How We Are Gaining Our Smartphones and Losing Our Souls

THE ALTERNATIVE

By Reno Omokri

Without contemplation, you cannot achieve anything worthwhile in life. And the most profitable use of the mind is to understand earthly life as a means to attain everlasting life through salvation. Look at Isaac. He was a contemplator-Genesis 24:63. Moses found God while he was contemplating-Exodus 3:3. David meditated his way into greatness-Psalm 63:6. Yeshua (Jesus) was in deep communion with God for forty days-Matthew 4:2. And the entire book of Revelations was the fruit of John’s meditation.

Satan does not want you to think deeply. Because he knows that if you contemplate life, you will see through his manufactured reality of modern life. That is why billions of dollars worth of scientific research and development is going towards studying your attention, so Silicon Valley, the most atheistic places on Earth, can keep you addicted to your phone from when you wake up until you go to bed.

Watch that movie, The Matrix, again. That is you. Ten years ago, you used to wake up to pray to God. Today, you wake up to prey on your phone. Am I lying? Five years ago, you could read a whole chapter of Scripture. Today, you struggle to read one verse before going on Facebook for endless meaningless scrolling. Mo pa iro ni? A mere two years ago, you could listen to your pastor or imam for one hour straight. Today, you must check your alert every two minutes, even in church and mosque. And what is the alert even about? That one boy touched one girl’s breast on #BBNaija. Is that not so? Demons went on holiday the day phones became smart. There is no need to tempt you away from God. Your phone is doing it brilliantly!

If you cannot urinate without looking at your phone, you have a severe attention deficit challenge. You are too focused on your phone, and your phone is sucking away your smartness by constantly feeding you an array of interesting but trivial information that cannot change your life.

And in case you are unaware, the attention you give to your phone is being remotely monitored by its manufacturers. They will use that data to make next year’s model smarter, which will make you more addicted and, as a result, get you dumber while your phone gets smarter. They intend to have dumber humans with smarter phones.

Remember that movie where machines take over from humans and rule them (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)? You are living it. You are addicted to your phone. And until you cure that addiction, there will be a ceiling to what you can achieve in life. Help yourself by fixing a one hour period within the day where you put your phone aside and deliberately build your attention span and consciousness of life.

You see young people supposedly in the prime of their lives complaining that a post on X, Facebook, or Instagram is too long because it has 500 words. Now, how can such a youth succeed in life without having the ability to read due to diminished attention? Though it is cliché, it is still true and will forever remain valid that readers are leaders.

Many people cannot even remember yesterday correctly because endless social media scrolling with blue light has fried their brains. Their cognitive abilities are so eroded that all they seek is the stimulation of entertainment. That is why the number one content consumed on YouTube for Black Africans are skits and music. In Germany, it is science and technology, coding, and gaming. Please fact-check me.

Meanwhile, investigative reporting has shown that the children of the owners and founders of these social media giants are not allowed to binge on their parents’ inventions. And in China, the birthplace of TikTok, children and young adults are not permitted on the platform. In fact, they have their own sanitised version of TikTok, called Douyin, which is focused on science and learning. For the first decade since recorded history, Millions of sub-Saharan Africans will likely become less intelligent than their parents were. While youths elsewhere are coding, our own youths are being coded!

That is why I encourage our youths to acquire the habit of mindfulness in order to build up your attention. Learn to become hyper aware of yourself and your environment, If you want to be dedicated, prepare for people to call you petty. Dedication is impossible without attention to detail. And to the vast majority of people, attention to detail is pettiness. That is why most people are not great. Because they see the discipline that is required for greatness as pettiness.

You cannot be a perfect artiste like Michael Jackson, a quintessential athlete like Michael Jordan, or a cutting-edge innovator and entrepreneur like Michael Bloomberg if you are not attentive to detail. God is so attentive to detail that He numbers the hair on your head-Luke 12:7. So, when next someone calls you petty, smile and be glad. A herb looks like a vegetable to the undiscerning!

Take it from me as someone who has travelled to every corner of the globe. The average Nigerian is super intelligent and physically capable. But why is Nigeria not fulfilling her potential? There are several reasons, and one of them is because our government is either unaware or does not care about the debilitating effect of negative media on the attention span and morals of our youth. Too many Nigerian youths with big potentials are quite easily distracted from their potential greatness by mundane things like big yansh and big bosoms fed to them periodically and regularly by media like Big Brother Naija.

By banning that show, and others like it, the Nigerian government can increase the productivity and morality of Nigeria’s youth.

