It’s all too much. Lets see – what all do I own? There is the ubiquitous refrigerator and television. These of course were considered necessities during my parent’s generation. But then, these were the only two possessions that my parents really owned. I have a lot many more though.Now, I have all the modern day time saving gadgets like a washing machine, microwave oven, the laptop, toaster, hand operated juice extractor, vegetable slicer, electronic mixer and grinder, the vaccum cleaner, the electronic screw driver all of which are supposed to make things easier and faster. What with all these things, one should think that I have a lotttttt of time on my hands. But the fact is I don’t have time. I don’t get time to call my parents as many times as I would have liked to. I don’t have time to call on my best friend. I don’t have the time to reply to all the emails my friends send me, I don’t have the time to wish my cousins on their birthdays. Perhaps, I am now far too busy maintaining and upgrading the so called time-saving-gadgets. God alone knows!
Not just these – among the ‘make-me-happy’ gadgets I own are the aircon, the video camera, the digital still, mobile phone, land phone, the baba adam music system, dvd player, i-pod, discman, another baba adam device the walkman (and a whole lot of tapes), the car, the car stereo, the car aircon, car audio-kit. We all own the same junk and it sits in our house for years. Does it makes us happy? I don’t think so.
The things we own do end up owning us. Is it possible to get rid of everything regardless of value – sentimental or monetary - and start all over again?
I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord I miss my mind! - Anon
4 comments:
The slew of gadgetry in our lives can be attributed to improved technology over the years, I guess. The more technology improves, the more we find ourselves asking, "How did I ever get along without gadget X?"
We, the tech-driven knowledge economy fuelled children of today, can't escape technology, whether at work or home. So much so that while we despair of the technology and gadgetry that's ruling our lives today, we crave for more of the same thing. There's a conflict in our heads, maybe...
It is technology that helps me earn my bread and puts food on the table. If it were not for technology, I would be a nobody behind a desk in a nothing organisation. In that sense, I am indebted to technology. I also like it because of the advances that it has made over the last decade or so. I like the technology that created my favourite gadget, the MP3 player. 1000 songs on a matchstick sized device, that plays back digital music at the push of a button! Good for soothing frayed nerves, right?
But I get over the euphoria quickly. I want more. Why, I think, can't I plug it into my amp so that my music system can play directly off it. Or, why can't my speakers be connected via bluetooth and thereby eliminate the ugly wires that criss cross my living room? I could go on and on.
I don't really need it, but I want it. Its not about greed, or wanting more, its about wanting to KNOW more, and master it. ("Yay, I finally configured my cell phone to remote control my laptop!") And I see so many parallels around me, that I've stopped thinking about the ridiculousness of it all.
One part of me, the more grounded part, likes the movie 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'. I think it would be great to be a bushman - no home theaters, no wires, no cell phones, no TV, no refrigerator, no cars, no microwave, whatever. One doesn't own anything because there is no concept of ownership. No ownership means there's a lot of love among people. Everything they eat comes off the land, and ergo, they respect it because it feeds them. They don't need clothes, their nakedness doesn't embarass them at all.
But another part of me wants to log on to my laptop, use this cool software to talk to my friend who lives half a world away, and tell him about this fab new cell phone that i've recently bought... and I begin to lose myself in gadgetry again. I begin to become someone that I am not.
Its an effort to staddle two very different worlds at the same time. And therein lies the conflict.
i know there is a lot of confusion in your mind right now...it's not easy being pulled by a world of nakedness and a world of tech-edness at the same time but let me make things clear for you...THIS IS SEEMA'S BLOG NOT YOURS...if you want to write essays go blog!
More on 'Gods Must Be Crazy', in tune with the theme of this thread.
In part I, Paddy O'Byrne, the narrator in the Jamie Uys epic, says, "... civilised man refused to adapt himself to his environment. Instead, he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery. And he put up power lines to run his labour saving devices. But somehow, he didn't know when to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make his life easier, the more complicated he made it."
"So now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, just to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat they were born into. And civilised man, who refused to adapt himself to his natural surroundings, finds himself having to adapt and readapt himself everyday and every hour of the day, to adapt to his self created environment..."
And to think that he said this 25 years ago...
Ahaha..the gringo-loji war continues on new battle turf!!!
Loji, i love the Gods must be crazy part..i am going to have to see the movie again. i indeed has been 25 years since i saw it!
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