By Patricia Burke of Safe Tech International, Image courtesy EPIC | Electromagnetic Pollution Illnesses Canada Foundation (EPIC) (iexistworld.org)
Nomophobia is the fear of being without a mobile phone, which can lead to Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks.
What is coherence? Does it require access to a device?
Cultures of Coherence
There is something rare and precious about driving in the Cape Ann fishing port of Gloucester, MA. The city has a culture of courtesy on the roadways, built on a foundation of attention, presence, waiting, and….yielding.
This is a coherent field.
Gloucester drivers yield to large, refrigerated tractor trailers carrying fish along impossibly narrow streets. Drivers yield, to wide turns, to trucks seeking to enter the roadway. The tractor trailers always create a delay in the traffic flow due to sheer size and weight, but drivers yield. No one honks.
If a Gloucester driver approaches a vehicle from the opposite direction waiting to make a left turn, the Gloucester driver will slow down or stop and wave the other car across its path – especially if other cars are also lining up and blocked by the turning driver.
Those that don’t yield ‘aren’t from around here.’
A friend once remarked that it is ‘totally ridiculous’ to yield to an approaching left-turning driver if you are the only other car on the road. The other driver can easily wait another minute or two and turn after you pass. But he didn’t understand the culture of courtesy and the grace of making eye contact, waving a driver through, and receiving a small nod of gratitude in return.
My friend did not perceive or recognize the unified, coherent, field – of patience and presence that nurtures the greater good – with the knowledge that the driver behind you in the rear-view mirror is also paying attention and will also yield, and not blare the horn at you. Unassisted by tech.
It’s a touchstone – of humanity.
Drivers Not Driven by Time Urgency
I think that one reason why the seaside community offers the gifts of patience, presence, courtesy and Time to others is due to the relationship Gloucester holds with the rhythms of the sea, and the Laws of Nature.
It is about Time… but not the time shown on a cell phone or ‘smart watch’, – the industrialized, inanimate, left-brained averaged form of time -which is a tool to coordinate, manipulate, surveil, control, and monetize the masses, and which is irrelevant to the rhythms of the life force and the cosmic current.
In Gloucester, locals know that the highest tide on Monday is not going to happen at the same time on Friday, or on the same day next month. Fisherman and surfers do not rely only on the Gregorian calendar which rules the modern lifestyle, or a clock out of synch with the sun. They live the rhythms of the full and new moons and the tides. The sky still serves as a timepiece.
Each interaction on and off the roads, every day, is an invitation for connection and collaborative ‘right rhythm,’ which is local, inclusive, relevant, and grounded in biology.
We have been missing the boat.
The Cut Bridge and the Art of Waiting
Drivers in Gloucester cannot predict or control when the cut bridge will need to be raised, temporarily closing the vehicle road as boats travel from the harbor to the Annisquam River, or vice versa.
On a summer day, there can be a very long line of boats and crafts of all sizes. The drivers simply wait, in a most civilized manner. Travelers not impatient and not on devices look out on the horizon where the sea meets the sky, connecting with Nature, – and yielding.
You can watch a 5-minute video of the Blynman Canal Draw Bridge Gloucester MA here – patiently, as if you were a part of the coherent field.
Every horizon, in every moment, can offer a moment of calm and integration, and a reset, not via the World Wide Web, but via coherence with the Web of Life.
We are reaching a critical choice point.
Those Lost at Sea
I believe there is another reason for Gloucester’s respect for one another and for Nature.
The names of the deceased lost at sea are engraved on the Fisherman’s Memorial, some recent. “Men [] honored here: 5368”
One of 10 plaques mounted in a semi-circle, with the names of those lost at sea, at the Fishermans’ Memorial in Gloucester MA “Numbers alone can never chronicle the loss of human life, yet the statistics reflect the magnitude of Gloucester’s sacrifice. On these plaques are the names of men known to have been lost. This memorial also stands to honor those men and ships lost without record. Men known to be lost at sea and honored here: 5368 Of the nearly 1,000 ships lost, those lost with all hands: 265, Thousands of widows struggled to survive and raise their children and many of those fatherless children entered the trade of their lost fathers. Between 1860–1906, a staggering 660 ships sank. While many of the fishermen were saved, 3880 men were lost. A single storm in 1862 claimed 15 schooners and 120 men, while another devastating storm in 1879 took the lives of 159 men.”
Maybe these losses are one reason why many locals do not delude themselves into believing that humans, machines, or technology are detached, or separate from, or superior to the natural world. There is no illusion that some portion of humans at a distance, with tech, can or should be in control.
