Dealing with Digital Addiction | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Patrick Briscoe
April 24, 2025
This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.
This is Father Patrick, and this is Father Gregory Pine. Welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all who support us. If you enjoyed the show, please consider making a monthly donation to us. Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcast. Brother Gregory, it is great to be with you.
Great to be with you as well. Studio to talk about what I think is one of the most, honestly important questions today. You were saying that you were listening to, a podcast recently, or maybe it was a newsreel because it was 1930 and you were in a movie theater. Exactly. But it seemed right. A tidbit.
You found a piece of information. Yeah. To you about the way that our data is used. And I think there’s an interesting place to start. Yeah. The conversation in what’s going on. Yeah. No, I so I, I was listening to, Johannes Hartl, whom we had on the podcast a couple of months ago, who, lives in Bavaria.
He runs the Augsburg House of prayer, and he has a couple of podcasts, one of which is called Eden Culture. So the idea being to cultivate a humane space in which we could be at ease with each other and with God, through conversations on philosophy. Theology, sure. But more broadly speaking, psychology, sociology, art, literature, etc. but he was talking about our inner world, in our outer world, and the kind of disconnect, as it were, between inner world and outer world.
And, he was describing how the biggest corporations in the world specialize in your inner world as a way by which to typically manipulate you emotionally and psychologically to generate profit. So they’re very motivated to collect pertinent information. And that might mean tapping into the microphone of your phone. I mean, not only that, they need to tap into it because it’s already theirs in some way, shape or form.
But when you think about it with like Apple and Google and, and so, you know, like Amazon and you know, these big corp, you know, it’s you might expect that it’d be an oil company or that it’d be a construction company, or that it’d be an automobile company. It’s like, no, these are all companies that focus on information, specifically your information, so that they can market a product that corresponds to the information that you have or have not revealed, but at least kind of let slip.
And so it’s that, that kind of just brought my attention or it brought to my attention the fact that the current cultural kind of in societal setting, it’s not that it’s like weaponized so much as it is invasive. So like everyone’s trying to get in and I think everyone’s trying to get in with greater vehemence and vociferous ness or with greater subtlety and snake attitude than has, like historically been the case.
And I think that we’re experiencing a lot of that, like tension whereby inner and outer are confused. Or maybe tension isn’t the right word, but confusion. Consternation where inner becomes outer, outer becomes inner, and we’re all just tied in the not so. Yeah. No, no. What do you think? I had the same revelation some years ago, watching with a number of friars at Providence College, the documentary social.
But, yeah, I haven’t. Fantastic. It’s absolutely worth your time. It’s worth everyone’s time, listeners, if you haven’t seen this documentary, borrow your parents Netflix account and watch this documentary. It’s absolutely fantastic because it makes it makes the point that you’re making. But in terms that terms that, that are, that are slightly different, slightly more stark.
I remember one of the people interviewed in the documentary insisting, when you realize that there is no product, you are the product. Yeah, exactly. And that that that’s an astonishing thing because it’s difficult to believe because it sounds like a theory of the conspiratorial sort. Which are all true, becoming increasingly clear that that is simply the reality.
Yeah. And that that purpose, the reason I wanted to begin with this, is because that purpose is the thing that we always have to keep in mind as we begin to interact. With all of these available ways, to share information online. I think that Saint Thomas actually can be a great help in this, because he can guide us through as we begin to understand our own sense of use, particularly with the idea of habits.
So or maybe you could lead us into what Thomas would say, and then we can go from Saint Thomas to, more contemporary conversations. Yeah, sure. So we are human beings and we are body soul composites and our souls act through powers. And so, like we all know, the powers of the soul, like the intellect and the will, and then our various senses which help us to cognize sense information, and then our various kind of passions which help us to digest sense information, for lack of a better description, and then other things besides.
But like some of our powers, just kind of go automatically. The power to self nourish, the power to grow, the power to reproduce. They’re just kind of always on, as it were. And so we don’t really check in with them too terribly much. You don’t often think like, I ought to, breathe regularly unless you’re, like in a yoga class.
Future episodes on that. Don’t be in your class. Okay. The takes are coming hot. Right. But specifically as it concerns our intellect and our will, and then what we refer to as our sensitive appetite or sensuality, or the source of our passions, you can train them such that they interact more or less fruitfully with their objects.
All right. So the intellect is for knowing the truth. The will is for choosing the good. But we can get better or worse at that. And so habits kind of stand in between the power and the activity of that power for its object, so as to a stable eyes it so as to kind of substantiated. I suppose there are better ways in which to describe it.
Nevertheless, habit is about filling out your personality, filling out your character. And so we’ll describe it as second nature in the sense that you got your first nature. That’s your base of operations. And your second nature is kind of how you train that first nature, either on to glory or on to the opposite. When I learned this about Saint Thomas, I was struck by how prescient it was.
It’s absolutely brilliant psychological insight which people might not be inclined to believe. You might be surprised to hear that medieval theologian could have such a profound knowledge of the human condition. For example, think of this on the most basic level, right? The way we talk about riding a bike, or practice makes perfect the way that we intentionally ingrain reactions and skills in ourselves.
And those reactions and skills are great because of the pleasure reward that comes from doing them. Well. Right. Like this is a this is how playing the piano comes about is how being a perfect Free-Throw shooter, is brought about. I remember Mr. Crystal, Tom Crystal, my seventh grade teacher, going on about shooting the perfect free throw at length.
Yeah. One day in one of our science classes. And the point that he was making was what was this point about about habit formation and how deeply were affected by that? There’s this really cool experiment, you know, about the butterfly experiment? No, this is a really cool thing. Done by the. No. But by the done by the Nobel Prize winner.
And I’m not going to get his name pronounced exactly correctly. I don’t think Nicholas Ginsburg nailed it. Yeah. There are whole countries out there which are applauding you. Their names are the Netherlands, Belgium, maybe Luxembourg. They’re all applauding you right now because they love you. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, brilliant scientist again. Nobel Prize winning, did a series of expanded, experiments and realized the, in fact, the impact that super stimuli have on, yeah.
And so two of the experiments that I was reading about that I thought were really cool were, one that featured a particular kind of butterfly. So, so we, you know, did the control test to see how the males mated with the females in normal setting, and then he made a bunch of cardboard butterflies. Okay. But the colors were more vibrant.
Yeah. And the males started trying to mate with the cardboard butterflies problem. And he reintroduced female actual female butterflies amid the cardboard butterflies. And the males still preferred the cardboard, but fascinating. So, this application is astonishing. And he was able to replicate this in a particular way with a small freshwater fish where he had a cardboard, or a wooden fish that had kind of a darker red belly.
And the fish would attack the fake fish with greater fervor than it would another fish, because it had a deeper red belly. Anyway, the point is that it’s been demonstrated in these experiments and others, since these are kind of old experiments. But it’s been demonstrated in these experiments and in other experiments since the, the results, just on a simple kind of animal level of the response to, excessive stimuli.
Yeah. Yeah. So and this plays nicely with the theory of habituation. Because in the ordinary course when we do something that’s good or when we do something that helps develop our nature, fill out our nature, there’s a pleasure that comes with that. So like sometimes in Christian conversation when we talk about pleasure, we can get like a little nervous.
So pleasure is just a sense response to a good that’s present. And we call that joy when that the thing to which we are responding is a little more dignified or a little less material. So like in the material or do we talk about pleasure in the material or do we talk about joy? We could kind of class them both as delight.
The language doesn’t matter too terribly much. Basically, when you operate well for a good thing, there’s a delight. There’s a, there’s a joy, a pleasure that comes with that because nature is such that it reaffirm good activity. But in the ordinary course, the things that we encounter, like the natural things that we encounter, they have a pleasure which is kind of proportion tit to the good with with which we engage.
And then our own human nature. Father Gregory, that is unnecessarily complicated. What do you mean, absolutely perfect? You guys are. You’re flushing out that. Yeah. The result that I was proposing from Tabor. Okay, so, like, you think about it, like, what’s most necessary for us as human beings to kind of get through life or to see the species propagate what’s food, drink and sexual intercourse.
