As I noted in my last post, we are all living through truly historic times. Whether it is the geo-political situation, the economy both here and abroad, climate change, advances in science and medicine, or any other number of areas, there are some real game-changers emerging. We have not slouched into this new millennium; seismic events have hurled us into and through its walls.
Yet how many of us have spent any serious time thinking about, reflecting on, and assessing these many and varied changes? It seems that the concurrent rise of technology has turned us into a nation of addicts. After years of resistance, I bought my first smart phone a couple of months ago, an iPhone, and I must confess that I, too, have become addicted to it. But I have also become so dependent on the device that I can see how easy it is to lose one's perspective on the outside world. And how can we change the world if we don't fully understand it? How can we understand it if our eyes are glued to our iPads? Do these new and amazing gadgets make us happier and more fulfilled human beings, or do they make us even more narcissistic than we already are?
What is at risk, I fear, is the total collapse of community itself. Without honest reflection and moral assessment, we will become a nation of self-absorbed individuals, a collective of gadget-dependent cocoons who interact with each other in virtual rather than actual ways.
I, for one, will take a flesh-and-blood embrace over a text or an e-mail any day.
Beware the Kryptonite: It's all fun and games until the power goes down. Remember 2003 when the entire Northeastern grid went down? How quickly we forget. I'm not sure I've read about a plan to make the grid redundant. I did, however, just get an update in my Facebook status feed that West Palm Beach Fla only has 3 weeks worth of water supply left for its residents. Water and electricity are very basic things we all take for granted. It's just so easy to bring us to the point where we're useless, what happens when the power goes out and we can't Google how to turn it back on? I guess it won't matter to anyone living in West Palm. Google can't fix dehydration.
ReplyDeleteYes, we do forget all too soon. I think that if everyone went without water and electricity for just 24 hours, their lives would be much clearer, more simplified, and far richer. Hey, what a minute--that's what we're urged to do on Yom Kippur every year. Maybe those rabbis were on to something....
ReplyDeleteNiles, your blog post reminded me of the steps I took to eliminate email from my life. For the most part, it's worked. http://ow.ly/5Iv5z
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kris. That is a noble aspiration which I myself have yet to achieve!
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