We live in an age where the gap between virtual life and real life is ever but subtly widening. An age of distraction. There are so many things calling for our attention, demanding, insisting, enticing, and intruding. Distractions lead to shallow thinking, and shallow thinking leads to shallow living. Distractions lead to shallow communication, which leads to shallow relationships.
Distraction is the true enemy of deep living, and deep relationships.
We go online to check one thing, and then another, and then another, chats, messages, comments,....one hour, two hours, four hours, and the whole day is gone, day after day. We are plugged in to this virtual system so much we forget that people are not online, not really. They are here with us, in our hearts, and in our homes, on our streets and offices, across the river and seas, living, feeling, schooling, starving, working, and getting old, and dying.
Their profiles are online but their personalities are not. Their pictures are online but their lives are not. Their words, wonderful or ordinary, are online, but their idiosyncratic peculiarities, their inclinations, tendencies, traits, struggles, secrets, and desires are neither in the black and white of what we read, nor in the color and shine of the pictures we see. We may meet someone online, but cannot know them except we disconnect from the virtual world.
Ironically, it is an age of disconnection. In the days of the post office box, this would be akin to writing a letter, putting our pictures in the envelope, and posting it to a friend or relative, with a view to, and longing for a proper visit. Now because this posting happens much easier and much faster, the illusion of adequate interaction is created.
Like the chicken and the egg -which came first -argument. That it should be an argument is amusing, as it is evident that chickens do not really come from eggs, chickens come from chickens (wrapped in eggs). And that eggs do not birth eggs; rather, they come from chickens. Eggs are the medium, chickens- the substance. (Of course the chicken came first.)
The hen may brood on the eggs for a while, but the idea is to be with her chicks eventually. She does not sit on eggs forever and form an alliance with eggs, hatching and laying and hatching ad infinitum, to the detriment of relating with the chicks thereof. Computers like eggs are dead in themselves, although existing to serve a vital purpose, it (that purpose) should never rise to the point of usurping the really living things.
It is important to be on social media, but social media cannot substitute for actual human interaction. Human beings are the substance, social media is the medium. People come first, social media second. We shouldn't stick with social media all day long and expect to know people, or to have any real family, or community life.
Man has tried to connect to man using computers, but computers cannot connect men. They don't have the capacity. They have no soul. Machines are vast, but they are not deep. They may seem intelligent, but are not sentient. Software helps us to transfer information, and that is important, but no matter how much it tries to personalize our interactions, the depths of the human being is several fathoms beneath the reach of electronics. We have only succeeded in connecting and networking computers, but we ourselves are driven further apart.
The younger generation is plugged in more tenaciously and dependently. There is so much unbridled flux of all kinds of data. The dividing line between important and trivial matters is thinning rapidly. Matters of great importance are more quickly forgotten, while we celebrate face-value events. Empathy is less felt and less understood, culture and social tact are all but non-existent. Attention span has surely dwindled. We have become computers- forever plugged in. It is a battle for the soul, and for humanity. The electronic information age has come with a heavy price, and have we counted the cost?
We have not been deficient in exploring the strengths of the internet, but we have, on acknowledging its limits.
Meet people, spend more offline time with friends, visit with family, join actual healthy on-the-ground groups, linger a bit to actually talk with people, be active in church. Folks, spend more time offline. We should always take the chance to actually interact. And if it seems to not be there, we have to make it.
Let's stop using rulers to measure weight.
Cheers.
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