“Be ye not conformed to the world”— Digital and Otherwise

My story of unconformity

I sometimes use a typewriter for first drafts. Read the piece I was working on in this photo here.

Digital minimalism is a hot topic in the digital universe these days. You can find dozens of blogs and Substacks online talking about how bad it is for you to be online. Paradox? Yes. But a somewhat necessary one.

“He that has ears, let him hear.” While we try to have more than just digital ears, these media forms are where most people are listening. “Faith comes through hearing. How can they believe if they have not heard?” Saint Paul asks. Therefore we preach in the digital city square — at least sometimes.

One couple who understands this are Peco and Ruth Gaskovski, writing at The School of the Unconformed. There, they explore how to experience the real in life, encourage you to knit your own socks and raise pigs, and discuss bringing up children in a home which moves at truly human pace.

In a recent post they asked for others to share their “stories of unconformity.” So that is what I will do today, in the hopes of inspiring others to take up practices I’ve found to be life-giving — and as an honest look at my own life to see how I could fill it with more of the juicy joy of reality. (Oh, and Peco and Ruth say they’ll give anyone a free subscription for sharing their story of unconformity!)

Is this enjoying nature or exercising technological mastery over it? (BTW, it’s really hard to fly a steep turn like this and look at the camera!)

Thinking about Tech

What technology is, and what our relationship to it is or ought to be is more than a dissertation-length topic. It’s a life-long topic, and one that will be answered — only partially — by the very wise.

That being said, I believe it’s fairly obvious that the past seventy years, and even more so the past twenty years, have seen a rise and advancement of technology quite different in effect from anything present in previous ages.

The fundamental effect of “mastery of nature” techniques ranging from hormonal contraceptives to polyester fabrics has been to alienate us from each other, from ourselves, from our health, and from the living of a life that is full of growth in love and wisdom. The curiously named “smartphone,” invented less than twenty years ago and now tyrannically ubiquitous, represents both the pinnacle and the depths of modern — and specifically digital — technology that has changed our relationship with nearly every aspect of life.

“Every aspect of life?” you ask, perhaps skeptically. Well, name one aspect that the smartphone has not affected for most of its users. Sleep? Its glowing blue screen disrupts our circadian rhythm. Sex? The phone has become a limitless library for pocket pornography. Communication? Distracting us from physically present interlocutors, the phone prioritizes texting over speaking, promotes faceless interactions over face-to-face ones, and allows us to be constantly interrupted and interruptible. Religion? Both as a conduit of bad news and immoral content and as a simple distraction from being present in a real place at a given moment, the phone makes a recollected prayer life doubly difficult. Education? The phone builds up a kind of wall between the generations, making it hard to find access to children anymore. Banking? I can’t do it without a passcode. Shopping? Scan the QR code. Travel? Since they are never asked, and they never had to bother with it, no one knows how to give directions anymore—only Google maps does. Government? How convenient for the CIA that they can listen in on your conversations, and pinpoint your location should it become advantageous to vaporize you (I’m not claiming we’re there quite yet, although we might be; we’re at least well on the way).

Intentional agency is in high evidence in this bow built and used by a student of St. Martin’s Academy. (Photo: Julian Kwasniewski)

Agency and Experience

My purpose here is not just to put down phones (in both senses). My point is that we must acknowledge the effects of a technology — phones first, but also cars, pencils, razors, aspirin, and so on — if we are to retain our dignified place as agents over those effects, the ones who control rather than the ones who are controlled.

All of the above does n ot mean that I think phones are unmitigated evils. Perhaps the disadvantages are so great, and so intimately tied up with the thing itself, that their potential for good can never be fully extricated from their tendency to problematic use. But it does mean that we had better think carefully about when and where we want to use them (or any similar technologies). And that we should try to discover how life can be richer if they were a lot less present.

Essentially we want love and communion with others; we want knowledge that builds us up; we want to care for and create good things, from children to pencil sketches, from chicken runs to governments. Each of these things requires tools and technologies, and will enable us to strive for our ends in various ways. To aim at our ends in a fully human way, what we need is intentional agency over our lives, to the extent that that is possible. In saying this I am not proposing that we be “control freaks.” When God created man, he tasked him with a certain amount of control: “Till the earth and keep it.”

There are many ways to “till” our lives and our environment. Some are better than others. That question of what “better” means is the technology question. Here’s what I’ve found “better” to mean in my life.

Technological Communication

To those who say that it is impossible to live without a smartphone, I have this to say: “I have never owned one. I have traveled internationally without a phone or even laptop computer. Don’t believe the lies you hear.” Incidentally, my father has also never had a smartphone.

Some of the ways I regularly chip at the ever-encroaching means of digital communication:

• Flip-phone use. On my flip-phone, I can call and (clumsily) text. It has a decent voice-recognition feature for texting, which I use for longer texts if such is unavoidable. Group texts don’t work well on a flip-phone: any time I text someone I was recently in a group text with, the message is sent to everyone unless I start a new thread. This has sometimes resulted in lots of friends calling me when I thought I only texted one of them “call me.” A pleasant surprise!

• Preferring cold-calls to friends instead of texting. I can text, but I often call friends without texting them first. I’ve never had someone ask me not to do this. They reserve the right not to answer if they are busy or don’t want to talk. I myself won’t answer if I don’t wish to. No one has a right to reach me when I don’t make myself available, and I don’t have a right to reach anybody else. If there is some question of needing to be “on call” for an emergency or a trip or something like that, then that is easy enough to communicate ahead of time.

• Not checking my email on weekends. I’m pretty consistent about this. I just don’t. If I’m not working, I’m rarely on the computer. And it’s really nice. Why would you need to check your email? I’d be missing out on life! The only way you’d not be missing out is if your life was only on the computer. And how sad would that be?

• No internet at home. My parents made the decision not to have wireless internet at home while my sister and I were growing up, so that we’d spend our time reading, doing art, playing outdoors, and the like. When we needed the internet, we’d walk downtown to the library or to my dad’s office. I have not paid for internet at the various apartments I’ve lived in as an adult. That saves money, and it keeps work at the office. If I want music, I can bring my computer home and play music downloaded off of Spotify. And my flip-phone doesn’t have a hotspot capability.

My friend Chris Carter (far left) oversees the production of wooden planks by high school boys at St. Martin’s Academy. (Photo: Julian Kwasniewski)

Work and Finances

This is where I live by more of a double standard than I’d like to. Nearly all my work is on the computer. Whether it is writing this article, or doing graphic design or photography, my work mostly starts and ends on the computer.

I’m hoping to move away from this over time, but for now that’s the way it is. I’d love (in theory, at least) to cut down my own trees to make my own boards to make my own furniture, run a small farm with livestock, or bake bread as some of my friends do. Perhaps at a later date. There are, however, specific things I’ve done to improve my work:

• Advertising through posters. Although I could get paid advertisements via Google ads for my photography work, I’m not sure the results would be worth it. And it would mean giving money to Google. So instead, I’ve created printed posters with my contact info, and spread them around town, in coffee shops, the public library, etc. I’ve gotten several gigs because of them!

• “Take a hike” in the middle of the week. This is not as consistent as it should be, but I often try to make Wednesday a lighter work day with time for nature so that I break the cycle of five-days of straight screen time. Refreshed, I can return to my computer having exercised my body and my power to live away from the screen.

• Sometimes drafting articles via typewriter. Earlier this year I was lent a typewriter in excellent working condition. Since then I’ve drafted about six articles on it. I enjoy this because it allows me to work outside where a screen would be washed out by sunlight. I like it because I can see every part of my page at once—nothing is scrolled into oblivion. The fact that you can’t immediately correct or change what you’ve written leads to more deliberateness. And later, when I enter the piece into the computer in order to prepare it for submission to a magazine, I appreciate the line-by-line opportunity for revisions, the attention I can then give to that first complete draft.

• Renting my car out. Using Turo, I earn nearly passive income by letting others use my car when they, as visitors and tourists, really need it and I can manage without it. It’s easy for me walk around my small town, but they can’t walk around Wyoming. This allows a “surplus,” namely my car, to be used more efficiently, providing a service, and encourages me to be on my feet or my bike.

My finances are a work-related area that I’ve recently become more intentional in moving off-line. Of course I have electronic bank accounts, but…

• Doing finances on paper, without a calculator. I re-organized my finances by taking a sheet and tabulating my living expenses solely on paper, doing all the addition in my head. Not only did the math part of my brain wake up after years of dormancy, I felt like I knew my expenses more directly. If I’m trying to be particularly frugal one month, I’ll keep a sheet in my pocket and write down every expense on it, even if it’s an electronic one.

• Using cash for monthly shopping. This also makes my spending much more apparent to me. I take out the amount of cash I want to spend on groceries and coffee shop visits at the start of tnhe month. Those $20 bills disappearing over the counter make me feel a lot more like I’m spending a resource than tapping a card could ever do. I also like that using cash encourages businesses to resist going completely electronic. If part of their customer base is cash-only, they won’t want to lose those sales.

• Depositing checks in person. I could do the drive-through deposit, and if I had a smartphone, I could deposit checks remotely. Instead, I always go into the bank, and have a brief interaction with the clerk.

Being creative with finances is progressively more freeing, as it allows me to keep more irregular hours and prioritize my priorities, only one of which is making money. The Buy-Me-a-Coffee donation page that many of you have kindly donated through is, to my mind, a great example of using digital technology to further a life away from it. Thank you for saying “thank you” in this way!

Fried trout with bacon, peppers, onions, potatoes, and almond slices.

Sustenance and Self-sufficiency

I can’t say that I’m exemplary in this realm, mostly because I don’t own and operate my dream homestead—and if I did, I’d probably find it a bit of a bore. When it comes to food, however, here are some things I’ve done:

• Volunteer at the local farm. One of the primary produce farms in Lander has a “workshare” program, where you help them harvest on Friday morning for the Saturday farmers’ market. In exchange for five hours of weeding and harvesting, I get a basket of fresh produce and a farm-cooked lunch. I just started participating this summer, and I’ve enjoyed seeing the process and especially eating the ultra-fresh food the farm-wife cooks for us all.

