One might argue fairly
convincingly that technology doesn’t necessarily lead to a more frenetic life
that is largely more complicated than before the comforts of modern technology
existed. I would say that’s absolutely
true; but I would also add the little caveat that modern technology inarguably
makes it that much more difficult to attain a simple lifestyle. This is coming from someone who takes full
advantage of the relative ease of international travel nowadays as well as the
internet to not only post my blog entries but also to keep in contact with
friends and family from home. As I said
before, I’m not making the case that technology is the great evil of our day in
the slightest, nor do I think it a sign of being in the last days as some
Christians might argue.
I’m simply making the statement
that perhaps we need to at least acknowledge the downsides of technology before
we jump so readily to spread technology to the rest of the world as their best
chance at a better life. In addition, we
need to humbly and hopefully reach the conclusion that business doesn’t always
mean better. Other westerners in particular
have a pretty good laugh when they consider the American mindset of ‘bigger is
better’ when it comes to just about everything.
I can still remember a preacher
sharing the story of how his friends from the UK had come over and were shocked
to see a Hummer dealership in the middle of town. When they relayed to the preacher that in the
rest of the world those are only used as military vehicles and asked what they
could possibly be used for aside from that, the preacher joking responded by
saying something along the lines of, “I don’t really know. Moms use those for picking up their kids from
soccer practice and getting groceries I guess.”
In our pursuit of making everything
bigger and better, we have created a lifestyle and society that is simply
unsustainable. We need more and more oil
nowadays. My friend informed me that the
EPA originally came into existence to help us get off foreign oil. This has yet to be accomplished and as a
result many people preach the gospel of “Drill Baby, Drill!” as an obvious
solution to this problem. I would humbly
suggest that improving fuel efficiency or at least not having every other car
on the roads be an enormous SUV of some sort might do a bit more good than the
theory of needing to drill more at home.
Of course, I am biased due to the fact that I live on the Gulf Coast of
Florida and the BP oil spill is still fairly fresh in our minds down
there. A few years pass though and it
exists our collective consciousness and suddenly the chants of “Drill Baby,
Drill!” are taken up again or at the very least replaced with a strong
consensus of Americans seeing no problem with the Keystone Pipeline being
implemented.
So, in anticipation of the
obvious backlash that the previous paragraph might incite, yes, I am well aware
that technology can undoubtedly make some great strides at getting us less oil
dependent as well as help propel us towards a more sustainable and renewable
energy policy. That simply won’t happen
with the current policies we have in place though, will it? Politicians around the country say they’re
simply waiting for renewable energy to become cheap enough to be competitive in
a free market while simultaneously renewing substantial subsidies to the fossil
fuel industry that don’t even compare to the subsidies provided to the
renewable energy industry.
I’m simply saying that a simple
life is a better life overall. If you go
to any church in America on any given Sunday morning and ask just about anyone
how they’re doing on that morning or overall in general, you are likely to
receive one of two main replies. One is,
“I’m fine” or something very similar and meaning the same thing. The other one that I hear most frequently is,
“I’m busy” as the basic response which varies in degree as to just how busy
someone considers their own life to be at that given moment. Unfortunately, they are not being off putting
in the slightest but simply stating the truth for themselves as well as the majority
of Americans, whether religious or not.
Christians are not immune to finding their identities in their work no
matter how many sermons we hear about finding our identity in Christ. Not only that, but we take a certain amount
of pride in how busy we are. Ever so
subtly, if we’re not careful, we practically compete in relaying how incredibly
busy our respective lives are compared to one another and the general
population at large and even go so far as to defending our busy lives as being
holier that another person’s life that is not as busy.
That being said, I don’t doubt
for one second that many people’s lives are incredibly busy, that’s the whole
problem I see in the first place. If we
are constantly busy and essentially hyped up on pure adrenaline fueled by an
endless supply of caffeine provided by soda, coffee or energy drinks, then I
dare say we can only take that for so long before we do some serious damage to
our lives in at least a few areas. One
of those areas is our families especially.
It broke my heart when I used to sponsor youth group at a different
church and I found out that they rarely if ever, aside from Thanksgiving or
Christmas perhaps but sometimes not even then, did they eat dinner at the
dinner table with their families. I had
just taken for granted that was how everyone lived since that’s how I grew
up. Unfortunately though, that has
largely changed over the past few decades with the degradation of the family
unit as a whole within our society.
Another obvious area is our
health. Allow me to share an example
from my pathetic excuse for a diet. I
simply hate trying to cook for one person.
I have been assured that it truly is not that difficult to accomplish,
but either due to an outright unwillingness on my part or just plain laziness,
I continue to eat out way too much if you’re trying to live a healthy lifestyle
including a healthy diet. Part of this
is definitely chalked up to pure laziness, but even aside from that if it’s during
the school year and I’m at a particularly stressful point in the quarter like
towards the end of the quarter when grades are due; I’m simply too busy to deal
with cooking.
It also breaks my heart to think
and see so many of my students being fed largely a diet consisting of
McDonalds, Burger King, and practically no vegetables aside from French fries
if you want to make that argument. Why
would anyone feed their children that kind of diet you may be asking yourself
after reading that last statement? Allow
me to put it simply for those of you who can’t imagine doing that to their own
children. In my humble opinion, it is
largely due to busyness coupled with necessity.
My students’ parents work 3 jobs apiece often even if both parents are
still together. They legitimately don’t
have time to cook. Couple this with the
fact that eating healthy simply costs more due to our perverse subsidizing
scheme that continues to pass Congress time after time in spite of the fact
that very few of farmers today are still what might be considered family
farmers. Big farming companies probably
don’t need any more incentive to produce more and more corn and soy, do they?
In addition to a poor diet that
can easily result from busyness, our health can be affected by our lack of time
to exercise. How many people have you
heard of who have started P90X or some similar program that takes only an hour
a day to accomplish and yet hardly ever do I hear of any of them completing the
program. Perhaps an extreme example, so
I’ll again share a personal example and I apologize to those of you who are
more committed to your exercise routines because this will undoubtedly disgust
you. It took me no less than 3 times of
starting a couch to 5k program on my phone to actually finish the program. Apparently the couch was just too tempting
and kept calling me back instead of me having the will power to keep going with
a very basic exercise routine. The
reason wasn’t busyness but laziness in my case at least. I know many people though who claim to be too
busy to work out and as a result gain a few pounds year after year until they
qualify to be a contestant on NBC’s hit show, “The Biggest Loser,” admittedly
one of my very few TV shows on network television.
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