Is Technology the Newest Evolution in What it Means to be Alive?
Approaching New Horizons with Intention - by Katie Jones Pomeroy
The human brain physically grew as our world grew through our migration across the globe.
Or so I heard, once.
It resonates and I think about it often- not the part about the brain, but rather the way it caused me to reflect upon the moments we find ourselves looking out at a world we no longer recognize.
I picture a small pack of people, who suddenly had no way of distinguishing panacea from pablum from poison. New plants, new animals, new weather, the very composition of the soil on which they stand now new; a different tint and texture, smell and stability.
I believe we are again in a time of great expansion- not physically, but technologically. To know, in real time, events happening on any continent has brought us to new frontiers of being; to a world where knowledge is no longer power, but a sea you can drown in if you do not know how to sort and filter, swim and float.
I do not know this landscape I am raising my children to call home. I do not know if or where we will settle, when each new horizon seems only to confirm the vast and boundless possibilities of this world. Surely, generations could walk this path without end.
Unlike our pioneering predecessors, I do not think our brains will grow this time- an arguably greater tool for information processing and storage fits in our pockets. And yet, surely, there will be changes.
As our access to the entirety of the Earth expands, I find my days increasingly sedentary. We are connected to people everywhere, and yet I often feel isolated and alone. In this world wide web, it is increasingly difficult to determine if I am the spider or the fly.
I am wary. I do not want the shrines in my home to be electronic. I have carefully crafted altars of books, set our furniture as prie-dieus around a wood stove, and brought rituals of gathering to our kitchen table. But screens enter all these areas as well.
I have sought community, in this small monastery that is the home I am making, with the chestnut trees and chickadees- saints without cellphones. Where I aim for technological abstemiousness, they are chaste.
And yet, here I am, writing for an online publication, because I value platforms for creativity and critical thinking and conversation. I would never relinquish the privilege of talking with my family and friends, seeing their faces, despite the distance between us. I do not want to scorn what is nutritious simply because it is new. I want to plant seeds that grow in the habitat I currently inhabit, not the one I left. I do not want my children to be illiterate in the societies where we settle. I want to learn about this new bionic biome which is the only home my children will know.
In this tension, the monastic draw has never felt stronger. I move forward as an aspiring mother monk, seeking moderation and mindfulness, maintaining rituals, writing meaning into life, wiring the brain with some intention.
Join us in conversation in the comments below… Do you feel comfortable in your personal relationship to technology and social media? How about our societal relationship to it? Is it important that we find balance and intentionality with technology in our lives? Whether as a parent or not, how do we navigate raising the next generation in a technological landscape that is so quickly evolving?
AUTHOR
Katie Jones Pomeroy is a member of the editorial team for Friends of Silence Newsletter. She serves on the board of Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community in West Virginia, where she lived for seven years before moving to Erie, Pennsylvania. Now she homeschools under the chestnut trees and along the Great Lake with her family.
This is a lovely take on technology.
In college I learned about monkeys in Japan. They were divided into a southern and a northern group, and depended on different staples for food. Some catastrophe in the south eliminated that food, so people brought them the kind of food their kin ate in the north. It was too foreign, and they wouldn't eat it. But! The young ones figured it out, and taught their mothers. The last ones to catch on were the most dominant males. Just sayin'
As a member of The Monastic Way I welcome your post. I am much older than you but so like your ability to express your idea of technology and ability to use it. Looking forward to seeing more posts.