• No microwave. I grew up in a household that never had one (even as we didn’t have a TV), and I never intend to have one. They are convenient… but so weird. And the extra step of warming something up in a pan, even if it makes the meal a bit slower, offsets the tendency to gobble down food and rush off to the next thing.

• Cooking from scratch. This is not particularly intentional, but most of my meals start as raw meat and raw vegetables. I cook them. And that’s that.

• Barter coffee for reviews. Okay, this is not infinitely sustainable, but I did obtain some free coffee for the sake of writing up a good story (which you can find in this article). If anyone reading this owns a coffee company, you are most welcome to send me some and I’ll write about it!

• Fishing. I like trout fishing, and I usually eat what I catch. You can read more here.

When it comes to clothing, my fiancée has been influential in reminding me to prioritize natural fabrics. It might sound silly, but artificial fabrics and tight underwear are one of the causes of the record low testosterone levels of men today. A serious case can be made for throwing out all your polyester underwear and replacing it with cotton boxers (if you’re a guy) or investing in bamboo bras (if you’re a lady). Microplastics from polyester and rayon enter the bloodstream and act as hormone blockers and endocrine system disruptors.

• Only natural fabrics allowed in the wardrobe. Almost. I rarely buy synthetic materials or even cloths that are partly polyester or rayon; otherwise it’s got to be cotton, wool, or linen. I make occasional exceptions if there is something I just can’t find otherwise, or if it’s a super-lightweight hiking shirt. Even then, I enjoy flouting the customary decalogue of contemporary camping “wisdom” that forbids anything but synthetic materials because of their tendency to dry slowly. You can be smart and safe in the wilderness and still use flannel, cotton, and wool, as great explorers did for many centuries.

• Thrifting. Why would I pay $75 for a new shirt when I could pay $5? The main drawback is how little suitable men’s clothing there usually is. I walk into a Goodwill, pass the eight aisles of women’s clothing and finish browsing the two rows of men’s items fifteen minutes sooner than any woman I’m with. I occasionally buy new clothing online, but even then, you can find unused items for much cheaper on sites like Poshmark.

• Don’t wear T-shirts and branded clothing in general. I’m not your billboard, and if I was, you’d have to pay me to wear your stuff, okay NIKE? Nobody in his right mind should pay money to do free advertising for other people, helping them to get rich on their logos.

• Avoid Amazon. I don’t have an Amazon account. If I need something from that site, I ask others who have accounts to buy it for me and I pay them back. That might just sound like I’m being both annoying and unprincipled, but it’s a compromise: you can find things on Amazon very hard to get elsewhere, but rather than furthering their grasp on everyone, I let those who choose to use it use it, while I don’t give them my info.

Two Wyoming Catholic College students on an outdoor trip. (Photo: Julian Kwasniewski)

Recreation and Relation

I have nothing against watching a good film…now and then. Here are some various ways I’ve tried to intentionally enhance my relaxation.

• Clock-off time. I sometimes intentionally remove any pressure on myself to eat dinner by this or that time, or to do anything in particular when I’m trying to spend time intentionally with those I love. It’s really lovely, and encourages one to just be. Then I’m free to look at the stars if I want, or go to the store for juice or a snack. No efficiency required. No bed-time required.

• Not turning all lights off when watching a movie. In the interests of not being completely sucked into the screen and also offsetting the blue-light, I usually have one or two small lamps on whenever I watch a movie so the room is dimly lit but not pitch dark. I think this helps to keep the screen in its place, and not let it completely monopolize your attention.

• Getting outside. I believe this is a good thing in any form. Canoeing? Great! An e-bike ride? Great! A hike? Great! Laying on the lawn and looking at the clouds? Amen!

• Leaving the phone in the car for hikes. This is not unsafe. Most of the places I hike don’t have cell reception anyway, and the safest thing you can do (which people have always done) is to let people know where you are going, set a time you’ll be back, and especially hike with a companion.

• Air-conditioning. Speaking of the c ar, I try to avoid using the AC in my vehicle when possible, rolling the windows down instead. I want fresh air! If it is really too hot for that to work, only then I use the AC.

• Practice the lute. Relaxation includes embodied art and music-making. I have played the lute for years but it’s hard to find time for it in the midst of busy weeks. The leisurely pursuit of art and music is something I would love to develop more in my life.

• Read physical books and print online articles. It is so relaxing to curl up with a cup of coffee in the morning and read a book that smells of paper. I can hardly focus sufficiently to read articles online, so when I see a good one, I print it. And then I try to get around to reading it!

Sunset near Frye Lake, Wyoming. (Photo: Julian Kwasniewski)

Future Joy

I don’t share all of this to virtue-signal or to brag. I know that I’m not perfect, that I don’t do many of the good things there are to do (or even do the above things as consistently as I’d like), and that other people have different needs and priorities when it comes to being unconventional. However, I do want to share that portion of joy I have discovered in this haphazard pursuit of mindful unconformity. I hope you can discover a joyous unconformity as well — your own, unconformed flavor of unconformity!

In consideration of the work that went into this article, and in furthering the joys of unconformity, please consider putting $5, $15, or $25 in my tip jar: