Ever see a small child at Christmastime stare quizzically at the fancy new automated thingamajig, only to start playing with its wrappings...?
Seems humanity is destined -- even if it has its doubts -- to move from the simple to the more complex. Usually that's called progress. Using this definition, we have progressed enormously, and are now bristling with ever more sophisticated tools for learning, creating, oh and killing.
We wonder. Phones so sophisticated we're not always able to make a call...apps so numerous we're not really sure why we have them all...websites like this one so numerous and relentless, we can't keep up even if we cared to. Maybe more is not better after all! While kids thrill to this stuff, many adults shake their heads. But then, this counter-point is hardly new. It's precisely how progress proceeds, right...?
Right...! All throughout history there has been stunning progress side-by-side with voices concerned with complexity. In ancient Israel, dissenters like the Essenes. In ancient Greece, dissenters like the Stoics. In 18th C Europe the Luddites damning technological progress, and Rousseau calling for a re-discovery of the Noble Savage. Thoreau here in the 19th C looking at the complexities of his Boston and retreating to Walden Pond.
Our 21st C is no different, only more so. There are the "survivalist," "sovereign citizens" and "terrorists" out there brandishing guns and damning the world to hell for its sins and conspiracies. However, more of us are dissenters than we may admit. Dissent today can be subtler and closer to home. The desire to shop farmers markets...to buy organic foods...to get-back-to-the-basics...to embrace fundamentalism ....and most of all, our passion for soundbites, because, well, they just make all these complex ideas so much easier to digest.
Voila! the rise of political stand ups...cable news pundits...radio & blogger shouters. Please, for God's sake, anyone anywhere who can simplify all these complicated things and people in my life. After all, I'm out of school, and don't have to do any more homework assignments!
Here's the problem. In a democracy, school is always supposed to be in session. It's called citizenship. So while this recurring yearning to keep-it-simple is a lesson-of-life forgotten by every generation's wunderkinds, better the gorgeous simplicity of a Thoreau than a gun-toting Redneck or bomb-throwing patriot.
Simplicity is a very good thing. But good things are good only so long as you know something good to do with them...
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What a fine aweep of the general conundrum of the times and the multi-tasking informaation overload we bear each day Jack .... Indeed this 'Luddite of Weldon Pond' found solace in the words of the kindred soul who wrote them this day apparently for my general angst to find some surcease
ReplyDeleteLuddite of Walden Pond.Perfect -- just like a Canadian frontiersman would put it!
ReplyDeleteWell said Jack, well said. That's the danger of the modern world and all of its convenience. With convenience comes the increased dangers of apathy.
ReplyDeleteLets the three of us find our own Walden Pond to have a meal. But with shame I admit I would prefer a stove to an open fire. Just the city boy in me...
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