Decolonize your mind, reclaim your life
Hi friends,
What a week, huh? (Please, please VOTE!)
The brilliant Nicole Pearson is all about redefining the Black travel experience by exploring connections between travel, colonialism and inequality. (Seriously, check out her writing on racism, the experiences of African America migrants and Afrodiaspora).
When I was chatting with Nicole last year about my digital wellbeing work, she commented that it's about encouraging people to decolonize their minds. Yes!
She and I discussed data mining and social media as a form of colonialism: of our relationships, our world views, our independent thinking, our free will and our minds. All for profit.
Wikipedia defines colonialism as "the policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories, generally with the aim of economic dominance.”
While I in no way want to minimize the suffering caused by centuries of White violence though colonization around the globe (seriously, let’s stop referring to colonizers as “settlers”), I also think it’s important for us to understand the ways that social media and other digital platforms intersect with capitalism and cause harm. Tech companies are acting like nations, and that is not ok.
Think about it: for many of us (myself included), taking a break from Instagram for a week feels like a huge accomplishment.
How did something completely voluntary end up feeling so necessary and compulsive?
Why do we feel like we need to keep refreshing our social media feeds?
What else could we be doing with that time?
What if we consolidated the 3 hours a day of fragmented attention and directed it at off-screen efforts to crush white supremacist heteropatriarchy and doing everything we can to prevent Donald Trump from spending another 4 years in the White House?
Are you aware of the growing field of neuromarketing?
Corporations, tech companies and political actors are using neuropsychology to study our sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli.
Much of what we see on social media and online is specifically designed to appeal to our reptilian brain (fight, flight, react), encouraging us to bypass our pre-frontal cortex (critical thinking and self-knowledge).
Guess who are the major actors in creating these platforms and marketing techniques?
Affluent young White men. Same. Old. Story.
What do we do about it?
We can rescue our minds by being aware of these forces and stopping to notice our thoughts, feelings, sensations and urges related to the media we consume.
We can fight the colonization of our relationships on social media by reaching out beyond algorithms that silo us into smaller and smaller social milieus.
We can take breaks from technology to strengthen our abilities to hear ourselves and other humans.
This is NOT about “digital detox". It’s about reclaiming our lives.
Who’s with me?
Much love,
Christina
P.S. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I invite you to join my mailing list for occasional musings and updates on retreats and events. I won't spam you, or share your data. Let's start supporting small businesses on platforms they own!