A “surrogate activity”, according to uncle Ted, is a species of artificial or simulated goal that has nothing to do with one’s survival or betterment. It could really be anything, and I hesitate to give any examples due to my own culpability in pursuing them. They’re activities that drain you of precious time, and distract from broader or more fundamental matters concerning your own survival, or civilizational survival. I think he paints with too broad a brush, branding political activism as one example. I get his meaning, though. Entire generations have made political activism their identity, and their naive, schizoid pursuits are spiralling society towards an oblivion that they, if they could see it, would look at in horror. Aside from the Lockean ‘Appeal to Heaven’, it is clear that never-ending political agitation is a black hole of our precious time. On the Right, a flood of articles, tweets, blog posts (ahem), podcasts, and other media, create an Augean stable for millions of people to wade into, and get caught in a riptide that they never leave. The politics of the day, the scandals, et cetera, become a hypnotizing distraction from the real goal of building a better world.
Extreme technological progression of the past two decades has converted convenience into the most powerful opiate ever to have existed. Our phones, computers, televisions, all have become the surrogate activity summum bonum, pushing out almost everything else. Even activities that Ted looked down on seem deeply meaningful in the face of this new artificial pursuit.
