Friends are coming for brunch. I am nervous, as I rarely socialise at home, but I have decided it's healthy to see people. I got up early and opened the door to the mild weather, drizzle, and church bells cheerfully pealing from the local church.
As I went to the computer to check my emails, it struck me once again how the Internet has replaced religion and has become a capitalist God, an all-seeing, all-controlling force that drives human life. We worship its wisdom and are afraid of its power, depending on it to advise us on how to behave and to give us value as human beings.
The Internet spies on us, categorises us, punishes us: we confess to it and seek its approval; it's an unacknowledged prop, an addiction for some.
Ask the Internet, and it will be our doctor, plumber, spiritual advisor or anything you care to mention. Chameleon-like, it is happy to encourage us to spend, spend, spend without leaving our comfy seats, or save, save, save seconds later.
In our capitalist prayers, we seek information to trade so that we accrue self-esteem, a very rare commodity.
We trade this information for our idea of freedom (or for Viagra, always somebody else's idea of freedom).
It has it's own built-in Devil, pornography, so those who wish to can dabble in the darkness which feels like virtual darkness because it happens at home, rather than real-life violent abuse which happens somewhere else to a real person before travelling as a series of electrical impulses through tangles of cables to be served up with a nice cuppa in someones seedy bedroom.
And yet we look askance at those who traipse to church, mosque, temple and synagogue, pointing fingers of ridicule at the divisions between the God-fearing communities. Superior, we see ourselves as mastering technology rather than being ruled and controlled by it.
From now on, I am going to have at least one Internet-free day a week, and that day shall be Wednesday. Who knows, it might become more, and I might get my life back!
Who would have thought that a simple exercise like making blueberry muffins would trigger such soul-searching?
1 comment:
I have a friend who pours scorn on the time I spend reading blogs, but she spends and equal amount of time on Ravelry - could this be the start of a schism to rival religion!
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