Tick, Tick, Tick, Tock - Part II 7/26/2009 5:05:59 AM
In my previous blog I posted I discussed living in the moment. I, therefore, found it très synchronistic when I read an article a day or two later in a health care newsletter discussing the very same thing. About UNPLUGGING ourselves from technology and finding PEACE.
Before I get into the rest of this post, I thing there are some good points to all this connectedness. I do feel that on a Zen Level all this technology is analogous to how people are--at a deeper level and has been taught down through the ages--connected. That there really are no boundaries to where “we” end and another “begins.” I’ve read in metaphysical texts that the burgeoning technology also makes it harder for nastiness to hide. The texts were referring, at the time, to the old Jonestown Massacre and other atrocities at home and abroad during the 60s and 70s. That the media is everywhere and will root these things out and make them public, much like any of the much more current situations. So, I think all this technology is preparation, on a Zen Level, for all of us to learn and get our collective acts together so we truly can come together at far more deeper, metaphysical level, and move forward as a species in way we could never do in any of the “old ways” and structures. Heck, look at this new game where you control little balls WITH YOUR MIND.
But that said...
I don’t have a cell phone. I like it that way at the moment, though realize that sometime in the future I might very well have to get one. It’s enough dealing with all the web applications, like Facebook, Twitter, websites, iPod technology, and the most Unholy of Unholies: E-MAIL. I do jest when I call them Necessary Evils, because in the Technology Age, much unlike Ray Bradbury’s recent “To Hell With The Internet!” comment, they ARE useful to today’s world.
I don’t like being constantly connected. I feel there is truly no peace and a helluva lot more stress in peoples’ lives today with all the technology and not being alone with one’s own thoughts. Much created short attentions spans. What seems to be the growing inability to deal with PEOPLE. Always looker at “greener grasses” on the “other side.” After all, how much “in the moment” are most of us with our technological wizardries--outside of whatever it is we’re playing with, that is? I watch many people with those they’re PHYSICALLY with, and they always seem to be playing on some gadget and never with those they’re...beside. I intentionally chose that word.
How are you WITH the person you’re actually alongside?
Look at iPods. Are many of the owners ever with their own thoughts? Use at the gym, sure, but every waking day, walking, biking, or driving?
Now, I admit I’m certainly exacerbating the argument, because, hopefully, many are not so technologically addicted as to behave so badly (at lest I hope)--those in my own family who are “connected” seem to deal with it all in a “good way.” But the discussion is still out there, because there are these articles out there, like the one I cited above. The same article also listed ways to unplug, not unlike what many more “Luddite-minded” (my New Word of the Year!) propose:
Disconnect yourself from all your technology and simply...BE. Even if it’s only a few minutes (five, ten, or more minutes at a time).
Learn to really (as I detailed about in my last post) live in the moment [to this I add: without technology].
Choose face-to-face contact for communication if at all possible.
And to these I add: SLOW DOWN. It’s not always about speed. There’s much to be said about the old saw “Stop and smell the roses.” It’s not a race to the finish. Why just yesterday, I was a fifteen year old wondering what I would be doing post-2000 (I’m quite beyond that age now!)....
These are good things. For many it’s MUCH easier to jump down someone’s throat or rip em a new one through an e-mail or a text. But, hey, talk to them in person, or over the phone, and it’s a slightly different story. Learn tolerance and compromise. It’s not ALL about YOU. Sometimes it truly is about someone else....
So, as the moments flow into each other, and we experience them throughout our lives, it again comes to...what do you want to do with the rest of your existence?
