The Simpler The Better

The changing technology of the world and the rapid changes it brings is too much with me. I often want to escape, flee from the mindless, robotic existence in which most of us live... as we are driven and controlled by whatever technology has a hold of each of our souls. What I do to get away, besides dreaming of the time when our lives were simpler and better, is to go back to the old time favorites. So today I want to tell you some of my old time favorites. Maybe you have some of your own. and perhaps they are older or not nearly as old as mine. But whatever yours are, I assume they all can give you the same feeling of comfort that I get when participating in mine.

When I watch the cell addicts chattering away and can't take it anymore, one nostalgia that whisks me from it is to listen to the radio. Yep! Radios still exist and a few people still like listening to them. The radio invigorates the imagination like too few other technologies do. When, for example, you listen to a sporting event on the radio, you create the players and the field of play with your imagination. The game seems bigger than life and the listener is more involved in it. And music! I love not being able to control what song appears next. With the radio your only escape from a Mariah Carey song is to turn it off or try to find another channel, two things most people don't like to do too often. So radio makes us more tolerant of what is played, more willing to listen to what our preconceptions say we won't like. That is good.

I know you are thinking "but the sound of radio is inferior". But life is less about sound and more about peace of mind. The simple technology gives me far more peace of mind because people who use it are far more civil when they do. They are far more involved in the content than in being enamored with the technology, the end rather than the process. Is not the addiction of humans to technology today disconnecting them for appreciation of the more subjective elements of their lives? I think so. Why not ditch the latest gadget in your arsenal once in a while and do something grandma used to do for entertainment.

As an example, if you don't have one, how about getting a simple ice cream making machine and making strawberry ice cream with it. Those gadgets are still sold, in simple form and require the user to be a whole lot more attentive and invested when using them than the person tweeting on his phone. One forgets tweets as soon as they are sent, but could anyone forget their own creamy strawberry ice cream?

Why is it our "happiness level" that those public opinion polls measure continuing to fall as our technological preoccupation increases? I think there is a correlation. Why not give up a little of your technology time today and invest it in some activity that people liked to do 20, 40, even 50 years ago. I will walk today...just walk...not like the addicts who are plugged into their phones, mp3's, ipods etc. They are clue less and polluting their walks. I'll walk and just think (remember when people used to think for themselves?), probably about little things that aren't important.

But at least I will free my self from the chains of modernity, and it will remind me that I am not a product of some technology. I am human. Oh, I can hear the birds calling me right now.