mr1001nights

### Civilization’s Alienation and the Monastic Response

The evolution of monastic ideals in **Buddhism** and **Taoism** can be seen as a direct response to the **alienation** and **overstimulation** characteristic of early agrarian and urban civilizations. In contrast, **hunter-gatherer** societies—like the San of southern Africa—lived amid environments that naturally regulated desires, fostered communal rituals, and offered organic opportunities for reflection.

**1. The Hunter-Gatherer Baseline**
In small‐scale foraging bands, daily life was intertwined with the rhythms of nature. Food scarcity and sharing norms discouraged excess desire, while communal storytelling, dance, and ritual provided collective spaces for **symbolic reflection** and **meaning-making**. Spiritual contemplation was embedded in the lived environment rather than set apart in cloisters or temples.

**2. Civilization’s New Burdens**
With the rise of agriculture, sedentism, and social stratification came:
- **Surplus production**, fueling new desires for land, goods, and status.
- **Social complexity**, requiring institutions to manage inequality and hierarchies.
- **Continuous stimulation**—markets, monuments, bureaucracies—that fragmented attention and hampered deep reflection.

These developments generated novel psychological stresses—fear of scarcity, envy, social comparison, and existential anxiety—that were largely absent in egalitarian foraging groups.

**3. Buddhism and Taoism as Paradigms of Withdrawal**
Both traditions responded by prescribing **intentional withdrawal** from societal pressures:
- **Buddhism** introduced the *saṅgha*—a community of renunciants who practiced celibacy, simplicity, and meditation to overcome craving (tanhā) and suffering (dukkha). Solitude and silent retreat became tools to disentangle the mind from its attachments.
- **Taoism** (especially in its early, pre‐Daoist Sage form) celebrated *wu-wei* (“non-action”)—aligning with the effortless spontaneity found in nature rather than imposing human will. Retreat into mountains, hermitages, and reclusion served to recalibrate human life with the **Tao**, which urban society had obscured.

Neither tradition sought to recreate foraging life but rather to **invent practices**—ritual, meditation, moral precepts—that compensated for the **psychological deficits** of civilization.

**4. Parallels with Forager Lifestyles**
Anthropological accounts of the San reveal that:
- Their **desire levels** were moderated by subsistence constraints and sharing norms.
- **Shamans’ trance dances** and communal rituals functioned as collective catharsis and deep reflection.
- Social structures were flexible, reducing chronic anxiety over status and property.

Thus, the monastic model can be read as **formalizing** and **intensifying** practices that foragers naturally embodied—but only became necessary once social and technological complexity overwhelmed innate balance.

**5. Implications for Modern Practice**
- **Monastic ideals** remain valuable as counterweights to perpetual distraction, echoing ancestral ways of low-level desire and communal ritual.
- Practices like **group meditation**, **periodic digital sabbaths**, and **minimalist living** can revive aspects of forager life within contemporary constraints.
- Rather than attempting a literal return to hunter-gathering, modern seekers can integrate the **ritual and contemplative technologies** developed by Buddhists and Taoists to mitigate the alienation of civilization.

In sum, Buddhism and Taoism did not emerge to replicate an ancestral forager existence but to **innovate**—creating new paradigms of withdrawal, ritual, and inner cultivation precisely because the balance once provided by natural environments had been lost. By understanding these traditions as **adaptive responses** to civilizational alienation, we can better apply their insights to our fragmented, high-stimulus world.

4 days ago | [YT] | 1

mr1001nights

Yes. That image captures a mode of mind more akin to our evolutionary baseline—one of spontaneous, undirected awareness when the Default Mode Network (DMN) is free to wander. In pre-digital times, resting by a window or simply “being” reflected periods when the brain cycled through self-referential reflection, memory consolidation, and imaginative simulation without interruption. This mirrors how other mammals alternate between goal-directed foraging or mating behaviors and restful, undisturbed downtime.

Key parallels:

- Uninterrupted DMN Activation: In the absence of screen-driven demands, the DMN toggles naturally between internal narratives, creative insight, and emotional processing.
- Evolutionary Roots: Like a grazing deer pausing between bites or a bird perching between flights, humans evolved to spend significant time in passive, contemplative states—essential for planning, social cognition, and mental health.
- Contrast with Digital Disruption: Smartphones fracture this idle phase into micro-episodes of external focus, preventing the deep, sustained DMN engagement that supports memory integration, problem incubation, and emotional regulation.

