Your contrast of positive flow state and dark flow state is really helpful and such a great application of Crawford's TWBYH.
I've been watching skateboarding videos recently and I'm so fascinated with how these folks, standing on -- not even strapped to! -- a piece of precisely designed wood with wheels attached, can navigate pools and rails and sidewalks and curbs with such deftness. Some people don't like the sport, but there's no denying that their powers of attention, apprehension, balance, strength, dexterity, and so many more have made them more in their bodies, even as they are more outside of their bodies.
My phone is absolutely my primary source of dark flow, and yet I find I'm unable to ditch it entirely. There's too much that I do in a day that requires data connectivity, so I'm stuck having to mitigate the negatives with whatever strategies I can muster. Interestingly, there's a rise of the use of VR for training tradespeople, which I think is a mistaken notion and one I'll likely write about at some point, and while I don't think there's a possibility of dark flow, there's a disembodying of the work, a similar end to dark flow state.
Strikingly apt comparison of slot machines with smart phones as sources of “dark flow.” The willing surrender of human consciousness seems to me as urgent a matter as the destruction of the planet. 🌏🌱 L’chayim
This is a great piece. The dark flow of the digital realm reminded me of the most powerful representation I have seen in cinema: the mother in “Require for a Dream.” She spends her time watching a game show/self-help personality which completely absorbs her to the degree she can avoid emotionally dealing with her son’s crippling drug addiction. She then progresses to more and more dramatic means to live out her fantasy, which would be living in that digital realm in her red dress. It’s a tough movie to watch, but it crystallizes the dark flow of a digital realm.
This is a tangent, but I also think there is a very therapeutic or explanatory effect to movies. “Leaving Las Vegas” helped many of my friends break their alcohol addictions. It’s one of the reasons why I think the powers that be have made recent films such trash. Film can definitely change people’s perspectives dramatically for the better or even alter the course of their lives. So I realize that not all digital forms of entertainment are corrupt. Never go full Uncle Ted.
A sobering reflection. "Digital dark flow" is a condition I have been well acquainted with. Up until just a few years ago, I was an avid online gamer and operated in that state of DDF for hours and hours at a time. As with all addictions, the law of diminishing returns was in full force. A couple of hours loses it's luster, it's not enough. So you start carving out 4-6 hours, then 8, 10, 12, calling in sick or skipping out on family events and responsibilities just to get more time. Then the thing itself isn't enough so you mix it with other things to amplify the escape - dark music, substance abuse. It became all consuming, not only to the determent of myself, but my wife and young children. Interruptions to that dark flow were met with anger and lashing out or a cold shoulder to the needs of anyone else around me. Like running from a rabid wolf, slowing down isn't an option, you can only go faster to keep pain, despondency and depression at bay. It was a terrible, terrible thing, a sort of hell before death. The decreasingly small moments of euphoria and distraction, did indeed disguise the loses.
I attempted some form of moderation, but it ultimately just wasn't feasible for me. Complete abstinence was the only solution. As horrible as it was, and even with the clarity of hindsight now, it left a mark and still whispers to me from time to time. Lord have mercy.
I completely agree that going cold turkey is the best for such a situation. I did so with gaming in college because I knew it would wreck my grades and social bonds at a critical time. Thankfully, I haven’t touched it since. A family friend had an addiction to gaming as well and his family assumed once he had a child that he would snap out of it. But of course that didn’t happen and he doubled up on gaming to cope with his strong emotions and stress of fatherhood.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I’m so glad to hear that you managed to pull yourself out of that DDF, and I hope you can stay out. It’s amazing how destructive some of these technologies can be, at least for some people. You mentioned abstinence, which seems a common solution for many who’ve fallen into the more severe (truly addictive) DDF experiences. Even for those who struggle with mild DDF experiences, abstinence might be a consideration, if only to refocus life on more fruitful things.
The Lord’s words definitely factored in “If your right hand causes you to sin...”. This wasn’t even a close comparison to something as essential as a hand or eye.
Sorry i do not think the name is accurate. I does seem to speak to the imagination though. But addiction behavior couldn't be further from any sort of flow. It's stagnant. It is the pure absence of flow, not the evil twin. What is deeply worrying is that the flow state is described as some illusive hard to reach high. It is not. It can be very special, but the basic requirements are simply no longer present in most modern lives. Yes partly because we are captured and taken out of ourselves in many ways. The agency to set our own rhythm taken away. The day to chose does not lie ahead. It is here and now. Learning to flow in daily live might be a big part of that. Not avoiding 'dark flow'. Sorry for disagreeing I do enjoy your writing, i just believe this too important to not point out.
