The power of the internet and the search engines like Google simply amaze me every time I search. I didn’t have anything better to do tonight than to search for a college sweetheart of 40 years ago. Her mother said that I wasn’t good enough for her, so there was nothing I could do. At the time, it broke my heart, but I got over it. My Google search was very interesting.
If I had to choose between knowledge and ignorance, I would choose knowledge, even though having knowldege is much more complex than the barren wasteland of ignorance. For me, the modern world is more stressful, but I wouldn’t want to go back to an earlier time.
As a Quaker, plain living also appeals to me. I live simply in a modest apartment and drive and old car. I am not interested in making a fashion statement to the world.
Cranberry, I have tried living simply. In 1970 I moved to a remote desert community (population 100) in Arizona near the Mexican border. I rented a trailer with the $500 that I had earned from my teaching job in Indiana, and I lived there for two years. The weekend square dances at the La Gitanna Saloon were wonderful, as I recall. On the postive side, I knew everyone in town, and everyone knew me. It was so quiet that when someone started a car engine, you noticed it. It was open range in town, so cows wandered through town and in your yards, bumping agianst my trailer. I got a job staking out mining claims. The minerals were there, but the location was so remote than I knew that it wasn’t a financial practicality. But when investors from Chicago are paying the bills, you don’t mention those issues.
In contrast to the small community in Arizona where I knew everyone, where I am living now in a larger city, I know very few of my neighbors. I only have to listen to their barking dogs. Part on me wants to go back to try to reclaim the simple life that I once had in the desert of Arizona. However, another part of me reminds me that “You Can’t go Home Again”.
And even if I could, I don’t think those old clothes would fit me now.
All of us are looking for something. We have our hopes, but we also have our doubts and fears. It is hard knowing what we should do.
That’s very true. In the last year I have really been practicing more and more inner and outward simplicity. I gave away nearly all of my clothes, especially the designer clothes I had and the bright colors, I gave away or sold about a hundred books, I gave or threw away boxes full of “junk” that I had accumilated over the years, I got rid of all kinds of musical instruments I never touched, and I have started eating more simply and speaking more simply as well.
It really is a journey that seems to take a person “backward” from the modern world, isn’t it? But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I am going forward extremely quickly and gaining more human interaction, more time with Christ, and more peace with myself, although I am nowhere near “finished”. I don’t think I ever will be.
It’s strange–I was talking to my therapist about my giving a lot of my material possesions away, and he thought I was going to kill myself. Apparently before some people kill themselves they give away all their stuff. But I was pretty much doing it for the opposite reason, because I want to live and live as “untrapped” as possible. Now, the moment I truly can say, “I don’t need a computer”, I think I’ll’ve crossed an important mark.
I’d like the best of both worlds. I wish we were discriminate enough to take what is valuable and reject what is silly and superficial in new technolgoy but, as a society, I can’t say that I think we are discriminate. Let me give a few examples.
I like the idea that mobile phones exist—they are great for emergencies, especially when on the road—but a world in which kids own technology like this and talk to each other more or less constantly alarms me. Growing up sensible requires many periods of quiet reflection. (I don’t own a mobile phone.) As for the Walkman, I can see how much more music I might have listened to if I’d had one as a kid—the long trips to and from school and university would have been more fun—but I hardly ever use mine. I do like to play music in the car though.
My family didn’t own a TV or a car when I was at school and I’m glad for the lack of TV now but the lack of a car was hard. It was very hard to have to ride my bicycle 10 or 15 miles to and from a football match only to see my team mates roll up in expensive cars driven by their parents. (I went to an expensive private school on a full scholarship; my family could never have afforded to pay.)
Computers are great for writing. I adore word processors and wonder how I ever managed to write without one. Some of my colleagues say that word processing has made them write more but be less critical; I can only think that they haven’t acquired rigorously critical habits of thought as real habits. Otherwise there’d be no problem. I find the internet really useful but I don’t know how someone not well-educated would have any idea what is a good source of information and what is crap. I suppose if you have friends who can give you hints about how to tell then you can filter out a lot of the crap.
Although I live in a city of nearly 400,000, it still has something of the feel of a country town about it. We often joke that everybody in Wollongong knows everybody else and although it’s a gross exaggeration, you would never say this in a larger city. I never pay for a tradesperson without word of mouth recommendations; that way I not only avoid overpaying but also cowboys. Wollongong is unusal. It is a very long thin strip along the coast between the sea and an escarpment. If it were as wide as it is long it would be a city of 4 or 5 million at least. It grew up as a series of fishing, timber and mining villages that gradually merged. The original village feel has never really gone away. Almosr all teh people in the shops I use regularly know me and stop to chat when they see me. I like it.
amar and I want to know if you found the college sweetheart. You can say “No comment” if you’ve said all you want to. But you did leave us hanging a bit!
Agreed. (Confessed info junkie here.) Humans change their world. It appears to be a given for the species.
