"I've decided that, in some ways, academia is not actually interested in you learning anything valuable, just in turning out results. Thus I have lots of experiences, but very little time to actually work through them and divulge the secrets that I have learned, because I'm so darned busy reproducing what they've told me that I don't have much time for unstructured learning. That makes me structured. Like a house. Some would say a house of brick. Except I think that's mostly used in reference to girls, which I am not."
Wasn't that fun? This post really isn't about the myriad of rather fun ideas I've had for blogs, this is an ironic blog. Not a clean out the wrinkles, not that kind of a blog, but rather a talk about why the internet/electronic entertainment in general can be a bad thing, or a good thing. Mostly why it can be a bad thing, which makes the fact that I'm posting this on the internet sort of ironed. Ironic.
Anyway, I was thinking today, as I tickled the old ivories (they laughed), that it was amazing how even when I got completely enveloped in a song, and time went by rather quickly, I was fairly cognizant of my surroundings and also of my general situation. How I felt, what I was thinking (mostly about the notes, but you know how it is when you play a song that you've played millions of times before. Or maybe you don't. If you don't, ask me sometime, I'll try to explain. And I'll use my words), who was around, that sort of thing. I can get pretty engrossed while playing the piano.
But, as much as I love playing the piano and as much as I seem to disconnect from the real world, it is nothing compared to the disconnect I have when I'm on the internet, or watching a show on tv, or when I'm playing a video game. That disconnect is so total it renders me, um, stupid. That's right, I'm rendered stupid. If you're a nerd you can laugh now. If you're not a nerd, feel free to laugh. . . now. My sensors shut down and, for awhile, I think that I forget that I exist outside of my basic thinking modulus. Or whateverlus. It's like the world becomes two dimensional. Which is really sad because then I become two dimensional, which is anything but what I really am. Obviously, I must be three dimensional because I can conceive a forth dimension. But not really a fifth. What would that be like? Something that could move more than one direction in space time and something else as well? Maybe energy is a dimension. That'd be weird. No, that can't be it, to simplistic, and we can add and subtract energy all the time. But we can't add total energy. Maybe the universe is expanding because . . .
Woah! Serious digression! Anyway, the point is that electronic media is facilitating me taking away my own depth. I love my depth. I want to keep my depth. I understand why one of the apostles in this last conference said technology could leave you in the cold heart of isolation. Just look at it, we're more connected but feel less so all the time. (How many friends do you have on facebook? Would you be number 505 for me?) The ease of texting has made us lackadaisical in our approach to talking to one another, tv shows portray hookups instead of lasting relationships, and fast food is still nasty a lot of the time. That last one doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying though, it was just fun to say.
I've never been very good at the balancing thing. I seem to go from one extreme to the other. As a kid I would play video games all the time during my free time, until I realized how stupid it was, then I would play nothing at all. Until I decided I wanted to play again, then I would play for a long time again. A vicious cycle, and avoidable if one learns to balance. My suggestion then? Shoot the computer. No, wait, I meant we need to balance. Differences in how we socialize are not always bad, but any extreme always is. I'm tired of trying to build a relationship with someone through text. It's hard to have a friendship built off of bytes.
