I wake up, and now suddenly, this is what’s on my mind. Why? Who knows.
First of all, it feels important that we not get preoccupied with, or confused over, which medium (or even multi-medium) that we create or use. It’s too easy to blame the messenger, and in this case, you can’t blame television or the internet for creating a seductive alternative to reality. Instead, you need to recognize the potential it has, and you need to deliberately create and live an alternative to that, one that supports a higher goal of the self, and best off that it be one that supports a benevolent environmental, or communal view.
So why wonder about, or even discuss it? Is it a potential threat to anyone? Somehow, it feels like it might be at the root of something. For example, people are fascinated by technology when it is new. (And then again, when it is old, too.) It is a distraction to think about the medium. The best analogy I can think of is when you’re telling somebody a story that is really iimpotnt to you — it just feels so significant to you that you’re bursting to get it out of you, and the words can’t seem to come out fast enough, and y ou’re just riding on that energy — and then you discover that the person you’ve been talking to is wandering, they’re no longer exercising that option to give you their full attention. They’ve instead divided their focus between you, and something minute — like the pattern of your speech, or they’ve interrupted you to discuss a technical aspect of what you’ve been saying, instead of staying locked onto the main point with you.
They’re replacing the experience of being in the same place with you, with a fear of committing to the listening process.
Why? Are we, culturally speaking, fearful of newness, or new thoughts, ideas, that we must latch onto distraction? Do we really love to obsess over technology, or is it just a distraction that works as a barrier to intimacy the way eye contact (or avoiding it) does for so many people?
Sometimes life seems like our attention is there, when in fact, it’s not; and it’s not technology that’s taking that away from us; it’s us, not acting or living deliberately enough to create focus.
We shall discuss this at length. But we shall begin to do so, by expressing very short ideas: namely that we are becoming a culture of overwhelm.