Technology. It's a huge blessing in my life. I can get in touch with my friends and family thousands of miles away in an instant. There is an enormous, seemingly infinite library of information on the web, which means I never have to wonder for long about something without being able to find the answer, or at least, someone's interpretation of the answer. I can buy things without leaving my living room, and have them delivered to my door, or someone else's door. Even better, I can buy music which gets delivered direct to my computer. I need do no more than click on the appropriate "button."
And yet I wonder just how good it is for me.
By getting me used to having whatever I want as soon as I realise I want it, it affects me negatively in a number of ways:
It somehow justifies my innate impatience. If the internet connection is slow today, I get overly frustrated and annoyed. This spills over into real life too, so the times I have to wait for things to be done, or finished, or given to me become intolerable and make me grouchy.
It feeds my greed. If I can get it so easily, why should I deny myself? My self-control goes out the window. Especially, in my case, with music - at only 79p a song on iTunes, it doesn't feel as though I'm spending very much at any one time. It soon builds up, of course.
This, in turn, leads me to appreciate less what I already have. I'm suddenly excited about having the newest thing, and I neglect the things I already have. So whether I'm buying a book or music, I focus on the new and stop listening to/reading my older collection.
iTunes
I have 2000 songs in my iTunes library. How often do I listen to any one of them? Not often. I really do tend to listen again and again to the album or song I bought most recently, until I'm sick of hearing it, or it loses its impact. Then something else that's new catches my attention, or I go back to something older from my collection. But with 2000 songs to choose from, I really do lose perspective and sometimes find myself lost for something to listen to. I have been known to start listening to one album then realise it's not really what I want to hear at the moment, so I go find something else, but then that doesn't really do it for me either... In the old days, with records, tapes or even CDs, I would either have spent longer on the choosing or would have been happier with my choice. But because I'm so used to instant gratification, I'm unimpressed if there's a song I don't absolutely LOVE.
One of the great things about iTunes is that you can make up your own "playlists" so you can select the songs from different albums you like and put them together. Yet this also makes me much more impatient with the music. If I only ever listen to things I really really like, is that really good for me? In my own little world, I don't ever have to put up with anything less than wonderful. And I wonder whether I'm becoming more and more set in my ways and protective of my own little bubble and maybe actually it would be very good for me not to live on my own for a while...
And then there's Facebook.
I admit to having a love-hate relationship with this social networking thing. So, you put your picture on it, add some personal information and then collect Facebook friends. Then you add applications, which can be games to play with others, campaigns to join, vehicles for expressing yourself or creative ways of describing yourself (Which Disney character are you? Which flower are you?) And then what? You get to keep in touch with all your friends. Hmm. These would be the same friends you see at work, or the ones you normally email, or folk at church... The same people, in fact, that you see or are in touch with anyway.
Okay, there are some people I have got in contact with who I haven't seen for a long time, and at first, it's really great to "see" them. However, mostly they are people I have lost touch with because we don't have much in common any more. So they stay a "friend" and whenever I want, I can look at their profile and find out what they're up to... but there is no further communication between us. Is that relationship? Not really. So why bother then? Maybe I'm just having a "grumpy old woman" day. I do, after all, have a giggle at some of the things people write on Facebook. But even so, is my life really that much richer for it? Hmmm.
We live in a world where the expectation is for instant communication and instant gratification. I'm wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for well-thought-out correspondence here in email land. When we had to write a letter and post it and wait days for the reply, we would spend time composing it. Now we have a thought and we send it off into the ether without a second thought. I'm also wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for deeper relationships. All this Facebooking is very surface stuff and, while it may serve to keep a relationship on a certain level, it certainly doesn't develop it any further. But shouldn't real relationships should be constantly growing and deepening?
I do believe that we are losing an appreciation of the things we have when it is so easy to acquire more. And that is a dangerous thing. It encourages in us a dissatisfaction with what we have, because there's always something newer, if not better, out there. And that has to have an effect on our general attitude towards life. If others can have it, what's to stop me from getting it? And so, during the times when my life is hard work, and the world is shouting its wares at me; "happiness can be yours if you eat enough ice cream/have enough sex/fill your home with enough technology..." of course it's going to be a lot harder to resist the lure of the lies. If we give in to this mindset of having what we want whenever we want it in the realms of communication, information and online purchasing, then we will easily be sucked into having that same attitude in the rest of our lives.
So let's be careful not to always give in to the urge. Let's take a moment to think whether we really need to know that fact/buy that product/write that email. And let's bring God into all our decisions, whether big or small, so that his love and grace and peace permeate our lives and we live each day a little more faithfully to the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And I shall start with me.
And yet I wonder just how good it is for me.
By getting me used to having whatever I want as soon as I realise I want it, it affects me negatively in a number of ways:
It somehow justifies my innate impatience. If the internet connection is slow today, I get overly frustrated and annoyed. This spills over into real life too, so the times I have to wait for things to be done, or finished, or given to me become intolerable and make me grouchy.
