We're Suffering from "Screens Distraction"!

Consider this an anti-blog . . . because I think there's a problem these days: we're staring at screens too much!

Our heads are increasingly in the "cloud" of cyberspace. Our attention is all over the place.

It's a problem because this trend runs counter to something which ought to be taking precedence: the development of ecological consciousness. I know we can read about ecological issues online and watch environmentally aware videos, etc. but stewardship of the land under our feet requires some degree of attention to that land. Identification and familiarity with a particular place on earth is key toward fostering ecological consciousness and good stewardship praxis.

The ideology of progress celebrates our expanding channels of transportation and communication. But in his essay "Life Without Principle" (1863) Thoreau wrote: "In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while."

Clearly the trend has accelerated over time. Where Thoreau's poor fellow might have received ten letters a day, the poor folks of our modern cyber-reality are overwhelmed by ten emails or text messages per hour. The busy-busy business executive (and the homework-distracted high-schooler!) might be getting a hundred electronic messages in a day.

Our domain of experience has now become "elevated" into the World Wide Web. We have access to boundless sources of facts and information, while few of us are knowledgeable about where our water comes from when we turn on the faucet. We follow news from around the world, but most of our neighbors are unfamiliar to us. We have hundreds or thousands of cyber-friends, but few of them live close enough to spend face-to-face time with on a regular basis.

With so little connection to place and such facile ability to communicate at a distance, hypermobility has become the norm. Sustained daily-intimate relationships have become a rarity. Families "keep in touch" while widely scattered, but there is little real touch and no particular place is considered to be the familial home.

A case can be made that "progress" has taken us too far from our original localist community-and-place-based life orientation. We now live everywhere and nowhere.

What we need to do is bring our attention "back down" ... away from the global marketplace, away from the industrial mega-state, away from the cyberspace "cloud" ... back toward a particular place-on-earth where we can renew real community and recreate Home.

A Daoist parable gives a sense of the other end of the spectrum from where we find ourselves now:

* * * * *
A Small Country of Few People

People do not travel far. They have boats and carriages but little use for them. They have armor and weapons but do not display them.

Their food is plain but good. Their clothes are simple but fit well. Their homes are secure.

Villagers in this country often live within earshot of a neighboring village, so close that they can hear each others' roosters crowing in the morning and dogs barking in the afternoon. Yet they rarely feel the need to visit; they are content where they are, satisfied in place.
* * * * *

By contrast, we are restless, bored, and unsatisfied. We try to solve our problems of attention deficit disorder and hyper-stimulation by adding on more stimulation (or taking pills). It won't work!

Instead, it's time to shatter the mystique of the cybernetic dystopia that is threatening to envelop us in an electronic daze. Let's get our attention away from the screens as part of a conscious movement back to simpler and more basic lifeways ... relating first and foremost to the primary reality of nature and local community.