WebSense Mindfulness
blogWhilst everyone else in the office is bemoaning the fact that the internet proxies have been turned off, I am secretly rejoicing. Humanity — and by humanity I mean Neil Scott — is incapable of denying itself the pleasures of distraction. The threat of discipline, the occasional glance at my screen by a superior, none of this is enough to prevent me from typing ‘gmail’ or ‘facebook’ into my browser. So I am glad that WebSense keeps asking me whether what I am browsing is work-related and blocks those things of which it doesn’t approve. It is an aid to mindfulness, like one of those Zen Buddhists who thwacks you on back with bamboo if you look like you are about to fall asleep.
Perhaps some people have amazing self-control, like the children who were able to resist the marshmallow, but unfortunately I appear to need some external authority, a super-ego figure, to avoid drifting when confronted by things I don’t find immediately engaging.
In the past, people have meditated on God as a way of keeping them good. Nowadays, people are as likely to use Justin.tv to get that sense of being watched by others.
Of course, most people hate the idea of Justin.tv, in the same way as even very religious people would hate the idea that God is interested in them picking their nose, but you can see why awareness of such a lifestreaming service might help you to remain more self-conscious of your bad habits and less likely to indulge in them. Unless you’re Leslie Grantham.
One of the best arguments in Bill McKibben’s anti-progress book Enough is that creating genetically enhanced human beings would increase the amount of boredom they experience because to really flow you need to have adequate challenges. If everything was too easy you’d quickly get bored and boredom equals self-consciousness. Only by divesting oneself of one’s egotism can you really flow.