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Alex Dong Intl Taijiquan Assoc: Pacific NW School - Essays and Articles |
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SLOW AND FLAWED vs. FAST AND PRECISE Dear fellow imperfect bioelectric units, Today's subject is Technology, which promises to save us time and money, by making our life easier and more efficient. I happen to love gadgets and software that does fancy things, especially if it makes cool sounds and has produces weird images. I also like the feel of buttons and shapes of different devices. They always perform quickly and are predictably accurate too, not like humans. All health and safety benefits aside, there is a point where technology changes from task-oriented purposes to pure amusement applications. All new electronic equipment is essentially entertainment based. We already have plenty of equipment to make our lives easier, now everything coming out on the market simply has more bells and whistles. Americans are easily lured into spending lots of money and huge amounts of time indulging in technological pursuits. It's no surprise that obesity continues to become the standard condition of young Americans as they spend more time in front of high-resolution flat screen projection televisions than being outside moving their bodies across land. It seems though that those who are really into technology spend more time responding to it (i.e.: troubleshooting equipment, network administration and data management, constant upgrading, loading new software versions, and learning how to use products) than the time that used to be spent doing the task that the technology was supposedly designed for. Is it possible stress that builds from constant interaction with technology does more damage to the human body than the benefits gained from the technology are worth? Overall, we have become addicted to technological communications (cell phones, video cams, internet chatting, and email) to the point where we are dependent on these methods to communicate. I fear that through continued use, the technology actually distracts and distances us emotionally from others. Only about 55% of human communication is actual words. Where people used to have conversations using tonality of voice, body posture, and emotional expressions, now they just send an email and loose out on valuable human interaction. An over-abundance of material possessions and increased competition are the result of our attachments to technology. Personal skills and creativity are the losers. As a culture, we have less personal hands-on human skills with every new cell phone that is produced because more people labor at terminals than in the fields anymore. Trades that involve physical activity are dwindling. Nobody wants to be a farmer, logger, or fisherman anymore because our economic structure rewards automation and economic gain is linked to mechanization and quantity rather than quality. Humans are becoming a depreciating asset in the view of Wall Street. Soon robots may be building houses and we wont even need humans for construction workers! Americans spend most of their money on 2 things. One is the pursuit of higher technology, through products such as computers, audio and visual equipment, and other electronics. The other is the opposite, which shows a conflicting aspect of our human nature, and that is trying to get away from Technology. This is reflected in our strong desire to escape on vacations, go camping, hiking, and basically make an attempt to get back to nature. So we crave technology and then feel bad because we are dependent on it. The only way we seem to heal ourselves temporarily is to crawl back to the woods and live like our ancestors used to, for a weekend! Everyone longs for solitude and the feels the comfort and security of natural surroundings. Yet rather than just enjoy nature for what it offers, we try to upgrade it with technology. We may be seeking a type of modern day balance. But really we are just deceiving ourselves by thinking we have somehow mitigated the impacts to our health from our fast paced lifestyles by injecting minor amounts of nature. I urge everyone, including myself, to reduce time using electronics and being around a lot of buildings with automation and other technology. Instead let's increase quality by spending more time moving our beautifully decaying physical bodies in natural environments.
TAI CHI FOR PARKINSON'S THE DONG FAMILY FAST SET MIND BENDER EXPLAINED MIND BENDER TAIJI CHI KUNG WHAT IS
QIGONG? QUEST FOR BALLANCE TIGER
MOUNTAIN TAI-CHI KUNG UNITY THROUGH POLARITY |
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