Walk on! Weekend thinkers about Rational Sheep topics

A quick tour of some symbolic screens-culture subjects to ponder

Raise your hand if you like to walk.

Raise your hand if you are over the age of 65 and would like someone to start a Substack offering advice about the best shoes for people whose aging feet have seen better days. OK, we can get back to that another day.

But here is a serious question: What do you do when you walk alone? Think? Pray? Look at (hopefully) scenery and wildlife?

Or are you always “plugged in” while on your walks?

In the latest evidence that it’s possible to go back to the future, some young people (on TikTok, of course) have come up with a radical idea — “Silent Walking.”

Honest! Check out this headline: “'Silent Walking' trend has Gen Zers opting for a device-less stroll.” Here is some of the key material, followed by a quote that is almost too perfect to believe:

Podcaster Mady Maio takes credit for “unintentionally starting a movement” that, she promises, will “change your life”. In a video on Tiktok, she explains her boyfriend was the one who first challenged her to take a walk without any distractions.

“No AirPods, no podcasts, no music. Just me, myself, and I,” she said in the video, which has now gained almost 500,000 views.

Ready for that perfect quote? Actually, it’s several quotes edited into a thesis statement:

Ms Maio said the first two minutes of her walk were “mayhem”, until she hit a “flow state”, when “suddenly you can ... hear yourself.”

You know, it’s even possible to hear a still, small voice of another kind while walking. Try it.

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Now, the opposite of “Silent Walking” would have to be attempting to get things done in a house containing small children. This is especially true for parents who would prefer not to plug their kids into screens-culture devices (a sanity-seeking strategy that, in the long run, is going to backfire).