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On the level folks, I do use a cellphone – a smart phone even. But I’m not sure I like it. I most certainly enjoy the GPS that comes with it, as finding those schools tucked away in suburban hell can be very tricky, even at the best of times. But, past the land navigation benefits, I’m not too sure.
Owning a mobile phone is not helping me in my struggle to continue to read widely and with depth in the topics I am interested in. The false novelty of the facebook feed is much to easy an out, versus intellectually girding oneself for tackling that next book on feminist theory or the ravages of American imperialism. I read a great deal in my 20’s and have the bookshelves to prove it, but now reading seems on a path that is further and harder away to reach. I remember my voracious reading days and wonder where that zeal went, and how to restoke that desire for knowledge and perspective of the world.
Facebook is open in the other tab, even as I write this post, offering its usual semi-catered beguilement for my consumption. It is truly the ‘ghost feast’ we read about in fairy tales – where you can eat and eat and eat and yet slowly starve to death because the scrumptious food being consumed is a insubstantial, desultory facade.
Much of what Dr.Reed says resonates with me, and I thought I’d share a part of his essay here.
“The decisive reason, however, for me to refuse a cellphone is the opposite of everyone else’s reason for having one: I do not want the omnipresent ability to communicate with anyone who is absent. Cellphones put their users constantly on call, constantly available, and as much as that can be liberating or convenient, it can also be an overwhelming burden. The burden comes in the form of feeling an obligation to individuals and events that are physically elsewhere. Anyone who has checked their phone during a face-to-face conversation understands the temptation. And anyone who has been talking to someone who has checked their phone understands what is wrong with it.
Communicating with someone who is not physically present is alienating, forcing the mind to separate from the body. We see this, for example, in the well-known and ubiquitous dangers of texting while driving, but also in more mundane experiences: friends or lovers ignoring each other’s presence in favour of their Facebook feeds; people broadcasting their entertainment, their meals, and their passing thoughts to all who will bear witness; parents capturing their daughter’s ballet performance on their phones rather than watching it live; people walking down the street talking animatedly to themselves who turn out to be apparently healthy people using their Bluetooth.
The cellphone intrudes into the public and private realms, preventing holistic engagement with what is around us. Smartphones only perfect their predecessors’ ability to intrude.
The disembodying and intrusive effects of cellphones have significant implications for our relationships to the self and to others. Truly knowing and understanding others requires patience, risk, empathy, and affection, all of which are inhibited by cell phones. Cellphones also inhibit solitude, self-reflection, and rumination (formerly known as ‘waiting’ and ‘boredom’), which I think are essential for living a good life.”
I hate it when people say stuff that rings true and hits close to home.
“A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as a climb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finally reach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the ‘real’ top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we’ve reached another bluff, and the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.
Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, “Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?” Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. “Because it is there.”
Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles away in the valleys in a dreamless day-to-day existence who only purpose is the preservation of an illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the unknown. Paradoxically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heights of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare – and endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security. “
-Saul D. Alinsky. Rules for Radicals p. 20 – 21
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
-Mark Twain, maybe
I like this quote and I envy its author. It is rational, clear headed, and it makes all kinds of sense. Earlier this year Makagutu had a post asking people about their views on death. I would have loved to have replied with this quote, but that would not have been honest. I did not take part in the conversation as my views are not as sensible as this quote or those from the other commenters. While I do see the wisdom of the quote, fear rarely listens to reason. I have feared death for most of my life. My journey into science and atheism has done very little to help with it. It isn’t just the prospect of dying, it is oblivion. Everything that I am will dissolve, degrade, decompose, and disappear. Eventually this will happen to everything that will ever live. I won’t even exist in memory. While this is sometimes a distressing thought, it isn’t the real problem. What really gets me is the inevitable end of everything and an eternity of nothingness.
The Heat Death of the universe has plagued many of my sleepless nights. The thought of the universe so expanded that there is no energy or matter left to spread out is terrifying. Nothing ever changing, nothing ever warm, just frozen pure entropy encompassing all of existence Forever. I have dealt with a lot of theists who throw about words like ‘eternity’ and ‘forever’ without really thinking about what that means. They talk about true immortality as being a good thing. If you spent half a second actually considering Forever, you would soon realize that an eternity of anything would eventually become hell. But of all the possible hells, the worst must surely be that of everything being stuck as the ultimate barren wasteland of Heat Death. Read the rest of this entry »
Human thought tends to function in binaries, but much of the reality we inhabit just doesn’t work that way.
Rather than referring to a one musty-tomb or another why not consider what life actually is and base our questions about existence (or not) on that basis?
This video asks some great questions. What is your take on the questions it asks?
“No single part of the cell is alive everything inside is dead matter moved by the laws of the universe.”
Is life the aggregate of all of these reactions taking place?
Living things can evolve into dead things as long as it is beneficial in forwarding their genetic code in the evolutionary process (mitochondrial DNA).
Is life simply information that manages to secure its continued existence?
This vid might make some of the deep thinking philosophers mad. :)
Star Trek writers have fun with the technology in their universe. CGP gray takes a look at some of the issues that transporters bring to the table.
Probably not what you expected, but still accurate and interesting. :)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…