picture in my mind

I feel really compelled to read this book.

The Winter of Our Disconnect: 

How Three Totally Wired Teenagers 

(and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) 

Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale 

The irony is that in the first place, I know of this book because of social media. There are all these bad addictive things about social media, and we all know it. But there are some really great things too! Like sharing great ideas, and giving support, and raising money, and political opposition, and power to the people etc etc. The answer, I suppose, will always be: moderation. And discussing what moderation is can be a debate all on its own.

Moderation is a relative concept, isn't it? What's moderate to you, might not be moderate to me. My sis and I were having a somewhat deep discussion just last night: someone might think going to a rock concert is not immoral, but someone else might think it is. One of my classmates was telling me about how her used-to-be-fashionable tudung friend totally started wearing drabber clothes because her Tarim-graduate fiance opposed the ostentatiousness; it wasn't like she wasn't covering up, she was just being all runwayproject about it. And here we are, buying colourful scarves by the dozen. There are really a lot of layers and variations to this. Ultimately, we all know that intentions and the heart are what matter, and it is down to the individual. So it's a case of tepuk dada, tanya niat, and if you feel your heart is pure while you're jumping in a moshpit to Lady Gaga's music, then by all means? (An aside: Recently, Gaga decided to put a cage of roaches on her head or something? O.O Please stop trying to pass stupidity as art; this is really pushing it.)

With something less extreme than a moshpit with Lady Gaga's controversially satanic music, like facebook or twitter, moderation is even more ambiguous, right? While it's not difficult to think that your intentions aren't pure if you're playing around in a foam party, it's not that easy to judge your intentions as you scroll down your news feed or tweeting. And then you start to wonder, those clarity-moments perhaps, What the heck am I doing here??? And is it just better if I disconnect completely, or am I being extreme?

At this point, I'd say it's extreme to just suddenly up and disconnect; all those friends I have :( and connections, and nice quotes, and great books. But if you're on the path of struggle and purification (on which we all technically should be!), maybe it is the right thing to do. Tepuk dada.