One of the finest souls I have met via the internet, not so by the way.
Posting it here again because Blogger has picture format issues...frequently.
Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
One of the great features of living in the Information Age is that what have so much at our fingertips.
One of the great features of being an American is the belief that you can strive to meaningfully improve your lot and that of your family.
These threads merge in the notion that information--be it a job opening, a sale, education or news of some opportunity or right-able injustice--is a tool to fix things.
While these things are all true to some extent or another--varying by time, place, and clashing or incompatible forces--each can also lead to the loss of a sense of proportion.
The reality is, we have far too much information. Our human minds aren't built to process all of that data flowing into it--much less to act upon it.
One of the many things the pandemic has shown us is how little control we actually have. But that loss of control has not dampened our demand for information. To the contrary, it has intensified it, even as our ability to do anything with the reams of data has shrunk by the same margin.
So we have overflowing heads and locked-down--to one degree or another--bodies. There's so much we want to do something about, yet our ability to act is corralled.
If that isn't a toxic cocktail, I don't know what is. To be honest, I think most of us are a bit out of sorts, and depression/anxiety are soaring. And despite (more likely because of) the endless roar of online voices, we feel alone.
No wonder we see rents in the social fabric.
And that's before you throw in the deliberate trolling and disinformation efforts.
The answer is Tolkien's.
We can't right every outrage, seize every opportunity, work up every solution or run every evil to ground. And that's without being plugged into a global network of truth and falsity which churns out new data of indeterminate quality by the gigabyte.
But we can till our own patch. We can shore up the shelters we have built for ourselves and others. We can look out for each other without being busybodies and scolds. We can keep an eye on the horizon without trying to puzzle out by-the-minute forecasts. And if--when--trouble comes looking for us, we can deal with it when it comes. And we'll probably have a clearer head when it does.
Or you can let your emotional buttons be endlessly mashed by things you cannot do a thing about, distracting you from those you can.
And yes, "Physician, heal thyself!" is definitely in play here.
Backpacking allows me to unplug.
ReplyDeleteThe Bear has been preaching this for years, but it's a tough sell. We are in a post-print age, and research shows our very brains are changing the way they process information. The internet could be used for more than venting, monetizing blogs and catering to the tastes of your audience. Catholic Blogdom has been chasing its tail so long it hasn't even noticed it's in flat spin and the ground is coming up fast. Blogs aren't even print, although they trick us into thinking they are. Francis is a symptom, not the problem. We'll never blog our way out of this. I'm doing a five-part analysis of this very issue. But, I have little doubt we'll continue to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because we don't bother reading classics like Treason of the Intellectuals, Amusing Ourselves to Death (information-action ratio), and understanding that the medium really is the message.
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