I was reading a discussion on Reddit that posed the question:
Our parents were(are) richer, happier, and healthier than we are(will be). So what are we doing wrong?
In reading the responses I came across this answer, which was some serious food for thought. Maybe nothing groundbreaking in terms of a criticism of today’s “plugged in” and “connected” culture, but stated very eloquently:
It’s information. Access to it, people vying for your attention with it. It infiltrates your personal space and occupies the mind like never before, particularly in the “millenium” generation.
I’m sure plenty here won’t agree with me since it’s difficult to explain and wrap your head around in a short post; but it’s the volume of information bombarding the mind and the inability to (emotionally) contend with that volume of information that is driving people nuts.Go back to the 50′s, briefly. There’s 3 channels on television and radio shows are still a popular form of entertainment. That’s really the extent of your connection to the world. Granted, there was the whole atomic bomb scare, but even that pales in comparison to the numerous doom’s day scenarios we’re frightened with in the media on a daily basis (thanks Glen Beck).
Beyond your local radio and 3 tv stations, your worries really ended at the end of your block in your neighborhood and left more time to focus on building a better life.
Now, the average time someone spends thinking about things which have no impact on their well-being has been multiplied exponentially. It may not seem like much at first, but after years spent watching people die on youtube, debating angrily over the policies of another country, worrying about the opinions of your 300 facebook “friends,” or even getting upset about the points of your last comment, it begins to mold your personality.
All this information stays with you in ways you don’t realize, and invisibly shapes you until you look back and count how much thought you put into something that really doesn’t matter to your overall life objectives (happiness).
Now, we’re even taking all this information with us in our pocket, just to make sure our access to this maddening level of information never leaves our side.
So, what are we doing wrong? Not really questioning, regularly anyway, if what we’re spending time on is conducive to our well-being and simply reacting to vast amounts of mental junk food instead. Ask yourself if your behaviors and the information you absorb every day is useful. Ask how to use everything as a tool to make it useful.
I agree! I’m so addicted to blogs and internet forums. Sometimes I get a queasy feeling before i enter a discussion, I think, “I don’t really want to go here…” but I end up doing so anyway because I can’t help it!
My hope is that at the very least technology will connect us well enough that this isn’t a matter of me sitting in a dark hole in my house, but rather the positive aspects of participation and engagement are taken everywhere.
Then these methods of discussion, debate, and sharing are just one more tool in our arsenal of language, writing, speaking, living.
But so long as the computer is a confining machine, then I start to feel my involvement in these places is an unhealthy addiction.
So, hopefully this can be turned more outward, more genuinely social, more in community with those near me. Eh?
Am I naive? Heh heh.