Technology

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. ~Jean Arp

Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. ~Max Frisch

I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind! ~Author Unknown

I don't know about you, but I have been so conflicted lately about technology and all the aspects that come with such great technological advances. The quotes above speak volumes about what I'm talking about. Take the first quote; it talks about how we are turning our backs on silence. And we totally are. Can you even remember the last time you were completely silent? The last time you just sat and pondered the sweet song of birds, or the rushing sound of the wind away from all distractions? The quote says the absence of silence is robbing us of our essence of life, and I couldn't agree more. More so, hearing the voice of God. I believe the more bells and whistles we put in our lives, the less and less we can hear God's direction for our lives.

The second quote involves something I've talked about before, how we are using movies, books and the like to live our lives for us instead of making our own stories great.

I've been so conflicted lately about how much technology I've been consuming. I've found there have been times where I'm on Facebook, watching a movie, and texting all at the same time! I walk down the halls of school and see everyone's faces buried in their phones, oblivious to the other human beings walking the halls along with them. Has technology made us even more selfish than ever?

How much are things like Facebook and texting hurting our social lives? We opt for technology as opposed to face to face time. I am so guilty of all this. For so long I've been trying to back off the use of so much technology, and for so long I've been failing. And I wonder why it's hard to hear God's direction for my life, it's cause He's being drowned in noise.

What are your guy's thoughts? How can someone so into technology back off a bit? It's so in our culture now that you could never totally get rid of technology! No, that would be terrible, technology is a great thing, though in moderation. But how does one back off enough to, as Jean Arp put it, get back into the essence of life? As the third quote so aptly says, "I miss my mind..."