And so when you think about it like, what are those things in life which supply the greatest of pleasures, typically food, drink, sexual intercourse, because that’s the way in which nature reaffirms, the types of activities which ensure that we keep on living as individuals and we keep on living as a species. And you’ll see, you know, like pleasures vary, but usually like higher order pleasures are a little more abstract at the outset, a little less concrete.
And so it takes us time to access them, because it’s more of a rational and less of a sensitive engagement. Okay. So that just kind of gives us a like a basic anthropology as to where does pleasure feature in our life. But you can also see lurking kind of around the corner in a creepy trenchcoat. Pleasure can be used to manipulate, especially if pleasure is decoupled from natural things and then dialed up to a billion.
That’s something that’s the point of these pathways, right? So it’s not a surprise then when we say, okay, if you’re building these neural pathways, right, that some habits are you’re building these neural pathways that are predicated on the reward you get from a certain kind of pleasure in all the facets of your life. How very dangerous that to propose putting the internet in a small black box in your pocket.
The average American checks his phone. How many times a day for, like, let’s say 150? Oh, my friend. Oh, no. Oh, five minutes every half. Every waking hour. Oh my gosh, it’s a lot. It’s really right. Yeah. The, the, the thing that is so extraordinary about that, I think, is that it tells us how reactive we are or how deeply we desire that pleasure reward that’s come from carrying the internet in our.
Yeah.
So I, I, I think we, I don’t think we need to belabor anymore the point of just how dangerous this is. But I do think we need to say a few more things about what it causes. We can move on to our tips or out of it. So. So if you’re listening, if you’re listening to this, you might at this point but be saying like, well, that’s all very interesting, but I don’t really know how to address whether or not this is a problem for me.
If someone says, I think I’m too attached to social media, what are the kinds of, pointers, tips you can give us to help us navigate whether or not that’s true? I think that, like, it can be helpful just to talk first about the medium and then talk about the various things that one accesses through the medium.
And in a certain sense, it’s easier to talk about the things that you access, like social media, for instance. That’s probably the most insidious. The others are more easily identifiable as deleterious. So like online gaming, online gambling, online shopping, pornography. Like when people have a problem with those things, they’re usually like, I have a problem with these things.
Social media is a little harder to identify because social media tracks more closely with just the medium itself. And I think that what’s so fascinating about the medium itself is that it’s potentially everything. It’s potentially everything in a nice handheld, compact, sleek, very, you know, kind of colorful, evocative, illustrative presentation comes in a titanium case. Yeah. It’s incredible.
Right. So you think about our kind of baseline now navigating human life as we do. You know there might be some people who temperamentally are more buoyant and some people who temperamentally are less so. But we’re all struggling with difficulties. We encounter hateful things. They cause us a certain aversion. And when they’re visited upon us, we experience pain or sadness, sorrow of some sort.
And a lot of us are looking to alleviate that sorrow, whether born of anxiety or depression or just the negative consequences of life in the flesh. And so we’re the thing about this device is that it delivers whatever we want. And so it conforms perfectly to the standard of our imagining, or at least we think it does when, truth be told, it’s got a mind of its own, or at least it’s got a mind that’s been programed by people who aren’t necessarily for us.
00:14:29:11 – 00:14:46:09
Unknown
Right? So it’s like then then. All right, having discussed the medium a little bit, what’s the thing that a lot of us will access through that? Again, we’ve said pornography, online shopping, online gambling, online gaming. A lot of us can acknowledge the problems associated with those things. Social media is harder for many of us because we’re like, I’m just checking in, you know, like I like to see the pictures.
00:14:46:09 – 00:15:09:09
Unknown
I like to see the updates. I like to follow those whom, you know, I’ve become associated with in this kind of influencing world, like the gods men exactly like the Gospel podcast. But what’s often like what is often the case is that and people who engage with social media at a high rate or at a high volume end up experiencing more in the way of negative emotion than the positive emotion that they seek in it.
00:15:09:11 – 00:15:37:05
Unknown
And that’s kind of paradoxical because it’s like, well, it seems like it’d be so comforting or consoling. And yet a lot of people feel themselves kind of gutted or like, bottomed out by the experience thereof. And I think that, you know, you could talk about the brain chemistry. It’s like we have become addicts of serotonin a dope, you know, whatever the neurotransmitters that we seek in those encounters, and they do have a way of depreciating like we we are becoming more and more tolerant and we need bigger and bigger hits, which is part of the reason for which people doom scroll.
