Computer Information Overload
We had our first significant snowfall today, not much, but enough to cause a great number of automobile pile ups on the road. One of the persons interviewed on the news said that people traveling on the highways were going much too fast for the conditions. Some of us on our stretch of streets have been trying to tell our alderman for some time now that cars are speeding. He seems to understand, having himself been a resident of this stretch of road, but seems helpless to do much about it. The speed limit for the nine blocks is 30 miles an hour and 20 miles an hour during school time but few bother with these limits. The ultimate speeding experience came today when I heard a loud noise outside. I looked out the window just to see a snowplow barreling down the road with speeds at least 50 miles an hour. He had a salter in back of the truck. The truck was in one of the middle lanes and did not have to slow down for parked cars.
Many in society, including myself, seem to be speeding through life these days. Sometime we are going too fast to see and hear what is going on around us. Maybe that is good at times since there seems to be so much going around us these days, sports, life, death, wars, poverty, violence, and Christmas shopping. It is easier to let life fly by than take it in.
When we do not take time to slow down and touch, see, hear, feel and smell life around us we can be become numb to human suffering and joy. One of the themes of this liturgical season of Advent is to Wake Up. If we are awake we can find more joy in life but also more suffering and pain. There is so much going around us, “powers that be” throw all kind of issues at us, war, street violence, environmental, like genetically modified apples that I heard about today.
Life becomes like a many channel TV where we look for the “least objectionable” program. It is easier to rationalize and justify things like racism and poverty than do something about them.
When we first got a personal computer and had access to the web, I found myself ‘surfing the web’ just looking at stuff and moving on. It was fun at first but soon I realized it just took so much time. I decided to take a very narrow and ‘monastic’ view of the web. I called it ‘monastic’ because like a monk, I wanted to take a self denying or reclusive view of what I was looking for. I tried to narrow my computer usage to learn what I needed to learn and to search for information that I needed. I tried to leave the rest of the many things you can do or discover, alone, as much as possible. However, as more things to do with a computer and more information and opinion were available this became harder to do.
With Nelson Mandela’s death I have been thinking about great men and woman of the 20th century, like Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Gandhi and realized they had one quality in common: Each one took time for prayer and meditation in their busy life. Once I heard a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. to the effect that the busier he became the more time he needed to take for prayer and reflection.
In a world speeding by maybe we all need to take more steps back into solitude and be more ‘monastic’ in our approach to life and living.
Comments
Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.