Quote of the Week...from Mohandas Gandhi

There is more to life than increasing its speed.    ---Mohandas Gandhi

Although the life of Mohandas Gandhi tragically ended in 1948 at the hands of an assassin, this quote of his is ever-so pertinent to today's world in the early 21st century.  Of course, in his day technology had already made incredible advances over the previous century with the advent of radio and the telephone in the field of communications and of the railway system, automobiles, and airplanes in the field of transportation.  But now, with television...be it cable, satellite, or streaming, cell phones with their applications, and the Internet with its social media, the speed and portability with which we can use these products has entered new frontiers.  In spite of this increase of the access and quickness of things, though, people at large don't seem to be any happier than they were when I was little and we only had one phone in our house and a TV that got four channels in a heavily metropolitan area...and of course a typewriter instead of a computer.  The fact is, as humans, we are very adept at adapting to new circumstances, quickly turning amazing new innovations into the norm.  Look at how quickly folks back in 1969 got used to people standing on the moon...by early the next year most had already lost interest...

Along with this trend toward accelerating our lives, I see an ever-decreasing attention span in people in general.  If you want to get a point across to someone nowadays, better do it quickly and with a lot of punch...right, Mr. President-Elect, the Twitter King?  I know that there is a lot of concern about the loss of personal privacy in this age of high-level digital data storage and transfer, but there is a concern, going in the diametrically opposite direction, that as individuals we are being diminished, devalued, and worst of all, ignored...

Although I grew up already knowing and expecting television, radio, automotive transportation, and the phone to be an integral part of my life, I do have the perspective of realizing that there is more to it all than having the fastest gadget in my possession.  There are still 24 hours in a day, so yes, it's nice to be able to speed up some things...but only if that means I have more free time left over to slow down the rest of my life and enjoy it...