00:15:37:07 – 00:15:55:22
Unknown
Because it’s not just that they’re looking for bad news, it’s it’s become a kind of genre where you’re just looking for anything. You’re just looking for anything that’s funny, happy that stress alleviating, that’s like mind changing or whatever. But but that’s never going to happen with the same kind of piquancy or with the kind of same delivery as was formerly the case.
00:15:55:23 – 00:16:14:05
Unknown
Yeah. The infinite scroll is a really important thing. And there’s a former Google ethicist who compares the infinite scroll, which is, of course, designed to keep you look at the infinite scroll. It’s like taking the bottom out of a glass of wine, and just continuing, continuing to apply. There, assuming that a person will continue to drink it.
00:16:14:09 – 00:16:20:18
Unknown
Yep. If there’s no bottom to the glass, which, I think that that image is very striking
00:16:20:18 – 00:16:38:21
Unknown
because how many times do you just sit something and unconsciously, whether you’ve got, you know, one of those 64 ounce water social, you know, water salsa, you know. Yes, yes, yes, I would say. Do I want to go? Yes, yes.
00:16:38:21 – 00:17:05:19
Unknown
It’s a it’s a security. Yes. Yes. So anyway, so so people, people just drink things unconsciously. Right. And if you’re doing that and if the vessel has no. Well that’s what social media. Yeah. And this is why Doomscrolling is right. They call Doomscrolling. And again this thing was explicitly designed. The infinite scroll feature was explicitly designed to keep us out to cause exactly the phenomenon you’re describing, that we build a tolerance.
00:17:05:19 – 00:17:29:22
Unknown
And so we continue, we continue to use it, and more advertising is able to be presented to us, and more data is collected about us. When we pause based on based on what we do. Yeah. And then I mean, on that basis, the algorithm will use the data that it collects for its own nefarious purposes. And often enough, it’s to kind of channel you or usher you into corners of the internet that are weirder still.
00:17:30:00 – 00:17:53:20
Unknown
So that in in maybe, maybe it’s like you’re watching conservative news meet and you’re like, yeah, like pumping the fist, beating the drum, banging the breast, getting all pumped. But you’re probably going to get pushed more and more fringe, more and more reactionary, to the point where you lose a certain sympathy with people on the other side of the aisle such that you can’t rehearse their arguments or even enter into dialog with them as a way by which of creating a fractured society, which is all just going to hunker down.
00:17:53:20 – 00:18:10:17
Unknown
It’s been an incredible lot of money on fringe products similar to the Infinite scroll, feature. So if you know someone where someone were to ask me, what are some ways that I know that this is becoming a problem for me in my life? One of the things that I would suggest is, are you looking to this thing for social validation?
00:18:10:19 – 00:18:28:08
Unknown
Many people do this unconsciously. Right. And this is part of the pledge of reward that comes from using this kind of thing where you get the like where you get a follow where, where you so on and so forth. This, this is one of the reasons why I shout out to Warren Gomez who runs our social. Did you just called her Gomez married and shame on no that’s right.
00:18:28:08 – 00:18:50:06
Unknown
It was never Gomez. Haha yeah, well I. Know that’s awesome. Now there’s no need for embarrassment here. She would love this. Yeah Lauren Rodriguez Gomez Miami. Bienvenido de.
00:18:50:08 – 00:19:12:06
Unknown
This is it’s all of. It’s just the right amount. Anyway, this is, I was going to say I’m extremely grateful for the. To the people who run our social media. Yeah. Moves that, desire from from us to check, to check out, for me, certainly to check out it, because I just do. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:12:08 – 00:19:36:04
Unknown
And it’s allowed me to to also be distance from, from my personal account. So to so to cut that part out of my life is just extremely, important to avoid that kind of looking for social validation. Yeah. I think it’s so tempting, in part why it’s, why social media is fact so addictive? Yeah. So I think that, like, I mean, we’ve identified, like, what’s happening here.
