So THIS is Progress?

The following is an article written a couple of years ago.  (I’m going back to a lot of older pieces and trying to update them as I post.)

Consider these two quotes as you read:

Henry David Thoreau (”Where I Lived and What I Lived For” Walden): Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify, simplify! … Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose…Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Albert Einstein: I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

So now my kid wants a TV and/or PC in her room. What’s the rest of the house for?

Today, the guy next to me at the local tire store wore an MP3 player as he worked on his laptop. (I sat, jealously, reading a People magazine from April of last year.)  After that, I went to the market and had to dance with a lady on the bread aisle, unbeknownst to her, to get around her.  She was engaged, on her Bluetooth, in a cellphone call and seemed really agitated about getting the right muffins.

My baby boy won’t use a manual toothbrush.  To present him with a colorful wooden toy confuses him, and he will press all over to see what will spur the sorting blocks to action.  He hops up to the computer at night when we’ve all gone to bed, and I am awakened by tapping keys.  What is this?

Still, I find myself feeling pulled to return to work from my stay-at-home-mom status in order to keep myself and family up to snuff on more commercialized, metallic-crusted electronic and wireless crud.  We do like to stay busy.

 But is this progress?  Personally, I would take Thoreau’s advice for our society — Simplify.  Sounds easy enough, right?

As I walk around, I see that all of this technology, this extra wealth that we’ve acquired has caused such self-absorption and only spawns the “need” for more.  To the delight of the wireless companies, parents are actually buying into the hype that every member of the family — including your elementary school-aged child — needs a cellphone.  And every home must be wireless, have a gameroom, a living area, a den, a study, and a three-car garage to accommodate all of this sssssstuffffff.  Are we Americans actually so obsessed with “progress” that we can see no further than taking care of our day-to-day business while acquiring as much as possible?

“I need the cell phone so I’m accessible (to people, on a whim).  I need the IPod because I listen en route to work (God forbid I think or read or talk to a stranger).  I need cable because regular TV stinks (yes, it’s that important).  I need a laptop to do my job at home, on the couch (because 9 hours at the office wasn’t enough).”  There is no end.

We have an insatiable appetite for maintaining our personal space while tapping into information and entertainment with the use of the coolest, state-of-the-art gizmos.  We want the most advanced gadgetry, we say, for the sake of expediency and efficiency…uh-huh.

I spent two hours yesterday trying to find out why my PDA wouldn’t sync, and then lost all of my updates when I pushed “reset.”  And I am totally unable to delete any email…ever.  I am a virtual packrat.  It’s as though I have two garages — one connected to the house and one on my PC — that need spring cleaning. 

But it’s not all a mess.  I impress myself sometimes with my efficiency.  Needless to say, I’ve learned that I don’t even have to look at other parents speaking while punching in all information at a PTA committee meeting.  I can’t tell you what even one of the moms looks like, but they know me by my constant downward gaze and grimace.

But one thing I’m beginning to suspect is this — that our quests for the latest and greatest may actually be driven less by greed and more by — *gasp* — boredom.  (That’s right — technology and its gadgets are just toys, folks, things to make life more interesting and break the monotony of our tasks.)  This technological quest can easily result in a frantic and fruitless life, and a plethora of AC adapters and rechargeable batteries.  I think that my baby’s toybox is filling up faster with our old tech gadgets than with McDonald toys.  Even he is afoot around the house, with finger in ear, muttering, “You’re cutting out…” In Whitman’s words, “the little actor cons another part.”  LOL

 EAch 24-hour period has been condensed for us into neat little bytes.  Through “space saving” and “time management,” we have allowed the technology industry to digitize and defragment our daily routines to the point that we are forgetting how to simply step out and bask in a given moment.  We fly from completing one task on one piece of equipment — that is, figuring out how Tivo remote works — to another — uploading new iTunes to the player or uploading our digital pics - to weighing in and measuring out body fat on the Tanita scale — and running series of ongoing, never-ending tasks.  As Mike and Harvey Robbins explain, “There is an obscure phrase in psychology for the tension caused by unresolved, uncompleted tasks — the Zygarnic Effect…(that) left to itself, uncompleted tasks slowly paralyze individuals.”  In essence, we are creating frustration in our daily lives with these ongoing tasks because we have an innate need for closure on things, like virtual calendars off which we cannot physically “X” the days, setting alarms on clocks that never wind down, countless voicemails through which we must sift before they build up, and then CallNotes at night, the anxiety produced by our inability to answer every page or text message sent to us.  The list goes on and on…and on.

For instance, when the farmer has milked the cow for the day, that job is over.  He pats the cow, gives her some hay, takes in his bucket, washes his hands, and feels some accomplishment that the job is completed until tomorrow.  He even gathers up a couple of eggs and gives a smile as he evaluates them while marching in.  Somehow, deleting a document or a call just doesn’t satisfy in the same way.  We have too many cows and need too much milk.  It’s too virtual.  We need hands-on, tangible tasks, not more of them. 

There’s a reason why farmers and craftsmen love what they do.  It’s not just self-reliance or pride in their work.  Simplicity is also key.

Our immediate gratification is less so today.  It is measured instead by the speed at which we have manipulated each instrument and thrown it back into our pockets.  And kudos to those savants among us who can do it all without consulting a manual.  The rest of us are left feeling a bit tested.

I mean, look at the term “virtual,” as re-introduced to modern society by those awkward headband goggles of the virtual gaming experience of the ’90s.  According to American Heritage Dictionary, the term “virtual” means, “Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name.  Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.”  With no ability to tangibly create or to truly manipulate through tactile means, it’s no wonder we feel somewhat powerless and need to further micro-manage every aspect of our lives.  It’s a quest to COMPLETE something and a basic human need to CONNECT. 

