The Stoical Social Media Diet and Signalman Jack

Social media diet and a furry railway signalman called Jack; what’s the connection?

Age must be catching up with me. I wrote this post back in November 2018, decided for some reason not to publish it and forgot about it. Today as I was about to start a new post, I noticed this and another half finished post, hiding away in the draft post folder .

With all the furore in social media right now about the corona virus, shutdowns, masks, social distancing and now riots in the USA, I thought it would be a good time to go on a social media diet.

The story about Jack is interesting too.

Read on and you will find out how reducing distractions from social media by following principles of Stoic philosophy can improve your life.

Signalman Jack’s story is an amusing but true tale of a baboon who was trained to operate railway signals to assist his disabled owner on a South African railway in the 19th century. Check the Wikipedia link above for verification. You can read more of Jack’s story in this article on MentalFloss

I will explain Jack’s connection with a social media diet and the stoic philosophy in a moment.

The Stoical Social Media Diet

If you remember your history lessons from school, you will know that during the heights of the Greek and Roman empires, the Stoic philosophers did not need a social media diet because there was no Internet and no social media.

True, but they had their share of distractions. 

So many that Marcus Aurelius  felt compelled to write: 

How satisfying it is to dismiss and block out any upsetting or foreign impression, and immediately to have peace in all things  

Marcus Aurelius – Meditations ,5.2

Other Stoics had similar advice including:

• Always shun that which makes you angry
• Don’t waste time fretting over things beyond your control
• Accept that the world is the way it is and not how you would like it to be
• Be grateful for what you have.

So much of what we are exposed to in the media pushes our buttons because it makes us angry, or it causes us anxiety about things over which we have no control. Or it seduces us into comparing ourselves with others who appear to be wealthier, more successful, better looking or happier than us.

You may believe that the stoic literature is hard to understand. Some of it is, but the best way to get daily, short, easily-digestible doses of stoic wisdom is with the book The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. You will get a daily quotation and an interpretation by the authors all on one page or less each day.

 Shun What Makes You Angry

From the comments I hear and the battles people mention on social media, I believe many people deliberately get into arguments in social media to feed their sense of righteous indignation. Does that put some excitement into an otherwise bland and boring life? If it does, it’s also increasing stress levels. It’s not healthy.

When I first got active on the Internet back in the 2000’s I used to get incensed at some of the stuff posted on Huffington Post. I could not resist commenting and getting embroiled in digital battles with a range of people. From well-meaning liberals who looked at the world (particularly Southern Africa) through rose tinted glasses to anarchists in training who just hated everybody.

I became a top commenter, one of the few conservative voices on a liberal platform. However my blood pressure went up in sync with the number of hateful responses to my comments.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that, like Don Quixote, I was tilting at windmills. There was no way I was going to change any views on that platform. Like so many media that claim to be impartial, Huffington Post preaches to the converted. To its credit though, I don’t think it refused to publish any of my comments.

Similarly, I refuse to get drawn into the endless tirades about US President Donald Trump. It’s not my battle and I am not going to lose any sleep over people who do not like their president. I just have to look at the improvement in the US economy, the unemployment rate and the President’s approval rating to know that the current administration must be doing something right. 

As I have written before, a few years ago, I cancelled my satellite TV subscription and opened a Netflix account.  On the farm, we can only get three broadcast channels, four if the wind is right and there are no electric storms, sunspots or UFOs. I never watch them.  I stopped getting a daily newspaper. The Internet provides more than enough news, should I need to know something. I know that if something really important does happen, someone will phone, email or text me or I will see a headline on the Internet and I can choose whether to find out more about it. 

The Social Media Diet for Catastrophes

Neither you nor I can solve the all world’s problems. Most of the time, we can’t even solve our own very well.

Spending hours watching reruns of the devastation caused by forest or bush fires, hurricanes, floods or other natural disasters does not do much good for the victims and even less for us. Anguishing over illegal immigrants’ children being separated from their parents, or people being forcibly prevented from swarming border posts fall into the same category.

All those things are beyond our control. It’s good to express sympathy, feel empathy and do something concrete if we can. Volunteering to assist, donating money or materials are all things we should do, but losing sleep and becoming neurotic do not help anybody.

Wiser people than me have said the best thing we can do for the poor is not be one of them. That sounds cynical but we can help more people with the fruits of our labours if we are successful, healthy, emotionally and mentally well balanced than if we are unsuccessful, financially constrained, eternally wringing our hands and perpetually pessimistic.

Signalman Jack’s lesson 

Jack the baboon was in a strange environment, totally different to that which a baboon in the wild would experience. But he seemed to adapt and thrive in that environment.

Why? He had a job to do, he had a purpose, something to focus his mind on that kept him busy. Any one who has had time to watch baboons and monkeys in the wild knows that they are curious, inquisitive, always turning over rocks looking for food, but also picking up non-food things that have no real use to them. Feeling them, weighing them in their hands, turning them over. 

Humans are not baboons, but we need purpose and meaning in our lives too, a job to do or opportunities to be curious.

Conclusion

• Guard against the distractions and time wasting of social media
• Shun what makes you angry to no purpose
• Pick your battles – real or digital
• You can’t solve all the world’s problems, help where you can and don’t be consumed by those you cannot fix
• Find purpose and meaning through positive action
• Have faith that God will help us find that purpose

A social media diet gives us time to do that.

What do you think? Leave a comment.

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