“But addiction behavior couldn't be further from any sort of flow. It's stagnant. It is the pure absence of flow, not the evil twin.”
No need for apologies, Bertus! I appreciate the critique. One of my goals is to help create useful concepts for people, a bit like eyeglasses that help focus certain realities of the Machine…and sometimes those concepts will be imperfect and end up blurring rather than clarifying. So I’ll probably have to reflect a bit on your thoughts.
One thing I should point out—maybe I didn’t get this spot-on in the essay—is that the DDF experience is not necessarily an addiction, but instead expresses a range of experiences, from addiction at one extreme, to a more passive habit of behavior on the other extreme. So, for instance, I used to read the news daily on the internet, even though I didn’t have to; nothing new was happening, but I kept looking, clicking, passively scrolling, as if to stimulate my bored mind with trivial surprises. Then one day I thought, “This is a waste of time.” I stopped without much difficulty. So it wasn’t anything like an addiction, but I was still caught up in a useless attentional flow that had pulled me away from the rest of life. That too, for me, was a DDF.
Yes a theme very worthwhile to have a deep conversation on. Much to say about this....I have just started publishing on Substack and would love a sort of public back and forth getting to the core of this. I write from experience, a bit like Caroline Ross but in a very different style. Making flow accessible, getting how it works, finding practical ways to allow it in on a daily basis....I invite you to check out my substack if you want a sample of my writings.
Peco, your essay couldn't be more timely for me. I just started writing a piece called "The Allure of Easy," and man, does it dovetail with yours! I'll be pointing back to yours multiple times, if that's okay. You've done a tremendous job, here, knitting together the concepts of disguised losses, addiction, distraction, and our blind acceptance of tech. As Jerry Mander pointed out, we've been propagandized to believe that tech evolution IS evolution, and thus can't be questioned. So grateful for your voice in this realm...🙏🏼
As a person battling lifelong tech-addiction, I can testify first-hand to the diabolical depression spiral that is "dark-flow". Some days I don't see any way out except going full Luddite. Only my wife's presence restrains me, "How can I contact you?" she whines every time I suggest iconoclasm as an answer to the woes of my soul.
Recently I thought about how fake the digital all is. Imagine a gloomy, apocalyptic day when or if the Machine was switched off. All internet, social media, "connectedness" completely shattered that selfsame moment. What would remain? *The real* remains. What disappeared was always just a disposable simulacrum, a synthetic reality for cyborg humanity.
My bush food foraging keeps me evermore planted firmly in the oft dirty but delicious *real*.
I'm running over that rickety bridge -- Wendell is a hero of mine. I look forward to reading this with my teenage son who is just beginning to be old enough to see and understand these issues. You have a gift for explaining and leading the thoughts along the trail. Real always turns out to be better even when it seems painful, tiring, or boring. It takes faith to stick to it in the face of the alluring lies.
Well written. The iphone is amazing. Stay off social media, read good news articles and other writing, check the scores, do your banking and that’s about it. Huge net plus.
The phone is absolutely a demon slab. I feel like my laptops still bring me good things as I create writing, music, photography, and less now, though occasional videos on them. If I could ditch my phone and didn't need it for work and to keep in touch with my elderly cancer survivor mother I would.
I’m new to Wendell Berry (I’ve heard of him, of course, but I’ve never read any substantive work of his). In which work does he contrast “people who want to live as creatures and people who want to live as machine”? I think that might be a good place for me to start with Berry. Thanks!
It is in his book "Life is a Miracle". Personally, I wouldn't start there if you wanted to get introduced to Berry's thought. I would start with 'The World Ending Fire' - a selection of his essays edited by Paul Kingsnorth. It is the book I suggest to all new Berry readers. I also run a Reading Group on this on my substack.
BTW, we recently ordered this book. Amusingly enough, the printing “machine” printed an entire section of the text upside down. It’s completely readable, yet there seemed a subtle message in that.
I have always wanted to trine those digital with dark energy. An energetic field of unfulfilled dreams that humans, all beings are trying to escape from. The place where lost hope and grief tarry. The bardo, the inchoate. The liminal. The cupboard where we stash our grief.
I wonder if our culture has been too focused on the light, the win. The spin of that trajectory casting enemies to the dark, creating the ultimate foes. The other, the loser required by a domination culture. The Marvel universe.
As much as I am fascinated by this area of discussion , does it not reinforce the binary. Machine or nature?
