In the new Kurzgesagt video We Found a Loophole to Survive the End of the Universe, the narrator speculates that an intelligent race that could upload their minds to a digital utopia might "activate their pleasure centers and experience perfect bliss forever". If the purpose of evolved life is to evolve, this would seem to be a dead-end. I prefer to think that progress might continue forever, always striving for some unreachable ideal state, at least until we can figure out what our post-evolutionary purpose might be.
We seem to be currently sliding toward a digital utopia but without the benefit of individual immortality. Addictive entertainment such as YouTube Shorts is providing the intermittent reward dopamine hits of a slot machine. If we choose videos that are educational entertainment, "edutainment", we can get some long-term benefits from our investment of time.
In our family, we moved our Digital Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. This seems to work better for our children as it gives them a chance to recover from school on Saturday by playing computer games. Sunday then becomes the day to focus on homework assignments due on Monday that were put off the day before.
I tell the children that they can get on their laptops on Sunday if they are doing homework, blogging, coding, drawing, or otherwise creating. I think that it is important that we are not just consuming content but also synthesizing it to produce new works. They say you learn more by doing.
I am concerned that many retirees are spending their final days watching old television shows when they could instead be volunteering, sharing their wisdom through writing, or otherwise contributing in some fashion that they find self-actualizing. As someone who never has enough time to work on all of the projects that I want to, it is hard for me to understand those who are satisfied with merely consuming and never contributing. Rather than as a rest stop on the way to heaven, I see my future retirement as a potential producer paradise.
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