I'm going to put a link to a kind of funny, somewhat negative rant that aired recently. It makes me cringe but also makes me laugh, because I've felt the way he does sometimes, about people and their entitlement in this current world of marvels and technology. I won't embed it here, though... I don't think it's cool enough to deserve placement on this blog. Link, and warning: there is one bleeped out word and a reference to "taking a dump" and he uses the Lord's name in vain... so maybe don't watch it at all, I don't know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus
Anyway, it was refreshing to me to see that someone in pop culture feels the way that I do. I'm not completely off base, wacky, Mormon girl who's just angsty about pop culture... it really is a problem that even worldly people notice. If you'd rather not veiw it, the basic upshot of this clip is... we live in this world of amazing technology and the potential for so much good, and what does this generation use it for?
And what have we come to expect, what is our entitlement like?
I was thinking about the previous question. We have so many amazing things in this world, so many technologies that make our lives much easier, save time, make our taskload much smaller. In addition to the phenomenons mentioned in the video, I'm thinking of much more revolutionary things like supermarkets and refrigeration and trucking (you don't have to grow your own food anymore—huge load lightener) telecommunications (including the internet), transportation (he mentioned this, but even trains were huge. When Salt Lake City got the railroad through, that completely changed the city.)
Sometimes these things bring bad along with the good. What do all of you think these technologies are for?
I've been looking for a long time to find a quote I heard once. I think it was by Brigham Young, and the basic point of the quote had to with these labor and time-saving technologies. He inferred that it was to give us more time for temple work, and to find our ancestors and perform their ordinances.
This clip is certainly not an example of godly use of technology itself... the man is entertaining. But I thought it was an apt illustration of how we take what we have for granted. Perhaps this is what leads to improper use of it, and the ability for Satan to turn these things to his purposes?
Thoughts, anyone?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
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I've seen that video clip before- it seems to be makin' the rounds. I think it's especially funny (and too too true) what he says about how we're incapable of waiting for anything. That's the number one downside to technology, I think (although I guess it's the number one up-side too, so confusing!) But really, I think the more stuff we can do, the more discontent we are with waiting for anything.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Satan has his hand in this (as he seems to in regard to anything that starts as good), but I think a lot of the problems we face come from our own flaws that are already there. Like impatience- I'm a pretty impatient person, I'll admit it, and it doesn't take much more than me thinking my time is more valuable than others' to make me irritated. Let's not even talk about road rage:)
"Technology" is a pretty enormous category, though. I mean, some sub-categories seem more prone to abuse or ungratefulness than others, don't you think.
Here's my $.02 (or by the length of this comment, $.20):
ReplyDeleteOne reality is that new people to the world don't have any perspective about the way it was before they got here and starting noticing it. Children take for granted that things just are the way they are, and it is easy for them to have a sense of entitlement. A parallel reality is that new people have to struggle with personality and character issues for themselves from scratch. The adversary makes good use of these realities, and foresees them better than we do--except the prophets forsee them, too, but often, we don't take them seriously enough until we, too, think we can se it clearly enough.
Also, there is the question: should humankind possess powerful tools? The capacity for good increases, but so does the capacity for evil. So does the capacity for unforseen consequences (I saw a story a day or two ago about an English doctor who claims that Facebook is causing new, undesirable configurations in the brain, etc. for children extensively involved in it.)
Is it good or bad to have these big tools? Maybe that's what ultimately makes the Last Days the Last Days, a la apocolyptic.
It reminds me of an issue about language as a tool. The original language of Adam allowed people to express things that are harder to express with our broken scattered language ["O Lord God deliver us in thy due time from the little narrow prison almost as it were total darkness of paper and pen and Ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect Language"--Joseph Smith in a letter to W.W.Phelps]. In those old days they spoke presumably a higher, better language--for thinking and communicating and being spriritual,for good--or for devastating perversion. The people were eradicated by The Flood, and not too long afterward their language was broken and scattered to prevent a repitition of the same level of wickedness. Anyway, this is like what I am describing above, but happening in reverse--a tool is taken away to protect us from ourselves. [I wonder if some of our technologies--computers, which use powerful languages of algorhythmic logic (discovered by geniuses like Godel and Turing), along with communication networks and the internet--are bringing back some of this specific language issue.]
Funny-- as I was reading, I was going to comment referencing that quote that you ended with -- it was quoted in Relief Society a few weeks ago in a lesson about temples-- but you mentioned it! The good news is that there are a lot of people doing their genealogy using the internet. The bad news is, there are a lot of people who aren't (me included)!
ReplyDeleteThat was a really funny video. And oh, so true. One of the most frustrating things for me personally is that I get impatient with technology and one of the reasons for that is:
I don't get it!
So if my computer malfunctions or the internet stops working or the car breaks down (and I don't have my husband with me to fix it), I'm clueless. So I get impatient and hope that nothing malfunctions because for the most part, our generation (except for the people specializing in each field) has NO CLUE how the technology that we rely upon daily even functions. Scary! We don't have even the basic survival skills in case an emergency happened and we had to hunt for our own food, start our own fires, build our own shelters...
Uncle Ron: I had never thought of our communications that way. But it's a very interesting thing. For sure, it has changed the way we communicate... these online communities (blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging) have made people in some ways more false with each other, and in some ways much more honest. It's a lot easier to talk to someone about something real, which might be vulnerable and scary, if you've got seven paragraphs to make your viewpoint heard before anyone comments. Also, IMing is nice because you're not staring anyone in the face, and you can more easily feel safe being vulnerable. This can be bad, too though! I think it's why online romantic relationships form so rapidly and so enmeshedly (if you know what I mean by that word... sorry.)
ReplyDeleteI get very impatient with technology, especially since jeff is so very good at fixing things. I always feel annoyed indirectly at JEFF if something doesn't work! Which is silly. And a perfect example of the above... how quickly the word owes me something now that I've found out I can have it.
One thing I have thought about is, I wonder if these things, these huge scientific and technological breaktrhoughs, actually come inspired by God. The information is brought to earth to redeem, but almost instantly it's deflected into something equally bad by Satan. For example, Media. It is such an intense way to learn something; using so many of the senses at once. My kids quickly learned their ABC's because of a video I have. But it also engages the mind so much that it makes an effective tool to distract people from other things they really ought to be doing. Using media to waste time is, I think, one big tool the adversary uses right now.
Another example that might be something less people agree with, is medical advances. So, we have antibiotics. Now we don't die of things like tuberculosis and pneumonia, because we have something that can effectively fight both of those illnesses!
But then doctors started prescribing them for every little thing, and so there are strains of these illnesses that have become resistant to many of the antibiotics. Superbacteria. Pretty soon (if things keep going the way they are) antibiotics will not effectively fight illness anymore... unless we can moderate our use of them.