00:19:36:04 – 00:20:01:03
Unknown
We’re being habituated on the basis of pleasure, and that pleasure is reaffirming certain activities. But those activities, they don’t have a clear terminus. Those activities don’t have a point of arrival. It’s not like, well, once I’ve done X, Y, and Z, then I will be satisfied with my experience of the internet. And so I think, like a lot the way that a lot of people experience, the way their interactions with or relationship to the internet is this open ended, you know, bottomless wine glass.
00:20:01:06 – 00:20:24:05
Unknown
And so where do you see it making manifest? Well, we can talk about the kind of boring, all trivial things, like people are sleeping less, you know, because one, you’re on your phone before you fall asleep and you end up going to bed later than you intended. And then two, you keep your phone close to your, you know, at your bedside table or close to your bed so that when you know, let’s say 50 years ago, you would have woken up late in bed, thought about whatever, and fallen back asleep.
00:20:24:07 – 00:20:48:03
Unknown
Now you wake up, look at your phone, are on it for X number of hours or X number of minutes maybe, and then eventually you might get back to sleep. Or maybe you might not. So what we have is a society that’s increasingly strung out from fatigue and from like digital miss connection. That’s over solicited and over advertised such that we become increasingly suspicious of all interaction in relationship.
00:20:48:05 – 00:21:07:23
Unknown
So it’s like, on the one hand, the quality of the pleasure is degrading us just spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and on the other hand, the things that we’re losing as a result are degrading us physically such that we’re just kind of like raw, exposed, but also like losing the capacity to relate and interact without suspicion of potential manipulation or control.
00:21:08:01 – 00:21:27:04
Unknown
So it’s awesome is what I’m trying to say, you know, like, let’s go. Great. You just keep nodding your head. I’m joking over here. But but I think that, like, the types of things where we find ourselves kind of, that, like, the type of thing where we find ourselves kind of backed into a seemingly inevitable corner.
00:21:27:04 – 00:21:54:05
Unknown
That’s a mixed metaphor, where we where we find ourselves in seemingly inevitable patterns of behavior or backed into a kind of inescapable corner. That’s where I think that we’re talking about addiction. And once we’re talking about addiction, I think we’re talking about certain violent or quasi violent measures that probably need to be taken. The striking icon I was at a park with my family recently, and, so it was with my parents, my sister and my brother in law and their two kids.
00:21:54:07 – 00:22:16:15
Unknown
And this young girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, arrives on a scooter with her father, you know, with these, like, motorized things. Yeah. We were down in Florida together. It was. It was a lovely, lovely weather, lovely day out of the park. And the young woman this year. But she’s out with this little girl, you know, begins to run off to the playground and start playing with my niece.
00:22:16:17 – 00:22:44:15
Unknown
And her father sits down on a bench and pulls his phone out and is scrolling and multiple times she called out to him to look at whatever it was she was doing on the playground. They never looked back. It was, it was so brutally painful. And I think, I think that image, shows exactly the moment, that you’re talking about where you’re just stuck in the corner.
00:22:44:21 – 00:22:46:18
Unknown
Yeah. Okay. So
00:22:46:18 – 00:23:02:19
Unknown
what what are we going to do, father Patrick, I think that a lot of folks feel like they need their smartphones on account of the fact that. Yeah, okay, so. But they’re like, here’s the thing. I gotta have it for two factor authentication. There are various apps that I am responsible for, you know, like this, that and the other thing at my place of work.
00:23:02:19 – 00:23:21:08
Unknown
And also if I were to dial down, I would be immediately marginalized by my friend group. I’m not interested in that. So just like pass on to the next step. How can I interact with my phone that I have at present, and I will continue to have until Jesus comes back, more healthily, you know, because it’s like at this, at this stage of the game, we have the data and this is killing kids especially.
00:23:21:13 – 00:23:39:23
Unknown
But a lot of people listening to this podcast are at the point where they’re like sufficiently well developed neurologically, you know, or just, you know, cerebrally to begin to fight or to have the wherewithal to fight. And then the question is how to fight well, how to fight constructively rather than continually following into maladaptive patterns that just got us.
00:23:39:23 – 00:23:59:13
Unknown
Yeah, I get this, and I’m very sensitive to it because I have to live on my phone. Yeah, in my ministry. So this is, so this is advice from someone who is not absent from these platforms. Yeah, yeah. What I said was everyone needs to use it less. Yeah. That’s so I think I think the first place to start is just after behavior for me.
