I recently read Ted Rall's latest opinion piece "A Fate Worse Than Death" (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucru/20050824/cm_ucru/afateworsethandeath ). He argues that we're commiting cultural suicide by converting all information to digitalization. He points out how there are serious storage flaws with digital technology, and we may lose too much information too quickly before we can record everything that is important. This may be an exaggeration, I don't know. But this reminds me of an insight I had when I was in college.
I was in history class, and something occured to me. Historians typically record the past as though it's a linear timeline. Well, the future keep moving forward, no? So the amount of events to record increases more and more. Will there be a point where it's too much? In the past, natural disasters, and man-made ones, or just time itself, eroded the records our ancestors made of their times and accumulated knowledge. Of all the seven wonders of the world, we have only the pyramids to remind us of past glories. Even those monuments have faded, compared to how they used to look, towering white limestone structures blazing in the desert sunlight, they're now just a big pile of crumbling bricks on top of sand. Who knows how much knowledge was lost when the library of Alexandria was burned down? Or how about the canon of books lost during the Crusades, or during other conquests? Perhaps another disaster will wipe out our logs, leaving people of the future wondering what life was really like in good old 2005.
As we've left the industrial age and are full swing into the information age, there's so much going on that it's become increasingly difficult to sort out what's meaningful.
No one knows all the facts, so we are in constant need of experts who specialize. With computing technology speeding up in efficiency at an exponential rate the cyber-world is taking on a life of its own.
This change is maddening, no? This was a theme in a lecture by Jon Kabat-Zinn. He was talking about how this speed influences us. We are great at processing information, but we don't receive training for our attention (hence, meditation). We go through our day, thinking about work, chores, endless tasks, acting on automatic pilot. We're not aware of our actions in the present, and we miss the space in which real life happens. We have no lives, in other words. The more time is saved by labor saving devices, the more opportunity we have to be productive. It's not that we won't stop, we can't stop. We have to maintain the system or it will crash. Remember, no machine can eliminate work, because energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Machines only speed up work.
Zinn doesn't believe we can turn back time. He prescibes being mindful of this flow, lest it sweep us up into a whirlpool of madness.
But I want to address a potential misunderstanding of the Buddhist discipline of mindfulness. The Buddhist solution to our modern woes is not to be a more sensual person.
In Indian philosophy, there isn't a duality between mind and body. There is a triad - mind, body, AND spirit. Buddhism and Jainism are full of warnings about the dangers of sensual indulgence. The middle way is to neither deny nor indulge, but to do what's necessary to keep our body alive, at least until there is realization. It's there in Greek philosophy as well, known to the ancients as "sophrosyne" or moderation.
Look at American culture today. We are an alienated, overworked, confused people. We cope by escaping anxiety through random pleasures. We meet so many people, but instead of lasting friendships we get associates coming and going, coming and going. Our news rarely focuses on issues that affect our lives, and instead on gossip, sound-bites, slogans, and the cult of personality.
What should we do? Slow down the machine of mindless consuming, sure. And meditation, yes, is wonderful. But let's have a clear understanding of what meditation is for. The senses are a fine instrument for interacting with the world, but not the only vehicle we have to enjoy life. The exclusive focus on things plays into the consumer machine that needs us to spend money on objects to feel good about ourselves. Ever hear the saying "the best things in life aren't things"? It's true.
