Day 11 - Digital Divide

December 20, 2014

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70th year. Each day I will find a gift the day brings, write about it and illustrate it.)

My thoughts are bombarded daily by constant sensory and social input, so much so that lately digital divide is growing another definition—the wall between the digital/media world and an individual’s internal life. It is this quiet life that nurtures what makes me unique and it is the never-ending sounds that invade my hearing and kill that internal life.

 

Every day my ears hear ceaseless television/radio babbling, talking heads telling me what is happening, how I should feel about it, what I should eat, what I should buy. Interspersed with all this is more ever-present auditory input through instant messaging, cell phone ring tones, dings and beeps. They are all attention hogs and crowd out my own thoughts, making it impossible sometimes to hear them at all. 

Television, a passive, sedentary past time, emits background noise that interferes when I try to read a book or write, even if the sound is low. We know that reading and writing are not passive and require some thought from us. If I hear a constant flow of distractions, the creativity space becomes so crowded that there is no room for creativity. My inner self is the womb for the flow of ideas and if I lose it, I lose part of what makes me alive. 

Is our civilization afraid of losing connection with the modern world around us if we turn electrical and battery powered devices off for just an hour? Why do we feel that we need to be in constant touch? Are we redefining life as one big party? Are we afraid of silence? Are we afraid that if there is silence, there will be no thought in our heads for us to listen to?

Today’s gift was an hour of silence.

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> DAY 12 Pareidolia
 

You can read my other posts on this project here:

http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html