When Exiting a Coherent Field: Harmonizing with Incoherence
It is usually not possible or safe to practice “Gloucester driving courtesies” in other locales, because the coherent, unified cultural field is not present. It is especially not possible when approaching a driverless vehicle, or with a car following too closely behind, or a driver on a device, who is not integrated and present. Off island, over the bridge, safety and courtesy are not sustained by others because ‘the field’ is often one of detachment, rushing, and/or competition.
In living history, over the last few decades, humans have shifted further and further into these incoherent energies.
It’s about our inattention, distraction, and our devices.
Outsourcing Attention, and Response-Ability
While driving, those rushing, and those on screens, do not recognize that they are outsourcing the responsibility for their safety and the safety of others – to others on the road.
Attentive drivers have to be on the lookout for cars that are not staying in their lane, with drivers who are distracted and in a state of incoherence.
Technologies, as currently adopted by humans, have created this culture, and it is getting worse, not better, and it’s not only on the roads.
When in the gym, a portion of patrons will be sitting on machines, texting or scrolling or adjusting their music, oblivious to the effects on others in the space, – who are waiting.
In the grocery store, some portion of shoppers will be talking on the phone or looking at the phone while heading down the aisle, or stopped in front of some section of the store, oblivious to others in the area, – waiting.
Some portion of walkers on the rail trail will be talking on a cell phone or texting, and looking at their device, outsourcing the responsibility for coherence to others.
By definition, when a human being focuses on a small screen, they are directing their senses away from the outer environment. This narrowed screen-based focus is literally damaging posture and eyesight, including in children. Screen use and social media are also disturbing the balance of brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine, gaba, and acetylcholine.
We are no longer aligning with one another in the present time and place, fully embodied in all of our senses, nurturing the greater good.
The cost of lack of integration with both the inner and outer environment and with each other is unfathomable.
The number of humans at any one point in time who are wholly aware of their environment, of others, of nature, of their own bodies, is at an all-time low on Earth – due to devices.
“Smart Meters: My Name is Marguerite”
Over a decade ago, I witnessed coherence, community, and compassion when wireless smart utility meters began to be installed in Maine. A sweet elderly woman contacted our Massachusetts activist group asking for help. She started to suddenly collapse in her kitchen after a wireless smart meter was installed. Her son contacted us also, explaining that she was in her 80’s and perfectly healthy until the day the meter went in. Her family had reached out to many decision makers including industry, ecology groups, and politicians involved with the deployment of smart meters, to no avail.
Her fourteen neighbors, upon hearing her plight, immediately chose to opt out of having a smart meter installed on their homes. They were not willing to accept that the supposed energy and cost savings were worth the price of destroying their neighbor’s health.
This question of smart meter harm should have been addressed decades ago. In the meantime, deployments continue, and decision-makers in some areas are prohibiting the practice of opting out, and/or imposing punitive surcharges.
This represents an incoherent, unstable, unsafe field that must be sustained at great expense, through falsehoods, manipulations, and abuse of power.
We are safer, in all ways, when everyone is watching out for others and for the coherence of the field, and not lying, exploiting, or treating others as collateral damage. Device use is sustaining an artificial reality about the safety of wireless tech – to sustain wireless tech. AI will not solve this.
The Art of Pausing – With and For Others
What do humans usually do when forced to wait, – that new behavior adopted the last two decades?
Humans detach, and scroll, and text, individually, everywhere.
We didn’t realize what the consequences were of screen-centric behaviors adopted during the pandemic, and the harm it has caused to the” field” of our consciousness.
Whether intentional or accidental, a growing portion of the population is either drunk or drowning in wireless frequencies, including children.
We face countless choices every day, about how to fill spaces in time.
We have been acculturated to look at a small screen that in itself seeks to manage and control our reality, just as previous generations were acculturated to smoke cigarettes. Both have been justified as beneficial to health.
Excessive “device-ing” is an increasingly unconscious and addictive choice, altering our reality, not for the better.
Right vs. Left Brained Consciousness
Part of this unbalanced dynamic has been caused by loss of right-brained, holistic processing discussed here recently by Kate Kheel of Safe Tech International. “The 2009 treatise, ‘The Master and His Emissary, The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’ by Iain McGilchrist discusses at length how the different world views of the left and right hemispheres of the brain impact us both individually and as a society.
The left sees the world in parts, is detailed oriented, and has a single-minded focus on achieving a given task. In Iain’s words, it favors, “manipulation – grabbing, getting and controlling” and is an inanimate universe. It’s like a map of the world which leaves out the sentience, flavors, and nuance of the actual world. The right hemisphere sees more holistically and senses our interconnectedness with all life. Iain explains, “[It] sees not the representation but the living presence.” The right brain understands that life is ever morphing and evolving, and experiences an animate universe of richness, complexity, potential, and imagination. In principle, the two sides of the brain complement one another enabling us to go about our daily activities and accomplish necessary tasks (more left brain skillset), while still sensing we are part of a grander interconnected and integrated living system (a right brain skillset).
