Progress never solves anything. It only raises the stakes. Reporting from a vacation on
South Carolina’s Outer Banks,
Suzanne Fields
wonders where it will all end, when we even take our electronics on vacation. She writes on her laptop
while her grandsons play their LEGO Star Wars game nearby.
Will the violent XBox first-person shooter games create a generation of violent young men? Will the
chatter of cell phones obliterate the deep waters of long-considered wisdom? And does the
addiction of video games “offering
immediate gratification that makes disciplined study all the more difficult” mean that nobody will be left
that can think a deep thought?
Perhaps the electronification of the world will create an huge nostalgia for quiet and repose. Hunting
survives as a nostalgic male pursuit long after agriculture became the chief means of livelihood. And
the cult of the countryside began immediately upon the removal of the farmers to the city.
But how can we create a still pool of quiet in the middle of the electronic hurricane of bustle and noise and chatter?
No comments:
Post a Comment