00:23:59:15 – 00:24:21:19
Unknown
How much you’re actually using various apps and recording your time. And there are in fact apps that will do this for you. Right. And Ivan has some built in features that will give you information about this. So you can begin to, you can begin to build a baseline and say to yourself, wow, that’s less I actually use my phone less than I thought I did.
00:24:21:19 – 00:24:44:06
Unknown
Or, you might discover that the country I use my phone much more than I thought I did. That’s the most important thing that you that that users can do is to begin to begin, to begin to realize where they actually are and how they’re, in fact, spending their time and then begin to set time limits that are very particular based on their patterns of use.
00:24:44:09 – 00:24:56:12
Unknown
Okay. So using less, you know, limits and, taking taking the time to construct, a real plan based on the actual data of your concrete life.
00:24:56:12 – 00:25:05:15
Unknown
Yep. I think I think, too, it can be helpful to reconceive of your relationship with your phone as a relationship. So it’s not just a passing interaction, it is a relationship. And it.
00:25:05:17 – 00:25:29:18
Unknown
You want me to take it out to dinner? Not exactly. Yeah, yeah. Just put like a little lips. Yeah, exactly. Put a little lipstick on it. Just light a candle next to it. An eternal flame. No. Because you remember, whatever, 25 years ago, you’re sitting around your family dinner table and let’s say that it’s, you know, 6:10 p.m. and somebody calls and that that call was from a advertiser of some sort, or like a solicitor solicitor’s the wrong word.
00:25:29:23 – 00:25:43:03
Unknown
Somebody soliciting for dot, dot, dot. I remember like, when my mom or dad would pick up the phone, they’d be a little bit upset, like, this is the dinner hour. You know, this is the time when I’m with my family, which isn’t every time, you know, which is an all the time. But it’s this time for sure.
00:25:43:03 – 00:25:59:20
Unknown
So you shouldn’t call. You shouldn’t interrupt that. I think we need to reconceive of our relationship with our phone in similar fashion. Like it’s like a robo caller, you know, it’s a telemarketing. That’s the word that I was looking for. Like, we need to see it as ever so slightly invasive because it does degrade the quality of our interactions.
00:26:00:01 – 00:26:21:11
Unknown
Like once a once a phone is present on a table at a restaurant, like everyone’s conscious of it. And that also makes a lot of these like subjects that we will discuss a little less real, a little more passing, because I know that you could pick up the phone, and I’m not going to want to invest in a conversation that could be derailed by business or by amusement or by whatever, like I want, I want real life.
00:26:21:16 – 00:26:42:02
Unknown
So I think if we can reconceive of our relationship with our phone after the manner of a telemarketer, it’s like, I use this for whatever reason, designated reason, but it’s not. It’s not a friend. It’s not. It’s not seated at the family table, you know, that’s just that’s for real people, you know, that’s for real life. And then the other thing too, is like, we have other tools on the phone that can make it less attractive, like grayscale.
00:26:42:05 – 00:26:58:07
Unknown
You know, that’s the thing that a lot of people deploy or even, like content blockers, you know, you can you can set screen time to shut you down at a certain hour and then start you back up at a certain hour. I leave my phone in my office so I don’t see it between Compline and Morning Prayer effectively, so I don’t see it from 9 p.m. until 8 a.m., which I think is helpful.
00:26:58:07 – 00:27:19:02
Unknown
It’s something it’s not. Nothing is really, really important. I had a lot, a number of friends, one of my sisters, she and her husband do this, they use a phone basket where they designate a place in their house where they use their phone. Yeah, and that way it’s not always. I mean, that was something that was great about telephones, before cordless phones.
00:27:19:04 – 00:27:49:10
Unknown
Where about you? You you they were anchored. Yeah. Yeah, there was kind of a designated place for them so we could actually do that. Yeah. Our current cell phones by by creating physical space. I think the other thing that that’s really important is that we have to build, build our lives offline. Yeah. Because everybody has a story that they tell themselves about what their life is and what their life means, and increasingly, I think that story is based on the brands and people you follow online and that that becomes part of your identity.
