Joe Hildebrand: I am much happier after quitting two vices

They have the potential to have serious impacts on your physical and mental health and quitting these two vices have not only saved Joe Hildebrand’s life but his soul as well.

I have quit many things in my life – almost all the sins and scenes you can imagine.

But it is the quitting of two particular vices that has done more to save my life and soul than all the rest combined: Smoking and social media.

For all the death and destruction it causes, smoking is ultimately a primal and earthly thing.

The literal consumption of fire for some brief temporal relief, all the while knowing that with each puff you bring death ever closer.

It is as emotional and irrational as it is habitual but also somehow very human – even Promethean.

I started, like most, as a dumb teenager trying to look tough or cool, and for a quarter of a century I thought I could never stop.

Then, not long after the death knell that is a 40th birthday, technology came to my rescue. I substituted smoking for vaping and pretty much every smoker I know has since done the same.

Perhaps we will now die from a new as yet unidentified disease, but in the meantime we are much happier and healthier. This is technology at its best, or at least its less worse.

Social media is the direct opposite of this. It takes something natural which is good and replaces it with something artificial which is bad.

For thousands of years – indeed hundreds of thousands of them – humans have struggled to find a way to live together without killing each other.

We have evolved and interacted, developed tribes and villages and cities and civilisations, all dedicated to the unspoken endpoint of being able simply to live.

Countless wars have been fought and lives lost to this cause.

The general rule of thumb has been that once you have killed and conquered all your enemies then finally everybody can relax. Machiavelli said as much.

This is more civilised than it sounds. The truth is that almost everybody hates war.

A famous example is the so-called “Pax Romana”, a couple of centuries in which the Roman Empire was so secure and subdued that everyone within its borders was safe at last. A British leader famously grumbled that the Romans had merely created a desert and called it peace.

An even greater empire was that of the Mongols, who built mountains of skulls from the cities that dared resist them. But for those who yielded? Frankly everything was pretty much fine.

Their philosophy was simple: Just accept our divinely ordained right to rule the entire world and nobody gets hurt. In retrospect it was a good deal.

Point being, most people don’t want conflict.

And these days most people gravitate to those who come from similar backgrounds or share similar values just as in the old days they would live in the same village – be it primitive mud huts or peasant farm holdings upon which the survival or starvation of the community depends.

I know this all sounds a bit heavy and crazy. Cavemen aren’t usual fodder for columnists.

But just imagine this endless millennia of communities trying to find each other, fighting others off, forging nations and building diplomatic relations.

And now imagine a world in which any single human can communicate with any other human from any nation on the globe and say the most outrageous or disgusting thing that pops into their head after 27 sherbets at 2.27 in the morning.

And now imagine that happening on a global platform that doesn’t just allow unfettered access between total strangers but is designed to amplify controversy and conflict.

I don’t want to ban it – Hell, I’ve done it! – but that is the situation we are dealing with.

We have created a global Kraken, unleashed before we even knew it existed, let alone prepared a collar for it.

Think about this. Think about everyone you know and love. Think about the people you live with, go to the pub or the footy or dinner parties or barbecues with.

Now think about opening up all that to someone you’ve never met but who already hates you because of something you said about climate change or cats.

Frankly human beings are simply not equipped for this, biologically, psychologically or emotionally.

We have created a disease for which we have no immunity.

But you can’t ban it anymore than you can ban a disease. All you can do is try to avoid it.

And that’s why social media is the new smoking.

Government regulation is one thing, but the only way it will truly be reined in is if it is treated as the pariah it has already become. It is something we need to quit.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to promote my new podcast on Instagram.

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Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: I am much happier after quitting two vices