I am reading Chekhov's short stories and in doing so i came across a passage that greatly interested me. The reason that i find it interesting is that all of my friends are so passionate about enjoying life and learning new things but are constantly held back by that evil fiend whispered quietly as time. But we live in the most technologicaly advanced country in the world. These countless technologies serve mainly to "make things easier and faster." Wouldnt it seem that with all these things we would have all the time that we need to read, study, and help those that our hearts are burdened for? This quote was written in 1896.
"If all of us, city and country dwellers alike, everyone without exception, would agree to divide among ourselves the work that is expended in satisfying the physical needs of mankind, each of us would be required to work perhaps two or three hours a day, no more. Imagine if we were able to invent machines to replace our work and tried to reduce the quanitity of our needs to the minimum! What a lot of free time we should have as a result! All of us together would devote this leisure to sciences and the arts. All of us as a community would search together for truth and the meaning of life, and - I am convinced of this - the truth would very soon be discovered."
I am curious what can be said of this? Computers, cars, calculators, microsoft, laptops, INTERNET...truth be found?
10 comments:
Interesting, it seems the machines we have today seem to motivate us (well not that a machine can motivate us) to work more, at home especially, and in turn we find less time to devote to leisure things. I think we may be a bit overstimulated with all our new technology. Though many tasks are more efficient these days, especially communication, we seem to just fill in the extra "time" with more activity. We may appear productive but we often exhausted. There is nothing wrong with learning new things but are we masters of anything? Do we try to squeeze more work into our day at a faster rate in response to our microwave, fast food, Fed Ex society? Is time really the evil? I would say not. We should be thankful for the time given us, make the most of it, but not live in such a way that we compete with it. I think in our attempt to do so we find that it always wins. The "discovery of truth" is not hindered by our lack of time, but possibly our poor stewardship of it.
To me the paradox of all of this is that we spend so much time in front of the TV, watching every reality show that is out there but use drive through banks because we have no time to walk in and actually talk to the people behind the counter! I think writing letters, listening to a beautiful music, being still and enjoying the nature around us is a romantic side that we are loosing as a humanity.
By the way, I do love the quote. I need to read some Russian books again :)
Entertaining Ourselves to Death By:Neil Postman
Have you read it? You would love it if you haven't :)
I'm sorry it's Amusing Ourselves to Death
I was just thinking of this today as I hand-washed my soup bowl alone in the breakroom. I thought about the amount of dedication it takes to wash something thoroughly in an age where we expect the "work" of life to be done by technology while the "play" of life should be done by the humans. I think we need both in order to have a context to put our enjoyment into.
I think we also want too desperately to mix the categories of work and play, so that what is hard should be the same as what is easy and what is uncomfortable becomes what is pleasurable. I don't think it's a proper way of going about life, and believe that it only harms our understanding of joy, peace, relaxation, stress, responsibility, etc.
If we would do the work and then do the play, all would perhaps settle into a more precious flow and all parts would take the stage when appropriate and thereby and give meaning to the whole.
I think that quote presents a very interesting idea. Given our proclivity as humans to endless consumption and greed, however, I think this quote assumes an almost utopian society in which everyone is solely concerned with the common good.
Martin Hiedegger, a great German philosopher, said that machines, though desired for productivity, would consequentially take over our lives. He calculated that machines would take away our humanity and we would become slave to the machine.
No one would argue that technology is not a helpful element in our lives. Yet, like Hiedegger, I am aware that machines have the ability to inundate us to the reality of the world. How often do we hear of young people escaping reality through video games, movies, etc. I think we each could see similar propensities in ourselves.
With this, I find when I turn off the radio, and the tv, I begin to be more aware of the world around me. I certainly hear the lord better, and I find more peace moving back into my life.
In closing I love technology, and agree that technologies can be a great advent for us. Yet with all great positive things, there seems to be weakness, which when overlooked can be massively detrimental.
I love that you put myspace as a link to hell. So, does that mean that I'm in pergatory?
Hmmm then I must be in heaven, I abstain from myspace, hee hee
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