And that is not all. We must make it illegal for persons under eighteen to feature in and watch YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or any other video that features erotic dances and is sexually provocative. The type of sexualisation being programmed into our young children is alarming, and that is feeding the rape epidemic and abandoned children crisis in our community.

And such juveniles will grow to become Senators who fight sex toy receptionists for refusing to sell them their favourite pleasure devices.

The Nigerian Communication Commission has policies in place which provides that every GSM subscriber must be registered. So, we already know the ages of every phone user in Nigeria. Let us go the extra mile to limit access to erotica apps and websites for phones with SIM cards registered to under 18s in Nigeria. Recently, I was in Nigeria and attended a party, and the type of sexy dancing (more like dirty dancing) I saw young children dancing to the glee of their parents is appalling!

And let us spend some of these palliative billions to provide free access to apps and websites that can teach Nigerian children and youths how to code and program.

And until that is a reality (I am optimistic about Nigeria), my message for adolescents who have not had their brains turned into mush by #BBNaija is that you can:

Learn to code free at codeacademy. com.

Learn ethical hacking at udemy. com.

Learn blockchain development at udacity. com.

Learn marketable skills at coursera. org.

Learn programming at programmr. com.

And, study with Harvard for free at pll.harvard.edu/catalog/ free.

And finally The spiritual governs the physical. What is happening in your region is a response to what is emanating from the mouths of your people, especially your youth. They curse and insult so much, and Scripture tells us we are made in the Image of God. If God’s Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), why do you think your words will return to you void?

Look at your children. They cannot talk for five minutes without insulting. You have filled their heads with lies from birth about how other tribes hate them. You have twisted history to give a very biased and one sided account of very unfortunate events that no Nigerian should pray for a repeat of. So your children see their fellow citizens as enemies rather than compatriots. You have, therefore, given them poison to drink and expect other Nigerians to die.

So now, they have a persecution complex. And they expect hatred. And because you get what you expect, they are never wrong. Their negative faith means that the thing they fear most will always happen to them.

They carry about the mother of all chips on their shoulders. They read meanings to innocent gestures. And then they curse and curse and curse! But those curses are undeserving because they are founded on the lies you told your children. So they hit the cursed and bounced back to return to the curser-Proverbs 26:2.

And the result is that there is violence, bitterness, unrest, displacement, tension, and tyranny in your region.

Compare your region to the region where children are brought up to respect their elders and to bless with their speech. Do you think it is a coincidence that that region is ahead in every measurable sphere on the human development index? Politically, they are ahead. Economically, they are light years ahead. Socially, they are pacesetters. Culturally, they are ‘Bigger Than Africa’.

What does Scripture say?

“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil.”-1 Peter 3:10.

As Bob Marley said, “Who the cap fit, (sic) let them wear it!”

(And does not apply to every region in Nigeria).

Congratulations to Nigeria:

I congratulate Nigeria for the adoption of a Nigerian language, Yoruba, as a testing language for the Department of Motor Vehicles in the United States.

Similarly, since 2014, Selfridges and Harrods have been employing Yoruba-speaking staff, and the UK Metropolitan Police Service has been hiring Yoruba-speaking Constables and Officers since 2015.

Elsewhere, I have written about traversing the American continent and studying the staying power of Yoruba language and culture in the Americas. Enslaved people were taken from all over Africa, but ONLY the Yoruba language, culture, and traditional religion have collectively withstood the acculturation by European culture to become one of the most dominant cultures in the Americas and Caribbeans.

Yoruba Ifa-based Babalawo are very popular with Whites and Latinos in the Americas, and Santeria and Candomblé are two of the fastest growing religions in North and South America. They are both based on traditional Yoruba Ifa religion, mixed with Catholicism, with saints known as Orisa.

Even in modern times, music of Yoruba origin is rebranding Nigeria’s image away from 419 and romance scams. For this, we thank those who set the table and laid the foundation, especially Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey.

Unsurprisingly, all of Nigeria’s Grammy Award winners have been of Yoruba descent, except Burna Boy, including:

Sade Adu (1986), Babatunde Olatunji (1991), Sikiru Adepoju (1991) and Seal (1996), Burna Boy (2021), Wizkid (2021), Temilade Openiyi AKA Tems (2023).

Once again, I say a big congratulations to Nigeria.

Reno’s Nuggets

Reno Omokri

Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #TableShaker. Ruffler of the Feathers of Obidents. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year 2022.

Reno

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