.JPG)
How many can remember when advances in technology promised to save us so much time? This information age would speed up communication to such a point that we would have oodles of free time on our hands--Automation would bring us the three-hour work week--and we would have hover-cars by 1999.
Certainly technology has given us a great deal of prosperity and a standard of living that few generations have known. But it has come with a high price, that being the spending of so much time on that which ultimately does not matter, and stifling truly intelligent, artistic and spiritual development. Rather than writing, we "tweet." Rather than reading, we are fed the non-stop assault of fast-cut video images. Rather than composing, we can simply cut and paste musical samples. Rather than taking a picture, we take hundreds of digital shots and photoshop them afterwards. Rather than meditating, we simply ignore.
What I'm getting at is that we often no longer consider what we do; we (as Nike coined) just do it. And "it" consumes so much of our time! We update blogs, websites, facebook, etc.; we watch our HD TV, listen to I-pods, Google everything, run apps on whatever, stay glued to e-mail and even text each other while avoiding personal communication! Our time is truly stretched thin; and there are a few things for which we no longer have time.
Those things include exercising the intellectual, artistic and spiritual side of our being--
We no longer have to think since thinking is done for us. The "so called" intellectual elite will take care of all of our problems, so there's no worries. And if there are any worries, you're obviously thinking too hard! Just ask our government--Washington truly believes that its elected officials were put into office to solve our problems--in essence, to think for us so we don't have to bother with that discipline.
We no longer have to create. We have programs that create for us. Whether it's visual art, music or written word, it's all just a click a way. It may not be of pristine quality, but it is "good enough." I remember when I first took a church gig, and it was expected of me to arrange, compose, rehearse and present the music. Now a days, not only is all that taken care of with a subscription service, but if one doesn't present the "ready-made" arrangements, then you are not like everyone else and are therefore suspect of unsatisfactory work.
And we have taken a true hit spiritually. Not only in our churches and families, but even in our world view and our understanding of literature and art. One simply cannot comprehend the bulk of western thought apart from the spiritual backdrop of its writers and poets. I remember my high school piano teacher explaining to me that you can see in the late works of Beethoven a man seeking God. When I recently performed Ives' Concord Sonata, I spent much time trying to comprehend the spiritual dimension of its namesakes--Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott and Thoreau. Even a reading of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings reveals a world view founded in the spiritual journey that is life; and who can begin to fathom the works of DaVinci apart from the relationship between God and man?
Yes, this technologicalmegatimemonster has delivered a higher standard of living--but it is a non-thinking, in-artistic and soul-less standard of living. It is a construct that requires us to make a concerted effort to prioritize our intellectual, artistic and spiritual development. In other words, we must make time for that which is truly important, lest we allow our lives to be consumed by the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent really isn't that urgent; but it does consume so much time!
(And when are we ever going to get those hover-cars?)
Certainly technology has given us a great deal of prosperity and a standard of living that few generations have known. But it has come with a high price, that being the spending of so much time on that which ultimately does not matter, and stifling truly intelligent, artistic and spiritual development. Rather than writing, we "tweet." Rather than reading, we are fed the non-stop assault of fast-cut video images. Rather than composing, we can simply cut and paste musical samples. Rather than taking a picture, we take hundreds of digital shots and photoshop them afterwards. Rather than meditating, we simply ignore.
What I'm getting at is that we often no longer consider what we do; we (as Nike coined) just do it. And "it" consumes so much of our time! We update blogs, websites, facebook, etc.; we watch our HD TV, listen to I-pods, Google everything, run apps on whatever, stay glued to e-mail and even text each other while avoiding personal communication! Our time is truly stretched thin; and there are a few things for which we no longer have time.
Those things include exercising the intellectual, artistic and spiritual side of our being--
We no longer have to think since thinking is done for us. The "so called" intellectual elite will take care of all of our problems, so there's no worries. And if there are any worries, you're obviously thinking too hard! Just ask our government--Washington truly believes that its elected officials were put into office to solve our problems--in essence, to think for us so we don't have to bother with that discipline.
We no longer have to create. We have programs that create for us. Whether it's visual art, music or written word, it's all just a click a way. It may not be of pristine quality, but it is "good enough." I remember when I first took a church gig, and it was expected of me to arrange, compose, rehearse and present the music. Now a days, not only is all that taken care of with a subscription service, but if one doesn't present the "ready-made" arrangements, then you are not like everyone else and are therefore suspect of unsatisfactory work.
And we have taken a true hit spiritually. Not only in our churches and families, but even in our world view and our understanding of literature and art. One simply cannot comprehend the bulk of western thought apart from the spiritual backdrop of its writers and poets. I remember my high school piano teacher explaining to me that you can see in the late works of Beethoven a man seeking God. When I recently performed Ives' Concord Sonata, I spent much time trying to comprehend the spiritual dimension of its namesakes--Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott and Thoreau. Even a reading of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings reveals a world view founded in the spiritual journey that is life; and who can begin to fathom the works of DaVinci apart from the relationship between God and man?
Yes, this technologicalmegatimemonster has delivered a higher standard of living--but it is a non-thinking, in-artistic and soul-less standard of living. It is a construct that requires us to make a concerted effort to prioritize our intellectual, artistic and spiritual development. In other words, we must make time for that which is truly important, lest we allow our lives to be consumed by the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent really isn't that urgent; but it does consume so much time!
(And when are we ever going to get those hover-cars?)
No comments:
Post a Comment