It feeds my greed. If I can get it so easily, why should I deny myself? My self-control goes out the window. Especially, in my case, with music - at only 79p a song on iTunes, it doesn't feel as though I'm spending very much at any one time. It soon builds up, of course.
This, in turn, leads me to appreciate less what I already have. I'm suddenly excited about having the newest thing, and I neglect the things I already have. So whether I'm buying a book or music, I focus on the new and stop listening to/reading my older collection.
iTunes
I have 2000 songs in my iTunes library. How often do I listen to any one of them? Not often. I really do tend to listen again and again to the album or song I bought most recently, until I'm sick of hearing it, or it loses its impact. Then something else that's new catches my attention, or I go back to something older from my collection. But with 2000 songs to choose from, I really do lose perspective and sometimes find myself lost for something to listen to. I have been known to start listening to one album then realise it's not really what I want to hear at the moment, so I go find something else, but then that doesn't really do it for me either... In the old days, with records, tapes or even CDs, I would either have spent longer on the choosing or would have been happier with my choice. But because I'm so used to instant gratification, I'm unimpressed if there's a song I don't absolutely LOVE.
One of the great things about iTunes is that you can make up your own "playlists" so you can select the songs from different albums you like and put them together. Yet this also makes me much more impatient with the music. If I only ever listen to things I really really like, is that really good for me? In my own little world, I don't ever have to put up with anything less than wonderful. And I wonder whether I'm becoming more and more set in my ways and protective of my own little bubble and maybe actually it would be very good for me not to live on my own for a while...
And then there's Facebook.
I admit to having a love-hate relationship with this social networking thing. So, you put your picture on it, add some personal information and then collect Facebook friends. Then you add applications, which can be games to play with others, campaigns to join, vehicles for expressing yourself or creative ways of describing yourself (Which Disney character are you? Which flower are you?) And then what? You get to keep in touch with all your friends. Hmm. These would be the same friends you see at work, or the ones you normally email, or folk at church... The same people, in fact, that you see or are in touch with anyway.
Okay, there are some people I have got in contact with who I haven't seen for a long time, and at first, it's really great to "see" them. However, mostly they are people I have lost touch with because we don't have much in common any more. So they stay a "friend" and whenever I want, I can look at their profile and find out what they're up to... but there is no further communication between us. Is that relationship? Not really. So why bother then? Maybe I'm just having a "grumpy old woman" day. I do, after all, have a giggle at some of the things people write on Facebook. But even so, is my life really that much richer for it? Hmmm.
We live in a world where the expectation is for instant communication and instant gratification. I'm wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for well-thought-out correspondence here in email land. When we had to write a letter and post it and wait days for the reply, we would spend time composing it. Now we have a thought and we send it off into the ether without a second thought. I'm also wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for deeper relationships. All this Facebooking is very surface stuff and, while it may serve to keep a relationship on a certain level, it certainly doesn't develop it any further. But shouldn't real relationships should be constantly growing and deepening?
I do believe that we are losing an appreciation of the things we have when it is so easy to acquire more. And that is a dangerous thing. It encourages in us a dissatisfaction with what we have, because there's always something newer, if not better, out there. And that has to have an effect on our general attitude towards life. If others can have it, what's to stop me from getting it? And so, during the times when my life is hard work, and the world is shouting its wares at me; "happiness can be yours if you eat enough ice cream/have enough sex/fill your home with enough technology..." of course it's going to be a lot harder to resist the lure of the lies. If we give in to this mindset of having what we want whenever we want it in the realms of communication, information and online purchasing, then we will easily be sucked into having that same attitude in the rest of our lives.
So let's be careful not to always give in to the urge. Let's take a moment to think whether we really need to know that fact/buy that product/write that email. And let's bring God into all our decisions, whether big or small, so that his love and grace and peace permeate our lives and we live each day a little more faithfully to the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And I shall start with me.
© Fiona L Cooper 2009
With ability comes responsibility, doesn't it? I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed for not having more music or movies - I'm happy with the same old things on those fronts. But plenty of other things tempt me. So easy to think spending more money will make us feel better. But that whole thing of instant gratification can always find something in our personalities to hook into. It's easy for me to find access to information becoming an addiction, even when it's unimportant like much of the stuff that comes across Facebook. I'm not going to boycott it, as some people are deciding to do, but need to work to find places of simplicity and solitude within a life of distractions.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm not sure that ignoring or boycotting the thing that seeks to control you is always the best thing. But we do need to make an effort to not let it control us and I like your idea of finding "places of simplicity and solitude within a life of distractions."
ReplyDeleteAt the heart of the issue is a lack of focus on God in our lives. The closer we are to him, the less distracted we become by the things that don't matter so much.
And isn't that pretty much the answer to all of life's problems?!
And it's so easy to say yet so hard to do.. :)