My reaction; retreat to the zero point, past the noise of myself. Transcendence or addiction? Do I have to decide? Does “both and” not exist in our reality? Can I not live in a spectrum?
I would like the best of both worlds please.
First do no harm. (Including unintended consequences)
Yes, I agree this doesn’t have to be “binary”. My own feeling (which I’ve mentioned in various essays in various ways) is that tech isn’t necessarily bad, as long as it doesn’t fragment or distort certain basic aspects of our humanity, esp our mind, body, face-to-face relationships, and connection with nature, and as long as it doesn’t attempt to replace ultimate things (the spiritual, God, etc.). There’s room for debate here, of course, but I think “how to remain human” or “how to remain real” is the target zone for the debate.
Dark Flow is a good description of the addiction buzz state for many things - gambling, but also porn. In that regard, all computers pose a temptation in that direction. Sadly, the computer is also necessary to do about anything anymore, at work and home.
Of my technical devices, I'm not sure of the full balance of pros and cons. I've come to hate my smartphone, and the required ubiquity of being made to use it as a token of my identity. If I didn't need the damned thing for work I'd happily drive over it. When it dies, I will see if I can find a good non-smart phone - one that can still text (since that seems mandatory for ID), but little else. Tried a smart watch and grew to despise its constant moralistic scolds and nags. Same with tablets.
The one area where my computer is a benefit is as an aid to my photography - photo storage, editing, and management. But I have come to realize that to make any of that permanent I will need to return those photos to prints on the walls, and in albums that I can easily share and pass on. I've dusted off the film cameras increasingly for that reason.
"In other words, Manfred’s flow experiences engage his mind, activate his muscles, and connect him with real people. His flow experiences make him more human."
What a simple way to express what I've been feeling yet could not put language to.
I want to be more human. I want to move more. Sweat more. Use my hands. And perhaps be pressed to hardship in the process if it melds me into a better husband and father.
The image of the dark flow state is crystal clear to me and could be what I needed to read to help me navigate my ongoing audit of my own tech use.
Your contrast of positive flow state and dark flow state is really helpful and such a great application of Crawford's TWBYH.
I've been watching skateboarding videos recently and I'm so fascinated with how these folks, standing on -- not even strapped to! -- a piece of precisely designed wood with wheels attached, can navigate pools and rails and sidewalks and curbs with such deftness. Some people don't like the sport, but there's no denying that their powers of attention, apprehension, balance, strength, dexterity, and so many more have made them more in their bodies, even as they are more outside of their bodies.
My phone is absolutely my primary source of dark flow, and yet I find I'm unable to ditch it entirely. There's too much that I do in a day that requires data connectivity, so I'm stuck having to mitigate the negatives with whatever strategies I can muster. Interestingly, there's a rise of the use of VR for training tradespeople, which I think is a mistaken notion and one I'll likely write about at some point, and while I don't think there's a possibility of dark flow, there's a disembodying of the work, a similar end to dark flow state.
Strikingly apt comparison of slot machines with smart phones as sources of “dark flow.” The willing surrender of human consciousness seems to me as urgent a matter as the destruction of the planet. 🌏🌱 L’chayim
I call it destruction of human/nature. To me they are intimately connected.
This is a great piece. The dark flow of the digital realm reminded me of the most powerful representation I have seen in cinema: the mother in “Require for a Dream.” She spends her time watching a game show/self-help personality which completely absorbs her to the degree she can avoid emotionally dealing with her son’s crippling drug addiction. She then progresses to more and more dramatic means to live out her fantasy, which would be living in that digital realm in her red dress. It’s a tough movie to watch, but it crystallizes the dark flow of a digital realm.
Possibly the darkest movie I've ever watched. Definitely a perfect picture of what Peco is talking about.
This is a tangent, but I also think there is a very therapeutic or explanatory effect to movies. “Leaving Las Vegas” helped many of my friends break their alcohol addictions. It’s one of the reasons why I think the powers that be have made recent films such trash. Film can definitely change people’s perspectives dramatically for the better or even alter the course of their lives. So I realize that not all digital forms of entertainment are corrupt. Never go full Uncle Ted.
Have you actually read Uncle Ted?
