Jeremy C Kester

As I drive around, there is a temptation. A temptation to yell, scream, to throw my hands in the air in dismay. At every junction there appears to be someone who does something that can only be described as stupid and dangerous. This many people can’t not know how to drive. And we all on occasion become the idiot. But this… this seems to be getting worse.

We are a culture overwhelmed. Information flies at us with a rapidity that only appears to increase. Texts need answering, emails call for action, and news changes by the nanosecond. Being involved — being even remotely informed — seems to require a super-human ability to compute everything going on. To make it worse, we believe we need to.

I fall into this trap often. Even though I am not nearly as “connected” as many are, the draw of being informed is great. Couple this desire with the urgency that notifications feigns.

Thinking back to the ancient art of writing letters and how we once felt excited to read a communication etched in ink and paper — something that was written days before at least and would remain unchanged for however long it takes to be read — it is no wonder we respond to texts, calls, emails, tweets, etc with ravenous appeal. After all, we are social animals and these are each tools of social interaction.

We are an animal that seeks inclusion. We seek to be a part of a group — a family, a tribe, a village, a community. Though the tools might change, the innate need remains. Sometimes, it is simply the tools that dictate how we interact, but it is still interaction.

In these past few years, as I’ve been marching along that inevitability of getting older, there has grown within me a strong desire to eschew the need to be connected at all times through the tools we’ve built and to move towards more ancient means. You know… talking with people face to face. Reading books. Sitting and thinking. Watching nature IRL.

Weirdly, purposely disconnecting in part without pulling a Ted Kaczynski-like rejection of modernity has helped. The distance placed between me and the digital tools we’ve created has allowed me to see them as what they are: tools.

The online world isn’t my world, nor is it really anyone’s. It is simply a digital representation. And a poor one at that.

Getting rid of them altogether would be silly, too. Even now, this is being written on an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard. When it is read, it will be through a device of some kind. How do we manage it, though?

I would venture to say that most people are simply trying to remain afloat, treading endlessly as more and more is thrown into the pool. It is to the point where we cannot even seem to focus enough to drive a car from point A to point B without making a mess of it. To the point where we feel we need all these engineering controls, such as braking assist and lane control, to hold us on task as our brains short circuit while Apple CarPlay (which I do love by the way), keeps our phone’s screen right up there, calling for us to look. At least Siri reads the texts and doesn’t show text there.

It takes effort to resist this feeling of needing to stay on top of everything. Still, the rewards starting to accumulate by declining the participation without trashing the tools helps a great deal. Who knows? Maybe there is a way to manage it that we can all find. At least then we can drive with a clearer head and be one less hazard on the road.