A recent article in the LA Times by Stuart Glascock describes a nature cure on an island in Puget Sound for what he calls our increasing 'addiction to technology'.
While I would never argue with time spent on Orcas Island, for ANY reason, I believe this article is coming at the question from the wrong angle.
Glascock quotes Nancy White as hoping to "bring more humanity to electronic communication", and her approach echoes my own. Rather than reinforcing commonly-held stereotypes about what technology is, my focus would be on how we can make our time online more nature-connected, heart-full, and sense-centric.
In fact, I feel this concern about technology addiction should be focused on our nature-disconnection, period. Tying the problem to technology or internet use is just too convenient a target and misses the fact that in our modern world almost everyone experiences some level of ‘disconnection’ from nature - both our own internal nature, and the external natural world around us - in their everyday habitual practices. Whether we are online excessively or shopping 'til we drop or over-eating or having superficial relationships or working too hard or watching trash TV or reading escapist fiction, or whatever it is we do to distract ourselves from life – it doesn’t really matter.
We are largely unconscious and unconnected as a culture, and that’s just how it is until we begin to regain consciousness by attuning with nature and re-discovering our senses. On one level, life in the Western world is an addiction. Ecopsychologist Chellis Glendinning makes this point brilliantly in her book My Name Is Chellis, and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization.
In other words, when we’re in touch with our relationship to 'nature', we are connected – whether we are online or off. It’s not really about technology at all – it’s about being connected or not being connected to Life and the life force.
The point is that it's not that technology is bad – it’s that how we use technology MATTERS. If we make those decisions wisely, technology will be a valuable, positive contribution to our lives.
I'm happy to support nature cures in Puget Sound - whatever helps us regain our connection with natural life is great - but I don't think they are the opposite of technology. The truth is I don’t think we’ve even begun to tap the level of connectivity that is becoming possible for us with the internet. Through the conscious link to humanity as a whole that the internet facilitates, we have the opportunity and capacity to make choices and create change on a significant level, something we have never had before.
The prevailing cultural belief reinforced by our every-day language and arguments like the one in this article says that what happens online is somehow not real. My contention is that what happens online IS real. Every interaction between human beings is real. On the internet, I don’t necessarily know what you look like, if you are male or female, young or old, fat or thin, but none of that matters because I do know you are alive and you are real - you have a heart and a body like I do; you live in the natural world. You are worthy of my fundamental respect as a fellow human being.
If I start with that, I can begin to listen to you, really listen to you, and who knows what can happen when people really start listening to each other? We can begin to create the new story of our future together, for one.
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