Back about a year ago I became terrified of the path our society is on. My fear was of the regular and almost obsessive use of technology in our society. We know the dangers of the over use of technology and yet we ignore them, sometimes with humour.
How many times have we been seen wrapped up in phones, in photos, in games, in songs, in text and with truly nothing to say to those who ask what we are doing? Our romances and hatreds are columns of misspelled text written carelessly, thoughtlessly and blankly. We lose ourselves and we lose each other in pale blue screens. It seems to me that our normal use of technology has severed our emotional attachments to reality. Of course t e c h n o l o g y does not ?sever? our relationships with friends but rather desensitizes them.
It is often very difficult to make arguments against technology because it is appreciated by the majority of society and those who make the arguments against it usually end up being viewed as radical naturalists/traditionalists or pedantic bibliophiles. The argument I must assert against technology is that it has blunted our emotional perceptions of life, our ability to understand ourselves and others on any real level. We react little to real enjoyment or frustration and have become so detached from ourselves by technology that stress and ecstasy are the only aspects of life that still hold the power to move us. Because technology endlessly stimulates us on such basic levels it has caused this loss of insight and because of that I argue against technology as a threat to our psychological health.
For those who are aware, we realize that the problem with technology is that too many people are using it and when they are offline they become practical strangers to the world. They have few thoughts or feelings as they look around because their minds are distracted by other things that are often not present or even real and they pay little attention to life, they have no interest for it. Technology, although amusing and useful, damages our perceptions of life because it constantly distracts and stimulates the mind which stops us from listening to our own thoughts and deciphering what they mean.