Iain opines that since the Enlightenment, our Western civilization has moved increasingly to the left (i.e. left-brained thinking), “…drunk on the belief that it knows everything and can fix everything.” – Kate Kheel
(See the 2021 4-minute overview of the book about the asymmetrical brain with Iain Gilchrist here. See the entire 1-hour interview here. See the Feb. 2004 46-minute Creed Culture interview with Dr. Iain Gilchrist here. In this episode, Luke and Iain discuss his work, focusing on the importance of rediscovering the sacred, viewing the world holistically, and engaging the imagination alongside our reasoning faculties.”)
AI is a force multiplier of the imbalance between right and left-brain processing.
Replacing ‘Sailing Too Close to the Wind’ with ‘Digital Sobriety’.
There are an increasing number of efforts emerging towards establishing coherent fields, by challenging inaccurate narratives about tech, including wireless.
# 1 Digital Sobriety, To Protect Nature
Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the effects of RFR on the nature environment.
On April 17, Arthur Firstenberg of the Cellular Phone Tack Force published his alarming narrative “Whirling fish, bees, worms, sheep, turtles, penguins; More Than Fifty Species Of Fish Circling And Spinning Until They Die” culled from reports from the public – i.e. citizen science. See his other newsletters here.
See also: Microwave News
https://microwavenews.com/short-takes-archive/review-emf-and-rf-effects-flora-and-fauna
#2 Digital Sobriety, to Protect Children – It’s Still a Man’s World
Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the effects of RFR on pregnant women, infants, and children.
Read about how cellphones are tested on a dummy – that represents the head of a male military recruit: We Are Not SAM.
Regarding mental health, John Haidt’s “After Babel “ Substack (free to all subscribers) chronicles his extraordinary research around the supposition that “the transformation of society in the 2010s was not caused by anxious college students. They were simply the “canaries in the coal mine” — the first generation whose social lives have moved onto smartphones and social media platforms. As soon as they did so, in the early 2010s, an epidemic of mental illness began.” Learn more here.
#3 Digital Sobriety, Regarding Neurological Health, EHS, Brain Cancer, DNA Damage, and More
Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the non-thermal effects of RFR, assuming that the only mechanism of damage is heat.
See the Bioinitiative Report 2022:
The Return of Reason: Replacing NOMOPHOBIA (Fear of Being Without a Cell Phone) and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) with LOMO (Less on Line – More on Life)
Those not yet actively questioning technology and technocracy are outsourcing responsibility for the safety of the Earth and humanity to those who are not ready, willing and able to confront an incoherent worldview.
Wireless, in particular, is a harmful environmental pollutant. Nature does not recognize placing radio frequency transmitters on wildlife as conservation, or AI’s grotesque water and energy consumption or carbon credits as progress towards stewardship. Technology harmful to biology is violating the Laws of Nature. Promoting AI alongside scarcity and carbon narratives, and smart grid/smart meter manipulations that deny access to basic services when needed, is obscene.
We face a perilous crossing.
Digital Sobriety and Scientific Diplomacy
As individuals, we can begin reclaiming our own habit fields, to move towards digital sobriety and scientific diplomacy in response to real world damage already unfolding.
Most likely we can and will continue to use devices and technology, but first we need to backtrack to hold ourselves accountable for coherence, true inclusion, and safety.
From mining to energy consumption to water use to disposal, we have unleashed a tsunami of outsourced damage, with new sights set on colonizing and exploiting space -competitively.
We need to make our choices and decisions about tech more conscious, more inclusive, more ethical, more truthful, and more protective of nature and human health, everywhere.
Screen Time (Perhaps) Can Recede to its Rightful Place
One way to start is to hard wire wherever possible as the first choice (especially in schools), and the minimize using screens and devices when in motion, for example when driving and walking.
There are so many good reasons and opportunities to forgo screens altogether, or to share screen experiences, rather than seeking faster, more ubiquitous wireless connections.
“Red, right, returning.” This Earth Day, more than ever, we need to call ourselves home.
“The real energy crisis, which exists upon this world, is the spiritual energy crisis and if this was solved all other crises would cease to exist” – George King – Western Master of Yoga
Image courtesy EPIC | Electromagnetic Pollution Illnesses Canada Foundation (EPIC) (iexistworld.org) To order bumper stickers and other LOMO items, send an email to epic@iexistworld.org.
Great post!