Friday, April 13, 2012

OUR BODY PARTS NOW ON DAILY DISPLAY

There are always new buzz words in any culture. All part of the zeitgeist with which we live, learn and love. Until, that is, the next buzz words. In the last many years one of the buzziest is: "Connectivity."

With the arrival of the Internet about 25 years ago, virtually everyone on the globe has discovered a variety of digital ways to connect with virtually everyone else on the globe. Any time, any where. Just check your body parts for proof. The hand holding the smartphone...the ear plugged into the receiver ...the eyes which they say will soon be wearing lens by which to connect with any source you need.

But now here's the thing. The inevitable thing that always seems to prove that too much of a good thing is...well you know, a bad thing. Neuroscientists have shown how today's staggering amount of activity can quickly overload our prefrontal cortex and its100 billion neurons. Put in layman's terms: It's one of the reasons we often feel drenched in a sense of clutter, confusion, self doubt, and not knowing how to clear our head of all those thoughts which keep tumbling around in there.

Sometimes it's simply time to dis-connect. Another way of saying what people have been saying for pre-Internet centuries. I gotta get away for awhile!

There is always the standard vacation to seashore and mountain country. Lately there is also the net-cation by which people turn everything off for a few weeks. But now comes the phenomenon of gated communities. Like the one in Sanford Florida which has roared into the national news.

Currently 100 million US housing units, or 10% of all homes, are in gated communities. You have to wonder. As our modern world hurtles proudly forward with bold new innovations...why are we retreating back into what we once were, huddled in medieval castles and frontier forts?

As if we needed to be reminded -- progress is never a straight line.

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