the dark truth is that it's become very hard to find anyone and certainly anything more interesting than a smartphone we love our phones and would never want to give them up but we're all probably also gently aware that these delightful gadgets bear hidden cost to say that we are addicted to our phones is not merely to point out that we use them a lot it signals a darker notion that we use them to keep our own selves at bay because of our phones we may find ourselves incapable of sitting alone in a room with our own thoughts floating freely in our heads daring to wander into the past and the future allowing ourselves to feel pain desire regret and excitement we are addicted to our phones not because we rely on them but to the extent that we recruit them to a harmful project of self avoidance they don't mean to hurt us but we may and probably do use them to injure ourselves addiction sounds horrible but it's a hard name for a normal inclination a habit of running away from the joys and terrors of self-knowledge we can look up so much on our phones we can if we're inclined check out the population of Lima 8.7 3 million who won the ladies final at Wimbledon in 1997 Martina Hingis the definition of tautology saying the same thing twice though in different ways or perhaps the author of that fascinating quote what you survive makes you stronger Nietzsche yet this constant resource has an unwitting unfortunate side-effect we consult our phones rather than ourselves it's not that we actually know so many obscure facts it's that we already possess in scattered unpolished forms the raw material from which a huge number of the very best insights and ideas could be formed if we gave them enough time and attention almost since the beginning of time we have prized the opportunity to get away from reminders of humanity and to immerse ourselves in nature we've wanted to gaze on a grey indifference of the ocean or the bright incalculable immensity of the starry sky but our phones are the enemies of such experiences they keep intruding are small selves into the picture we might be on the edge of the Grand Canyon they are beeping in our back pockets we may be gazing at the southern slopes of the Matterhorn they are receiving updates for a food delivery app back home they ask us never to forget our ego and the endless things that al us without meaning to they strip away the help that the grandeur of nature can offer us we constantly use our phones to keep track of our appointments but we are if we think about it quite constrained around the things to which we choose to be alerted there's the automated reminder of the session with a dentist the alert to jog our memories that it's our parents anniversary or the text message to let us know which you to play tennis match on Sunday afternoon but there are other very different appointments we need to keep in mind we need reminders to keep appointments with ourselves we need to spend time with our own worries to understand them rather than just suffer the anxiety they create the grandest and much the worst is our final appointment with death we don't know how many days we have left to countdown but what we need reminding of is not the day and the hour but the fact ideally we'd get a message every morning memento home oak we are pull this s a tin Pulver M River Terrace remember you are made of dust and will be dust again our phones seem amazingly sophisticated small miracles of compressed practical science working hand in hand with advanced capitalism we think so highly of them because we compare them to the past rather than to the possibilities of the future they are so much more advanced than any device we possessed twenty or forty years ago yet our phones are almost unbearably primitive in comparison with what idea the long future will bring we are still so far from inventing the technology we really require for us to flourish capitalism has delivered only on the simplest of our needs we can summon up the street map of Lille but not a diagram of what our partner is really thinking and feeling the phone will help us follow 15 news outlets but not help us to know when we've spent more than enough time doing so it emphatically refuses to distinguish between the most profound needs of our soul and a passing fancy in the Utopia of phones will be wiser than we are they will be kind and not merely subservient they will know how to address away from a stupid decision and how to summon up our better natures we deserve pity for having been born in such primitive times we publish new thought-provoking films every week be sure to subscribe to our Channel and take a look at more of what we have to offer at the link on your screen now