"Technology is the art of arranging the world so we don't notice it."
- my latest fortune cookie, writes my friend.
Is this true? Yes. No. Both-and.
Technology is a tool, like fire, like a cast iron cook pot, like shoes, furniture, a bicycle. Think of a microscope, or an MRI machine, or the Large Hadron Collider. Think of a computer that compiles and analyzes huge amounts of data and organizes it into forms that allow humans to contemplate the information found therein. Tools, old and new.
Human choice determines if one practices the art of arranging the world so as to not notice. Noticing and telling the truth of what we notice can be both terribly painful and ecstatically rewarding.
My feeling about truth-knowing shifted as I got off pain medications and lived day after day after year with a non-stop hum of whole-body pain. I leaned how to look at the experience of pain-in-the-moment, look straight on, to examine the exact details of it, to recognize the variations of it, to recognize the precision with which it enhanced my awareness of the zing of life with the sometimes sharp, always blanketing ache and misery of it. I learned how to carry this, too.
Now I am experiencing hours on end of not-everything-hurts. Now I'm aware that I can't remember when I was last previously without that constant hum of whole-body pain. Now I understand clearly that there is absolutely no way to communicate to someone who has not lived there what life with constant pain is like. Like we can't communicate exactly our experience of a color, or a flavor.
I noticed my experience. It's the only one I've got. Yet how presumptuous if I imagine that anyone who has reached adulthood has not experienced real, deep, lasting pain, physical and emotional. All carry their pain. Some by choosing to practice the art of not noticing.
Human. Both alone in our unique skins and just like everyone else. Experiencing life. Making our choices. Using our tools. Noticing and not noticing.
Today the sky is clear, high blue and sunny. The temperature is upper 40s. I will put on shoes and a coat and go notice.
- my latest fortune cookie, writes my friend.
Is this true? Yes. No. Both-and.
Technology is a tool, like fire, like a cast iron cook pot, like shoes, furniture, a bicycle. Think of a microscope, or an MRI machine, or the Large Hadron Collider. Think of a computer that compiles and analyzes huge amounts of data and organizes it into forms that allow humans to contemplate the information found therein. Tools, old and new.
Human choice determines if one practices the art of arranging the world so as to not notice. Noticing and telling the truth of what we notice can be both terribly painful and ecstatically rewarding.
My feeling about truth-knowing shifted as I got off pain medications and lived day after day after year with a non-stop hum of whole-body pain. I leaned how to look at the experience of pain-in-the-moment, look straight on, to examine the exact details of it, to recognize the variations of it, to recognize the precision with which it enhanced my awareness of the zing of life with the sometimes sharp, always blanketing ache and misery of it. I learned how to carry this, too.
Now I am experiencing hours on end of not-everything-hurts. Now I'm aware that I can't remember when I was last previously without that constant hum of whole-body pain. Now I understand clearly that there is absolutely no way to communicate to someone who has not lived there what life with constant pain is like. Like we can't communicate exactly our experience of a color, or a flavor.
I noticed my experience. It's the only one I've got. Yet how presumptuous if I imagine that anyone who has reached adulthood has not experienced real, deep, lasting pain, physical and emotional. All carry their pain. Some by choosing to practice the art of not noticing.
Human. Both alone in our unique skins and just like everyone else. Experiencing life. Making our choices. Using our tools. Noticing and not noticing.
Today the sky is clear, high blue and sunny. The temperature is upper 40s. I will put on shoes and a coat and go notice.
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