning. We also believe that there is a fundamental power of face-to-face conversation around a kitchen table. One of the most earth-shattering changes in history did not come to pass through political action, institutional change, or mass demonstrations; it was preceded by a meal around a dinner table, sharing bread and wine.
Share your experience
What was your experience of this year’s digital fast?
What practices worked for you? Did you discover any new strategies?
What was your biggest struggle?
What did not work?
Was knowing that others were fasting alongside helpful?
Going forward, are you planning on continuing any of your digital fasting practices?
“Another Life is Possible”—Join Peco and me at the next Doomer Optimism Gathering from July 10-12th at the Woodcrest Bruderhof in Rifton, NY! These gatherings are truly inspiring and include not just fantastic presentations and panel discussions, but potluck meals, lively debates, sing-alongs, dance, and conversations that will stay with you for months to come! See here for details.
My digital fast did not go as planned. However, I took Monday off Substack and most internet use, and it was amazing. The plan is to use the internet more intentionally (and less frequently) going forward and to continue Mondays mostly offline. Oh, and Sundays completely offline. Thank you for inspiring me, Ruth!
Thanks Ruth for providing me the opportunity to write you an airmail letter from England, and thanks even more for your lovely hand written reply. Careful calligraphy clearly helps!
On the present subject, I do not use a smart cellphone, and am unskilful for any but the simplest text, like OK etc on the dumb one. I am guilty though of relying on others for fact checks, local stuff, friends and wider family.
Cutting twitter notifications has been one exceptionally good idea for several years. I get email notifications from a variety of sources across the range rather than mainstream. They are different enough to allow me to review the international scene and subjects of continuinng interest and participation. (I was a much too dedicated newspaper and journal reader until I chucked the Guardian a number of years back. We didn't have to chuck TV.)
Being elderly and temporarily disabled this last 3 years, (ok the deafness is not temporary), the need to row back from online activity has been only too obvious. Fortunately, I have regained fitness enough to work outside more and find a new 'normal' in 'catch up' jobs, some undone, for more than 20 years! Rueful smile!