There’s not much point in being a moaning stasist, wishing all would remain “simpler” and the same…you’re asking for the impossible.
I guess we each need to figure out what our relationship with the world, as it is, should be (an ongoing process,) and that could mean a different living situation, or just some kind of self-calming practice.
What that will mean for me, (some day I hope,) is no yard (condo?,) a small number of rooms, and an interesting walkable town.
What an interesting thread - and I hadn’t even checked it out before. I’ve been thinking about exactly this same thing for some time now - I mean about how we’re “informationed” to death and how much stress and anxiety it causes us. One of the most alarming things to me about the internet is the medical disinformation there is out there that people accept as fact. When my sister’s son was diagnosed with a somewhat alarming condition, she got all her information from the internet - some reliable, some absolute crap - and seemed unable to distinguish between the two, accepting both.
The happiest time in my life was a five year period when I was three until I was eight. We lived in a town of 450 in a beautiful setting. The simplicity of it was amazing. It was so Tom Sawyer - I’ve even thought about writing a book or at least a story about it. We moved then to a larger place (1500 people) in an even more beautiful setting and last year I had an opportunity to move back there. I seriously considered it, but realized there are things here in the city that I couldn’t have there - really talented art instructors for my painting, museums, art exhibits, concerts, ballgames, etc. Guess I’ll just stay here and long to be there.
The biggest challenge for me: giving up perusing every article on CNN.com each day. I don’t need to know all that stuff and I think it really does add to my stress (I suffer from depression and anxiety disorders). One of these days I’m going to do it!
No, I didn’t. I decided not to read through the obituaries. I did find a newpaper clipping of an old ladies’ knitting circle with the names written in sequence underneath. The smiling, gray-haired woman with the same maiden name as my sweetheart looks a lot like her, but 40 years is a long time, and people change.
I bet though, that you could take almost any well adjusted, cared for 3-8 year old, from almost any setting–rural, small town, noisy urban–and they would, in retrospect, look at that time/place as somehow idyllic.
Is it the setting? Or is it the mindset of the young child–life is ahead of you, you haven’t screwed up majorly yet, you have virtually no responsibilities, and the life ahead still looks ripe with positive potential.
I don’t think it’s the technology making us crazy. I think it’s the jaded adult mind, and how we view our experiences as good or bad. I think a real zen approach might be the key.
I think it is being an adult that makes us crazy. We probably forget a lot of the anguish we went through as children----even happy childhoods have their anxious times, etc.— but I think our consciousnesses are different as adults, our brains have developed more. We look deeper inward and more broadly outward and it all adds up to a lot more things to deal with. We are more aware, I guess.
[I know that there are childhoods so terrible that the anguish is not forgotten, so I don’t mean to ignore those dreadful situations.]
In my particular situation I think the setting was truly idyllic, Emm. It was an almost magical place. My daughter certainly has no memories like that. In fact, my mother told me on many occasions that the five years we spent in that tiny little town were the happiest of her life - and she was in her 30s with five kids when we lived there.
There’s an old quote, I can’t remember where it comes from, that its “easier to be holy on a mountaintop”. On the surface this looks like a recommendation for a simple life in a secluded or less populated area, but on reflection it is obvious that this is really a reproach for hiding from the world and not participating in life and contributing to society.
I felt that way about my Grandparents farm in Southwest Virginia where I spent quite a bit of time growing up. About the house, the farm, and the whole town in fact. I really felt torn when my grandmother sold it and moved into a retirement community when I was just out of college, even though there was no chance I would’ve moved there. Just having the place not be available to me anymore was a loss.
I, for one, adore technology. I love my computer, my vacuum, the ability to cross continents and oceans in hours. I love my appliances, and a phone that tells me who is calling. My microwave is spectacular, my radio brings me the world as I drink my morning coffee…I wouldn’t give up any of it. Modern medicine that allows 3D imaging, microchips that ID my pets, cable TV that allows me to see a good movie without the jerk in the seat behind me yakking with his buddy. I like being able to call Tyghre from the grocery store so I can check the ingredients for dinner. I like wash and wear clothing of the newest synthetics…
no Miniver(a) Cheevy here! Full ahead! Exciting things are just around the corner!
EDIT:
I’m back. I realized I wasn’t done…
My new neighbor Jim lives 5 paces from my house…he’s a nice guy with a lovely husky, and he never fails to wave. When he decided to take down some trees, he consulted with me, knowing how I love my shaded yard. Tom and Cheryl have the two Danes around the back of the block. They stopped by yesterday and mentioned that they like to hear me whistle in the backyard. Across the street is Joan, who comes out to say hello when we’re on the porch with the bird. Next door Francisco and his wife have a party every other weekend for some women’s soccer team and they’re unfailingly polite. Maria, across the street, brought me bread and salt when we moved in, and had me over to talk about weather and politics…
I will go back to a rural life when the nether regions have winter sports.