00:27:49:10 – 00:28:08:06
Unknown
So if you’re trying to distance yourself from that, you have to build identity offline and you have to have places and people that you’re ready to go to and interact with in meaningful ways so as to build a life off site. Because people people can build lives online. I think it’s dangerous. I think it’s very easy to do.
00:28:08:08 – 00:28:30:04
Unknown
That’s why it’s very attractive. It’s kind of a different way of building life. But, what you have to do is build life offline. So, what does that mean? Well, become a member of a country club, go to your public library regularly for events. Not drag queen story out the other, become invested in, your particular hobbies that get you outside.
00:28:30:04 – 00:28:52:15
Unknown
You don’t have to come about near like Charlie Gregory, but taking a walk every day is a good thing for you. I love that your first recommendation is join a country club. Yeah. No, this is great. No. Like, people need to make friends. And Jesus greatest friends would he? But joining a country club is always step two. Step one is earn 100,000 extra dollars.
00:28:52:17 – 00:29:05:18
Unknown
Join up. Yeah, a mountaineering club with the plebs. It costs like 15 bones. There you go. With other men. That’s. No, that’s the move. And I think, too, it’s like
00:29:05:18 – 00:29:14:11
Unknown
we find it difficult to distance ourself from our phones because we have fear of missing out, fear of missing out on a relationship or an interaction. Like somebody may have asked.
00:29:14:11 – 00:29:29:13
Unknown
Like Father Joseph Anthony arrives last night at 10 p.m. it’s like, does he have the sign in code? I should keep my phone on me to ensure that he’s not blah blah blah dot dot dot. But we do that with everything and we imagine that everyone’s relying on us, counting on us, and potentially in contact with us when truth be told.
00:29:29:13 – 00:29:50:10
Unknown
Like that’s probably not the case, but it’s informed by this, this fear of missing out or this desire to remain connected in meaningful fashion. And if we can do that offline, it’s not just like a mere anxiety management tactic. It’s like you plunge the roots of your soul into real metaphysical soil and you find it nourishing. And so it’s not like a kind of spiritual hedonism.
00:29:50:10 – 00:30:04:07
Unknown
Let me just accumulate all manner of good feels over here. It’s like, this is what you’re made for. Like, this is where you’re meant to take root. Otherwise you’re always going to feel somewhat detached, somewhat distant, somewhat divorced from the reality of human existence.
00:30:04:07 – 00:30:13:19
Unknown
So final thoughts. Yeah, I think it’s okay to be a little irresponsible with this, and I don’t think that’s me justifying my own parents.
00:30:13:21 – 00:30:40:09
Unknown
But but I think there’s, there’s become such an obsession, especially in the business world, with providing quick and timely answers to email. And that drives all kinds of other behavior patterns. And we simply need to begin to back up and regulate what that looks like in our lives. Yeah, yeah. And I think that you can set a case, like, sometimes people are worried about changing their behavior in a way that others will find confusing or like inconsistent.
00:30:40:11 – 00:30:56:10
Unknown
So you just have to set a digital cadence, you know, and and I don’t think that means having an automatic response that goes out like, you know, I’ll get back to you with an X number about, you know, you don’t need to tell people. You just need to show people. Right. Because showing people sets their expectations and then they can, you know, accommodate them.
00:30:56:16 – 00:31:20:20
Unknown
So it’s like, if I need something from you, I know that I have to get this email to you x number of days beforehand because I can’t I can’t expect a response in the short term unless it’s truly extraordinary. And then I might text you for it, you know? But like when you set a digital cadence, you manage everyone’s expectations and your own anxieties such that you’re free to be at the pace that you can live at, rather than the pace where others are demanding that you live at, that you can’t sustain.
00:31:20:22 – 00:31:39:21
Unknown
Well, Friends turning to you. Our dear listeners, thanks for tuning in to this roast of Father Patrick. Yeah, grateful that you listened to the Godsplaining podcast. We’re especially grateful to those of you who support us on Patreon. If you enjoyed this show or any of our the past shows that you think about it in this episode, please consider becoming,
00:31:39:23 – 00:31:59:20
Unknown
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00:31:59:22 – 00:32:17:04
Unknown
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