A sobering reflection. "Digital dark flow" is a condition I have been well acquainted with. Up until just a few years ago, I was an avid online gamer and operated in that state of DDF for hours and hours at a time. As with all addictions, the law of diminishing returns was in full force. A couple of hours loses it's luster, it's not enough. So you start carving out 4-6 hours, then 8, 10, 12, calling in sick or skipping out on family events and responsibilities just to get more time. Then the thing itself isn't enough so you mix it with other things to amplify the escape - dark music, substance abuse. It became all consuming, not only to the determent of myself, but my wife and young children. Interruptions to that dark flow were met with anger and lashing out or a cold shoulder to the needs of anyone else around me. Like running from a rabid wolf, slowing down isn't an option, you can only go faster to keep pain, despondency and depression at bay. It was a terrible, terrible thing, a sort of hell before death. The decreasingly small moments of euphoria and distraction, did indeed disguise the loses.
I attempted some form of moderation, but it ultimately just wasn't feasible for me. Complete abstinence was the only solution. As horrible as it was, and even with the clarity of hindsight now, it left a mark and still whispers to me from time to time. Lord have mercy.
I completely agree that going cold turkey is the best for such a situation. I did so with gaming in college because I knew it would wreck my grades and social bonds at a critical time. Thankfully, I haven’t touched it since. A family friend had an addiction to gaming as well and his family assumed once he had a child that he would snap out of it. But of course that didn’t happen and he doubled up on gaming to cope with his strong emotions and stress of fatherhood.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I’m so glad to hear that you managed to pull yourself out of that DDF, and I hope you can stay out. It’s amazing how destructive some of these technologies can be, at least for some people. You mentioned abstinence, which seems a common solution for many who’ve fallen into the more severe (truly addictive) DDF experiences. Even for those who struggle with mild DDF experiences, abstinence might be a consideration, if only to refocus life on more fruitful things.
The Lord’s words definitely factored in “If your right hand causes you to sin...”. This wasn’t even a close comparison to something as essential as a hand or eye.
Sorry i do not think the name is accurate. I does seem to speak to the imagination though. But addiction behavior couldn't be further from any sort of flow. It's stagnant. It is the pure absence of flow, not the evil twin. What is deeply worrying is that the flow state is described as some illusive hard to reach high. It is not. It can be very special, but the basic requirements are simply no longer present in most modern lives. Yes partly because we are captured and taken out of ourselves in many ways. The agency to set our own rhythm taken away. The day to chose does not lie ahead. It is here and now. Learning to flow in daily live might be a big part of that. Not avoiding 'dark flow'. Sorry for disagreeing I do enjoy your writing, i just believe this too important to not point out.
“But addiction behavior couldn't be further from any sort of flow. It's stagnant. It is the pure absence of flow, not the evil twin.”
No need for apologies, Bertus! I appreciate the critique. One of my goals is to help create useful concepts for people, a bit like eyeglasses that help focus certain realities of the Machine…and sometimes those concepts will be imperfect and end up blurring rather than clarifying. So I’ll probably have to reflect a bit on your thoughts.
One thing I should point out—maybe I didn’t get this spot-on in the essay—is that the DDF experience is not necessarily an addiction, but instead expresses a range of experiences, from addiction at one extreme, to a more passive habit of behavior on the other extreme. So, for instance, I used to read the news daily on the internet, even though I didn’t have to; nothing new was happening, but I kept looking, clicking, passively scrolling, as if to stimulate my bored mind with trivial surprises. Then one day I thought, “This is a waste of time.” I stopped without much difficulty. So it wasn’t anything like an addiction, but I was still caught up in a useless attentional flow that had pulled me away from the rest of life. That too, for me, was a DDF.
Anyway, thank you again.
Yes a theme very worthwhile to have a deep conversation on. Much to say about this....I have just started publishing on Substack and would love a sort of public back and forth getting to the core of this. I write from experience, a bit like Caroline Ross but in a very different style. Making flow accessible, getting how it works, finding practical ways to allow it in on a daily basis....I invite you to check out my substack if you want a sample of my writings.
Peco, your essay couldn't be more timely for me. I just started writing a piece called "The Allure of Easy," and man, does it dovetail with yours! I'll be pointing back to yours multiple times, if that's okay. You've done a tremendous job, here, knitting together the concepts of disguised losses, addiction, distraction, and our blind acceptance of tech. As Jerry Mander pointed out, we've been propagandized to believe that tech evolution IS evolution, and thus can't be questioned. So grateful for your voice in this realm...🙏🏼
As a person battling lifelong tech-addiction, I can testify first-hand to the diabolical depression spiral that is "dark-flow". Some days I don't see any way out except going full Luddite. Only my wife's presence restrains me, "How can I contact you?" she whines every time I suggest iconoclasm as an answer to the woes of my soul.
Recently I thought about how fake the digital all is. Imagine a gloomy, apocalyptic day when or if the Machine was switched off. All internet, social media, "connectedness" completely shattered that selfsame moment. What would remain? *The real* remains. What disappeared was always just a disposable simulacrum, a synthetic reality for cyborg humanity.
My bush food foraging keeps me evermore planted firmly in the oft dirty but delicious *real*.
I'm running over that rickety bridge -- Wendell is a hero of mine. I look forward to reading this with my teenage son who is just beginning to be old enough to see and understand these issues. You have a gift for explaining and leading the thoughts along the trail. Real always turns out to be better even when it seems painful, tiring, or boring. It takes faith to stick to it in the face of the alluring lies.
Clara
Well written. The iphone is amazing. Stay off social media, read good news articles and other writing, check the scores, do your banking and that’s about it. Huge net plus.
The phone is absolutely a demon slab. I feel like my laptops still bring me good things as I create writing, music, photography, and less now, though occasional videos on them. If I could ditch my phone and didn't need it for work and to keep in touch with my elderly cancer survivor mother I would.
My desktop, like your laptop, still seems to have some virtues. Slow, clunky things seem to encourage creativity.
I’m new to Wendell Berry (I’ve heard of him, of course, but I’ve never read any substantive work of his). In which work does he contrast “people who want to live as creatures and people who want to live as machine”? I think that might be a good place for me to start with Berry. Thanks!
It is in his book "Life is a Miracle". Personally, I wouldn't start there if you wanted to get introduced to Berry's thought. I would start with 'The World Ending Fire' - a selection of his essays edited by Paul Kingsnorth. It is the book I suggest to all new Berry readers. I also run a Reading Group on this on my substack.
Thanks Hadden!
BTW, we recently ordered this book. Amusingly enough, the printing “machine” printed an entire section of the text upside down. It’s completely readable, yet there seemed a subtle message in that.
Hadden’s the expert on Berry around here, so you can trust his advice!
Dark flow. The Smart phone.
I have always wanted to trine those digital with dark energy. An energetic field of unfulfilled dreams that humans, all beings are trying to escape from. The place where lost hope and grief tarry. The bardo, the inchoate. The liminal. The cupboard where we stash our grief.
I wonder if our culture has been too focused on the light, the win. The spin of that trajectory casting enemies to the dark, creating the ultimate foes. The other, the loser required by a domination culture. The Marvel universe.
As much as I am fascinated by this area of discussion , does it not reinforce the binary. Machine or nature?
My reaction; retreat to the zero point, past the noise of myself. Transcendence or addiction? Do I have to decide? Does “both and” not exist in our reality? Can I not live in a spectrum?
I would like the best of both worlds please.
First do no harm. (Including unintended consequences)
Yes, I agree this doesn’t have to be “binary”. My own feeling (which I’ve mentioned in various essays in various ways) is that tech isn’t necessarily bad, as long as it doesn’t fragment or distort certain basic aspects of our humanity, esp our mind, body, face-to-face relationships, and connection with nature, and as long as it doesn’t attempt to replace ultimate things (the spiritual, God, etc.). There’s room for debate here, of course, but I think “how to remain human” or “how to remain real” is the target zone for the debate.
Sounnds like you are looking for an excuse to keep your demon slab rather than reaching for a hammer and smashing it with a satisfying crunch.
Dark Flow is a good description of the addiction buzz state for many things - gambling, but also porn. In that regard, all computers pose a temptation in that direction. Sadly, the computer is also necessary to do about anything anymore, at work and home.
Of my technical devices, I'm not sure of the full balance of pros and cons. I've come to hate my smartphone, and the required ubiquity of being made to use it as a token of my identity. If I didn't need the damned thing for work I'd happily drive over it. When it dies, I will see if I can find a good non-smart phone - one that can still text (since that seems mandatory for ID), but little else. Tried a smart watch and grew to despise its constant moralistic scolds and nags. Same with tablets.
The one area where my computer is a benefit is as an aid to my photography - photo storage, editing, and management. But I have come to realize that to make any of that permanent I will need to return those photos to prints on the walls, and in albums that I can easily share and pass on. I've dusted off the film cameras increasingly for that reason.
"In other words, Manfred’s flow experiences engage his mind, activate his muscles, and connect him with real people. His flow experiences make him more human."
What a simple way to express what I've been feeling yet could not put language to.
I want to be more human. I want to move more. Sweat more. Use my hands. And perhaps be pressed to hardship in the process if it melds me into a better husband and father.
The image of the dark flow state is crystal clear to me and could be what I needed to read to help me navigate my ongoing audit of my own tech use.