Life in a barrel

The writer Evgeny Morozov recently revealed his methods for limiting internet use:

… I have bought myself a type of laptop from which it was very easy to remove the Wi-Fi card – so when I go to a coffee shop or the library I have no way to get online. However, at home I have cable connection. So I bought a safe with a timed combination lock… I lock my phone and my router cable in my safe so I’m completely free from any interruption and I can spend the entire day, weekend or week reading and writing.

It doesn’t stop there:

To circumvent my safe I have to open a panel with a screwdriver, so I have to hide all my screwdrivers in the safe as well. So I would have to leave home to buy a screwdriver – the time and cost of doing this is what stops me.

What I like about Morozov is that he doesn’t think this is anything to be embarrassed about. He doesn’t even think he has an internet addiction, pointing out-rightly-that he uses the internet to discover “good and useful information”. I feel the same way, and I also find myself racked with anxiety when attempting to absorb all this good and useful information, because I’m always alive to the fact that when I’m reading something on the internet there’s another, better something that I’m not reading. There’s just too much stuff online, and it often gets in the way of learning and introspection.

There’s too much stuff offline, too. I recently took up knitting with a vague notion that would be therapeutic to create something with my own hands and help me be at one with  nature and that kind of thing. There are a lot of aesthetic and tactile pleasures associated with knitting, from the beautiful silken yarns you can use to the smooth clicking of the bamboo needles as you ‘K2, P1, K2tog’. But the only way to get good enough to progress beyond making mufflers is to actually want the end product i.e. jumpers and socks and giant owls, and I really don’t. I appreciate nice things, but I only want to own as many as are strictly necessary.

The ancient Greek Diogenes-who was the original Cynic when the word meant someone who believed in simplicity and virtue-lived without any possessions in a barrel, surrounded by dogs (cynic from kynikos, meaning dog-like), and I think he was on to something.

All the same, I’m hesitant to give up knitting so soon, because it actually is fun-perhaps I’ll just give away all the stuff I make.

Anybody want a half-finished muffler? It can also be used as a dishcloth.

In the meantime, like any good Cynic, I’ll be curating the contents of my barrel. They will probably include a laptop-and a safe.