Technology, Freedom, & Choices

Have you ever stopped to consider, where will technology really ever stop?

I was just reading about a terrible crime which sounds like it was inspired by a video game. I'm not going to rant about video games, because I love playing them. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I sat here and denigrated video games for the detriment they do versus their positive aspects. Apparently, somewhere in middle America, two late adolescents beat a young girl to death demonstrating martial arts from a video game on her.

I've read before that the adolescent brain hasn't fully developed into a fully functional decision making machine yet. So, the question is, where does the fault of the parent end and the fault of the perpetrator in such a crime begin. The establishment has chosen to lay the blame at the foot of the perpetrators, rather the adolescents, who beat the 7-year old to death. But, what blame should be placed upon the guardians of those adolescents? They are not of legal age, they were drinking, and apparently unattended by someone who could check their behavior.

I, much like you, was a teenager once. I know I made my share of terrible descisions. Heck, I made some terrible decisions even into my adult life. Yet, I always had the tools necessary to made good choices where another person's life, personal belongings, close personal ties, and basically where the "Ten Commandments" are concerned. But, in the case above, it makes you wonder who was really responsible for the outcome of this terrible situation.

You have the creator of the video game. But, blaming them is the wrong choice. Video games offer a great diversion to people who need an occasional escape. They're an artistic form created by exceptionally talented people. In some ways, no different than some of the more risque painters of the Renaissance era whose works were contrary to the social mores of the day.

You have the kids. They had very limited decision making skills. Their concepts of the durability of the human body is likely marred by their experiences with video games, movies, television, and their chance exposure to a well-informed health class in the educational system. Kids these days are surrounded by images of indestructibles. Figures who take damage after damage and prevail, characters who die and are immediately reborn, digitized moments of imagined lives with unlimited immortality.

Then, there are the guardians. Who was responsible to see that these adolescents, more so, that the seven-year old girl was being protected. Those guardians, who put that Pandora's Box of technology into the hands of the brains that were still forming, minds whose basic framework for decision-making was still being connected.

At one point in life, you start to see the wisdom behind some of the choices that the establishment makes to protect the population as a whole.

Our freedoms we experience are fleeting, while technology is expanding. If the balance soon does not reveal itself, if we don't take the responsibility for our freedoms, technology will eventually outstrip those freedoms. We shackle ourselves to machines daily, whether it is a television, a computer, a video game system, an mp3 player, or a cell phone, our interconnected, over-stimulated world hasn't got the ability any longer to make the basic choices to exist.

That seems to be a huge problem looming on the horizon for the human race.


Read the story about the Teens here..

Flotsam and jetsam

I've closed yet another chapter in this myriad of experience called life. Yet another move to a new location. It's a much smaller place that required me to look at all of the flotsam that I've accumulated in the last 5 years. It's something that all of us should do at one time or another. I mean, every day you acquire some new possession, whether it's something as simple as a piece of mail, a card, a CD, a stick of deodorant, or an iPod. The constant barrage of capitalism is sometimes overwhelming and you have to consider whether you really need 'more stuff'.
Things I had to get rid of included a dining room table, a telescope, a pile of my kids toys that he's either too big to play with or simply doesn't need anymore, clothes, books, belts, and some old chairs. There's probably a lot of things that I've left out, but I imagine that the things I've neglected to include were likely just meaningless junk that I really had no use for.

"There's going to be a lot of things in this world that you're going to have no use for. But when you get blue, and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothing like a campfire and a can of beans." --Tom Waits "The Black Rider"

It seems we are truly unique among the creatures of this planet. We acquire more pointless baggage than any other organism on the planet. We're the only thing on this rock that actually 'hoards' other animals. It's puzzling when you consider it. It begs the question of 'Why?".

I'm constantly drawn back to a statment from the film "Fight Club" and I know it's from other places as well.

"The things you own, eventually own you."

It's so true, because you acquire so much that you have a hard time letting it go. Soon, it becomes you, your width, your breadth, the encapsulation of your human experience. One day, when you're gone, all that is left is a pile of possessions that those you once loved and love you have to find new homes, new uses, or to ascribe new meanings to.

I know this fear intimately, for I am the child of individuals who are reaching their final days. They have acquired significant material wealth and I, along with my brother, will be responsible for discovering a means for their material that they leave behind when they depart this consciousness.

Do the things that they own, own them? Yes, in a manner of speaking, for they are tied so closely to the items that they have acquired that they can not move easily throughout their home. Is there value, yes, there are many things of value in the great stores of history they have acquired. But, to whom does it provide worth? No one at the moment.

I've encouraged them to dispose of as much of the flotsam that they have acquired so they can enjoy themselves in these latter years, but they are happy owning and being owned by their acquisitions. Yet, I have great trepidation for the future for what is to come when my parents are no longer around to own these things they have acquired. I fear that so much of it will mean too much to me and my brother. Will we have the strength and piece of mind to part with so many items that our parents devoted themselves to acquiring? Will the allure of assuming ownership of all of their material overcome our individual lack of material? It remains to be seen. I hope that it is many years to the resolution of the questions I have about what will become of that, yet it is likely nearer than I wish.

Meanwhile, here I am in a smaller apartment, basically 2 rooms, a closet, and a bathroom, with a meager kitchen. But, it is enough for a single man with few attachments.