> It would be like saying you have a healthy relationship with smoking because you don't smoke at all for one day a week, but after that you can chain smoke 24/6.

I don't buy this at all (sidenote: interesting that you decided to use a throwaway for this comment?) - taking a vacation from distractions and a smartphone even for a week helps me for months afterwards because it allows me to realize that the pull isn't important - daily use builds up the idea, being able to not use it without consequences stops the FOMO.

However if there's a magic rope round the town you can carry things outside?

And your point about taking breaks is valid.

But I agree with the parent's about not using a break as a magic elixir. You need to detach once in a while AND put reasonable regular limitations.

It's possible that both being connected and disconnected are happy, functional states for humans, and finding the right balance is the topic under discussion.

I think you're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Also, very intentionally keeping a day per week free of technology may help cultivate the skills necessary to keep it under control for the other six days. It would certainly keep it from becoming an all-consuming habit by providing regular opportunities to re-evaluate.

I'm reminded of a story a landlord told me: he didn't typically offer his tenants yearly leases. Instead he'd provide a six-month lease that would allow them to continue month-to-month without any extra fees. Why did he do this? Because the ritual of regularly renewing a lease prompted his tenants to reflect on if they wanted to continue to live in his building at all, and many would leave for places that suited them better. Removing that ritual encouraged his tenants to coast and stagnate, so he had to do much less work less to keep is building full and the rent checks flowing.

So, even if your point -- that disconnecting one day a week is still 90% as bad as disconnecting all the time -- were to be true, it's also moot because that's not an option.

If your point is conditioned upon technology, rather than work, I would ask you to determine how to disentangle the two. It's not like working into the weekend is a new phenomenon (since, as we know, the concept of a weekend was only recently won).

I'm Jewish too, and was never religious.

The parent is not selling anything, simply describing a recurring experience in a lovely way. It's not an argument or a pitch. To each his or her own.

I thought that if one did not observe certain tenants of Judaism that they were longer Jewish?

http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm

If you're "Christianed" or "Baptised" CofE and Catholics will both mostly consider you Christian even if you're an atheist by confession.

The issue is that religious actions become cultural actions. And that religious leaders claim people as their own.

People who live in Thisistan are Chrewslims; or people whose parents were Chrewslims are also that. Silly.

It is weird how culture and religion become decoupled and religious actions become cultural markers.

I am not qualified to offer an opinion on Judaism specifically, but people have been "converting" to different ethnicities for all of recorded history.

I personally have a Scottish last name; but that branch of my family is catholic, which is a little unusual, but not impossible. Tracing back the paperwork, my "Scottish' ancestor arrived in America on a boat that came from Ireland during the famous famine in the mid 1800s. Now... maybe it was a Scottish person who just happened to be living in Ireland... but it seems a lot more likely to me that it was an irish dude who looked around, saw the difference in how people were treated, and gave his landlord's name to the immigration agent. I'm imagining the guy running around new york hamming up a brogue James Doohan style. But, I mean, today? I get to claim I'm as Scottish-American as anyone else, and there's not a lot you can say otherwise.

But there are countless stories like that where a person integrates themselves into another ethnicity to the point where they are accepted and they (or their children) become indistinguishable from other members of that ethnicity.

This is one of those major problems of racialism; most people define ethnicity by "looks like X" which often doesn't really line up with, well, anything.

Anyway, lying and converting seem different. Assuming an identity as a Jew and being a Jew are surely different.

Functionally, there is what ethnicity you say you are, and what ethnicity other people see you as.

I don't have a complete picture of my genealogy, and even if I did, even if I could say I was descended from some ur-scott and you could say the same of all of my other ancestors, you're still just pushing the problem back in time. People migrate. People have been migrating for as long as people have been people; You could, with enough work, figure out that some of my ancestors were in country X at time Y... but I don't think that is going to line up with your common definition of ethnicity.

If I think I'm ethnicity X and if most people perceive me as ethnicity X... well, then I very clearly am ethnicity X... regardless of what my great great grandparents may or may not have been.

It's more complex if I think I'm X but others perceive me as Y... but it's still all about perception, as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Downvotes? For stating a fact about Jewish ethnicity and religion? OK, I guess.

Alright man. It is, though. I am not sure how this is confusing to you. You're the first person I've ever met who has this problem.

What?

No.

You need food, but you can overeat.

You need exercise, but you can do too much.

It's not an irrational argument to indicate we need a day off, moreover, it's not irrational to suggest we do it at the same time.

FYI - have a look at your activity logs. Whatever business you're in, I'll bet a lot that it's down on Sunday. All our charts show a huge drop them. So we already are a little bit conditioned for this behaviour. It's worth considering nudging in a given direction.

Exercise is good, if we get our rest in between rather than do it to excess in which case we burn out and grow weaker.

Eating is good, if it supplies us nutrients and we don't overdo it in which case we become obese and suffer health problems.

Sleep is good, if we use it to function in the world well rested and don't spend all our time in bed or it can develop into slothfulness and depression.

Leisure can be good, if we don't do it all the time otherwise we likely become parasites on others doing all the work.

Stress can be good, if its in healthy amounts that stimulate rather than destroy us.

Even using smoking as in your example. Lets accept it as bad.

Lets pretend we have a friend and he's managed to cut back to smoking less than he use to.

We have two attitudes we can take:

- Berrate him as a failure because he hasn't managed to quit (saracasm: I'm sure that will be very productive and helpful)

- Congratulate him on making an improvement and support him in his decision and effort.

No, a recovery period can make a bigger difference. By the same token the recent advice on alcohol is to avoid it at least 2 days out of 7.

"When it comes to policy recommendations, it is notable that the authors recommend public health measures to reduce total consumption at a population level, such as “excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, and controlling alcohol advertising”. There is no mention of information campaigns or targeting heavy drinkers, which may be less effective ways of reducing average consumption."

The risks they found are actually very small.

"Let’s consider one drink a day (10g, 1.25 UK units) compared to none, for which the authors estimated an extra 4 (918–914) in 100,000 people would experience a (serious) alcohol-related condition. That means, to experience one extra problem, 25,000 people need to drink 10g alcohol a day for a year, that’s 3,650g a year each. To put this in perspective, a standard 70cl bottle of gin contains 224 g of alcohol, so 3,650g a year is equivalent to around 16 bottles of gin per person. That’s a total of 400,000 bottles of gin among 25,000 people, being associated with one extra health problem. Which indicates a rather low level of harm in these occasional drinkers."

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2...

Disclaimer: Not a smoker, dated smokers.