Sometimes it seems that vanity is a factor in this obsession.  A lot more people keep nicer manicures now, and reading glasses have made quite a comeback.  Everyone wants to be perceived as an executive to some degree, even if all he runs with such aplomb is his own life.

I think we’ve lost the pleasure of sunlight hitting our coffee cups in the mornings, of the sound of only the swing on the porch as we watch the sun set, of a homecooked meal instead of one pulled from a box, of talking in the evenings around a table instead of each heading to her own bedroom to do what she thinks she enjoys.  Case in point — ever feel sensually excited at the smell of paint and the idea of actually rolling it onto your walls?  Does the smell of manure and the grit under your shoes when walking in Home Depot’s lumber department leave you feeling heady? Maybe we need to put down the Blackberry and rejoin the real world.

The best memory I have is of our family’s daily routine — my doing homework with a paper and pencil, the lead darkening my fingers, and the feel of the wood; this, as my father read the constantly crunching paper and my mother browned beef in the kitchen and sang.  The smells and quietude recalled make me warm and fuzzy, longing for those simpler times.  I remember simply swinging in the backyard and feeling my ponytail hitting the ground while I twisted in a circular motion that felt like forever, to the sound of cicadas.  My boys at this age are popping out batteries from the charger and cleaning their screens with their sleeves… :/

I’m afraid my kids have very few of those moments free from mental noise and LED visuals.  Sometimes I get irritated and pull an earplug out of my child’s ear, just so he can hear how loudly he’s addressing his brother seated right next to him.  And I do feel like I’m doing a better job of parenting when my kids come in panting, sweaty and dirty.  I’m afraid they’re too clean most of the time. 

There is a certain amount of guilt we all feel nowadays if we just sit and “think” for any amount of time.  God forbid a mother should spy her child doing so today, or the child will surely be sent to a psychologist to be screened for depression or asocialism.

I decided to do an experiment and aksed my 8 year-old twins to sit still the other day and just relax.  They were given the choice of either reading or talking to me on the couch.  Honestly, we all ended up laughing because it was so foreign to our repertoire.  (We concluded tht this must be what life is like in rural areas.  The sad thing is that it’s actually much the same there as here, as technology is global.)  In the end, though, I think we opted to keep the TV off for another 30 minutes.  Score one for our family!

I’ll also admit that I had a problem maintaining eye contact with my offspring during our 30-minute “conversation” experiment.  I even noticed a new dark freckle on my twin’s right cheek.  Wow, how long’s THAT been there?  What’s more, I had to quell the urge to pick up any handheld device and go at it.  I finally figured out that, with our hands sitting still and the calm closing in on us, it was almost claustrophobic.  However, it could be a welcome daily event if we were more accustomed to it.  Heck, we might even end up getting reacquainted.  And the experiment did create a lot of laughter and revelation.  Still, the sense of urgency created in society today, along with the invasion of our personal space and the feeling that we were “wasting time doing nothing” made our livingroom lab almost painful. 

The machines allow us to escape from coonecting with another person, or at least make a conversation seem as though it occurs incidentally as a sidebar rather than a mainstay, occurring only because we’re booting something up or the batteries are recharging, or we “need to grab a bite.”  For example, when was the last time you went inside of your bank, or actually walked with your child onto the playground?  When was the last time you talked with your family somewhere other than the car, attention undivided?  However, even that’s being sidestepped with portable DVD players and iPods.

 I sat flabbergasted in my car, in the Target parking lot the other day, wanting to shake young mother crossing to her car, engaged in what was obviously a riveting cellphone call…with her knobby-kneed toddler trailing behind her, other vehicles immediately criss-crossing in traffic as he passed.  What’s become of the mother’s outstretched hand and the child’s grasping for it?  I wanted to say, “Wake up! Can’t you see? He’s only yours for a few years!  Enjoy his company now. Nothing being said on that phone could be as important as the little body following you right now.” It was disheartening, really.  Our priorities are changing, and we better start paying attention to what is right before our eyes and forget about the race we’re running to do as much in as little time as possible.

 How are our children feeling?

I’ve noticed that my girlfriends share some frustration in trying to talk to their husbands once they get home.  Watch your spouse and see if he also has the need to multitask while conversing about the day — fixing the remote, checking called ID, catching a glimpse of sports or news over your shoulder.  Many of us notice that our families, ourselves included, don’t look each other in the eyes for more than a couple of times during conversation.  You must admit that it can leave one feeling unheard, unimportant, and, frankly, unloved.

Do I seem like this to people…my husband, my kids?  Sadly, I’m sure that I do at times.

I remember the term “multitasking” when it was introduced to society a few years back, I believe by Bill Gates referring to the abilities of Windows when it was released.  However, I think the notion of doing many tasks at one time has spilled over into our consciousness as a measure of success or effectiveness as a person.  We need to think again because some of us have allowed this notion to limit our enjoyment of life as a whole. 

With all of this technology, we don’t have to look too far to see why there are so many problems in society.  Like I was reading here in the news today while browsing MyYahoo! — where was that story?  Oh, shoot!  I’ve lost my DSL connection!  I’ll fill you in later.

 By the way, this was typed on my husband’s laptop.  Just felt like I should tell on myself so that I don’t feel like a total hypocrite. I’ll admit…I’ve been a little caught up in the race, too.

~ by Galvanized on December 30, 2006.