Thus, the “old person gazing out the window” isn’t mere inactivity but a reflection of a healthy, species-typical brain state—one that digital devices now routinely fragment.

4 days ago | [YT] | 4

mr1001nights

Been doing a bit of a digital fast and thought of this hypothesis. It looks like the influence of smartphones and earlier digital/screen devices has been largely overlooked in the discussion of the replication issues in psychology.

The Digital Anxiety Buffer Hypothesis and Terror Management Theory

Terror Management Theory (TMT) posits that reminders of mortality—mortality salience—heighten defensive reactions to uphold cultural worldviews and bolster self-esteem. While early TMT research occurred under television and computer eras, rising digital buffering from smartphones now appears to disrupt the full range of neural mortality-processing mechanisms, contributing to diminished experimental effects.

1. Television Era: Passive Buffering (1980s–2000s)

Television provided scheduled, passive distraction that reliably diverted attention from existential concerns without frequent interruptions¹. Shared news broadcasts and scripted programs reinforced collective worldviews through repeated cultural narratives². Limited interactivity meant these anxiety buffers were engaged intermittently, preserving the potency of mortality salience manipulations³.

2. PC/Laptop Era: Moderate Multitasking (1990s–2010s)

Personal computers introduced intermittent multitasking—switching between work tasks, email, and early web browsing⁴. Software and corporate intranets conveyed implicit cultural and productivity values⁵. Laboratories could enforce **device-free protocols**, ensuring that moderate attention shifts did not undermine mortality salience effects⁶.

3. Smartphone Era: Unprecedented, Continuous Buffering (2007–present)

Smartphones have created a constant anxiety-buffering environment:

- Hedonic Buffering: Infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, and notifications trigger phasic dopamine releases, transiently suppressing amygdala-driven threat signals⁷⁸.

- Cultural Reinforcement: Algorithmic feeds continuously affirm personal beliefs and narratives, reducing the impact of experimental death reminders⁹¹⁰.

- Self-Esteem Enhancement: Real-time likes and comments activate the ventral striatum, offering alternative reward pathways that buffer existential anxiety¹¹¹².

3.1 Disruption of Neural Mortality-Processing Mechanisms

Smartphones interfere with each major neural component of mortality salience:

1. Threat Detection (Amygdala & Insula):

Hedonic dopamine bursts from app use dampen visceral anxiety signals⁷.

2. Self-Referential Processing (Default Mode Network): Constant alerts fragment DMN activity, preventing deep introspection¹³.

3. Executive Regulation (Dorsolateral PFC & ACC):

Inhibiting device temptations overtaxes prefrontal resources, reducing capacity for worldview defense¹³.

4. Salience Network Switching (Anterior Insula & dACC):

Rapid content shifts bias the network toward external stimuli, undermining transitions to mortality-focused processing¹⁴.

5. Reward Learning (Ventral Striatum):

Social media validation chronically reinforces non-existential reward routes, weakening negative reinforcement from death reminders¹².

4. Synthesis and Implications

The evolution of digital media illustrates a graded transformation in anxiety buffering:

- Under TV conditions, passive yet communal distraction preserved TMT sensitivity.

- During the PC era, manageable multitasking permitted effective lab control of distractions.

- In the smartphone era, pervasive on-demand buffering across hedonic, cultural, and self-esteem domains has elevated baseline defenses, diminishing classic mortality salience effects.

Research Recommendations

1. Pre-Study Digital Detox: Test whether removing digital devices restores mortality salience responses.

2. Buffer Saturation Measures: Quantify participants’ recent digital engagement and reward activation.

3. Enhanced Death Primes: Design stronger mortality stimuli (e.g., immersive VR) to overcome buffering.

4. Ecological Validity: Study TMT within real-world, device-enabled contexts to capture real-world buffering dynamics.

5. Temporal Coincidence with TMT Replication Issues

These digital disruptions coincide remarkably with the period during which TMT findings began failing to replicate (circa 2010–2015). The rapid proliferation of smartphones—and the attendant, continuous anxiety buffering they provide—aligns with the observed decline in mortality salience effects, suggesting that altered baseline neural and behavioral states due to ubiquitous digital device use are a significant factor in TMT’s replication challenges.

