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+> For the listener, who listens in the snow,
+> And, nothing himself, beholds
+> Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
+
+-- Wallace Stevens
+
+I mentioned in [a recent post][1] that we often spend a good bit of time "doing nothing". Certainly more than we used it. Early on on this trip we ran around and did things. And sometimes we still do, but I would say less than we used to. These days, so long as it's a wild enough spot, we're happy hanging around camp, walking whatever trails or seashore might be around and generally doing "nothing". 
+
+In the post linked above the "nothing" is staring out at the sparkling waters of Pensacola's East Bay, but it could be anything really. I spent hours watching the pine forests of Colorado, the deep woods of Mount Shasta, the deserts of the southwest, the rocky stream beds of Utah, the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. We stare at campfires almost every night. 
+
+But watching the world, observing the natural environment around you isn't really doing nothing. It took me quite a while to internalize that, even if I might have *said* it from the beginning. I've come to recognize that there's a big difference between saying something and actually knowing it through experience. 
+
+Staring at nothing isn't doing nothing. It so happen that watching the world in silence isn't something our culture considers valuable and so you and I have been trained to casually dismiss it as "doing nothing". But the more I've done it, the more I realized that sitting, "doing nothing" is actually, possibly, the secret of the world so to speak. Whatever it may be, I can say from experience that it's incredibly valuable to me now and has helped me grow by leaps and bounds as a person.
+
+I also think it offers a practical, easy way out of many of the social messes we've created for ourselves.
+
+There's a lot of windbags out there criticizing the internet, especially social media, for fostering narcissism, consumer culture, intellectual bullying, and whatever other social ill gets their particular goat as it were. But it's rare that said windbags have any good ideas on how we can counteracting these forces beyond turning off the TV and internet. 
+
+To be fair, that does work. Especially turning off the TV. Few things will improve your life so dramatically as throwing your TV out the highest window you can find (making sure there's no one below). 
+
+The internet though is more neutral in my view. It can be good, it can be bad, it all depends on you and how you use it. In my case I have to use it, it's how I make money to live this way. And sure I can say oh I'm only going to look up whatever technical thing I need to look up to solve a particular problem, but that ideal is very different from the messy relaity that the internet is full of interesting stuff to stare at. 
+
+\l
+
+Observing nature is not nothing. 
+
+Which is to say all the things we as a culture don't want to talk about right now.
+
+You and I find ourselves born into a declining culture. A culture that is what Spengler would call the end of an abstraction phase that will soon start swinging toward 
+
+
+is a bit more complex than that. If you want to still use social media, try first developing humility. One easy way to do that is to create an active practice cultivating humility, for example, pending time in quiet observance of nature. Spend some time realizing that most of life care not at all what humans think, say or do, is helpful in 
+
+seems like it would require an active practice.
+
+spending time in quiet observance of nature is one practice that helps me. I would be curious as to your opinion of which habits of religion or culture–intentional or not–led to greater humility.
+
+[1]: