Hello everyone. I wanted to write about technology. We are being exposed to new technology, both in person that we use everyday, but also technology in the news. Even though it is necessary to live–we sure are seeing what happens when we don’t have necessary technology to keep us alive, it isn’t the answer to our deep down emotional needs. Ventilators are important temporarily. As with all technology, it only goes so far. With technology we use everyday, why do we beat ourselves up for not being good enough when we use it? In Buddhism, there is the term “ignorance” and “ignorance of our ignorance.” This makes it tricky. Technology is kind of like that.
As Albert Low wrote about Martin Heidegger: “It is technology’s very success that must be feared because it so captivates, bewitches, dazzles, anld beguiles us that it threatens to become someday accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking.” Here’s what Heidegger wrote: “Then man would have denied and thrown away his special nature–that he is a meditative being . . . The issue is keeping meditative thinking alive.”
Remembering that technology is necessary for us to live but won’t solve our most pressing emotional needs might help us navigate through our new found online-lives. What can help us? Meditation.