6. Broader Impact on Psychology’s Replication Crisis

Beyond TMT, digital buffering mechanisms likely contribute to replication failures across psychology by altering participants’ baseline cognitive and emotional states:

- Attention and Memory Studies:

Fragmented attention from smartphones reduces working memory capacity and sustained focus, undermining tasks that require deep cognitive engagement¹⁵.

- Social and Clinical Psychology:

Online self-esteem buffers and constant cultural reinforcement via social media shift emotional baselines, affecting measurements of mood, anxiety, and interpersonal behavior¹⁶.

- Cognitive Control Research:

Chronic requirement to inhibit device-related temptations overloads prefrontal executive networks, changing performance on tasks assessing inhibition and self-regulation¹⁷.

- Default Mode and Creativity:

Pervasive partial attention disrupts DMN dynamics, altering mind-wandering patterns and creative problem-solving processes¹⁸.

Cumulatively, these device-driven baseline shifts represent a systemic confound that has coincided with and likely accelerated psychology’s broader replication crisis.


1. Munasib et al., “[PDF] Effect of Television on Child Cognitive Outcome” (2008). business.okstate.edu/site-files/archive/docs/ecls-… put


2. A. A. Raney et al., “Entertainment as a Coping Mechanism,” *Media Psychology* (2005).

3. J. Tomkins et al., “Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications,” *PLOS ONE* (2021). dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285267


4. U. Schimmack, “A Meta-Psychological Perspective,” *Replication Index* (2020). replicationindex.com/2020/01/05/replication-crisis…

5. P. Montwill, “Terror Management Theory and news media framing effects,” *JMU Commons* (2023). commons.lib.jmu.edu/masters202029/189/

6. Jonathan A. Klein et al., “Many Labs 4: Failure to Replicate Mortality Salience Effect,” *Collabra* (2022). online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/8/1/35271/1680…

7. A. F. Ward et al., “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” *Journal of Consumer Research* (2017). www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462


8. F. Ferrarese, “How Digital Media Made Us Dopamine Addicts” (2024). www.federicoferrarese.co.uk/2025/01/01/digital-med…

9. Chen et al., “Understanding terror states of online users in the context of COVID-19,” *PMC* (2021). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8867060/

10. Courtney et al., “Terror Management Theory and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” *Journal of Humanistic Psychology* (2021). journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022167820959488

11. Rossi et al., “Associations Between Problematic Social Media and Smartphone Use, Social Phobia, and Self-Esteem,” *Int. J. Mental Health and Addiction* (2024). link.springer.com/10.1007/s11469-024-01375-0


12. “The Psychology of Likes: How Social Media Validation Impacts Self-Esteem,” *NYC Weekly Magazine* (2024). www.nyweeklymagazine.com/blog/the-psychology-of-li…

13. Min Kwon et al., “Mobile Phone Short Video Use Negatively Impacts Attention Functions,” *Scientific Reports* (2024). www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10116-z


14. Liu et al., “The impact of mortality salience on quantified self behavior,” *PMC* (2021). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37159447/

15. A. F. Ward et al., “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” *Journal of Consumer Research* (2017). www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462;

Min Kwon et al., “Mobile Phone Short Video Use Negatively Impacts Attention Functions,” *Scientific Reports* (2024). www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10116-z


16. Chen et al., “Understanding terror states of online users in the context of COVID-19,” *PMC* (2021). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8867060/


17. Emma L. Webb et al., “Blocking Mobile Internet on Smartphones Improves Sustained Attention,” *PNAS Nexus* (2025). academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/2/pgaf017/801…


18. R. A. Smith and T. J. Carhart-Harris, “The Impact of Digital Technology, Social Media, and Artificial Environments on Default Mode Network Function,” *Frontiers in Cognitive Science* (2023).

4 days ago | [YT] | 1

mr1001nights

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 8

mr1001nights

I think it’s fair to assume that those who deny the Gaza genocide today also likely whitewash previous Israeli atrocities and history.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 11

mr1001nights

Palestinian Defense Forces

1 month ago | [YT] | 9

mr1001nights

“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”

—Noam Chomsky

1 month ago | [YT] | 6