I went to Hertz today to rent a car for a few days while my automobile is being serviced. I had to hit more buttons on my cell phone to get service with AAA, which I never got. Nothing is more annoying. All “big pieces of stuff” businesses have turned to robo-dialing to get away from servicing inquiries. Which brings me to the sorest subject in the world for me i.e., technology whose benefits are being overshadowed by the ineptness of the system in place.
As a Jungian-styled therapist my method of return to wellness is all about uncovering, discovering and discarding or keeping what my client finds that helps him or her to live a life more fulfilling, and honestly by looking at addictions and codependency to see where the breakdown started.
Truth be told, I am afraid that most of us are unconscious about the downside of technology that invades our lives and adversely affects how we do what we do that leads to a loss of quality in how we live our lives.
My most recent discomfort was about how I could never hit a button to find someone who could assist me with what I needed. But what seemed to be an inconvenience caused me to look at all the ways the new technologies have brokered us into the addictive factor of so much of new inventions and technologies. Let’s start with Facebook and Twitter. Billions of both genders have become obsessed with “playing the game” mostly to their detriment. It is not only about a cell phone introducing a new phone that makes the addiction kick-in, “I gotta have this new technology.
So I tracked back to where all this nonsense started and voila! It can be traced back to the introduction of the computer in 1953. The royalty of having all this nonsensical technology at our fingertips is diminished when you consider how many people’s personal accounts have been hacked to the tune of billions of dollars lost. Now we face an enemy far more deadly that Ibola and ISIS–the capacity the computer has to invade and cause havoc in our lives without anyone firing a shot or invading our shores. Of all the dates you memorized in school, add 1953, the introduction of the computer. In many ways its benefits are overshadowed and have diminished quality of life rather than monumental benefits.
I would be remiss if I did not caution about the introduction of the credit card in 1959. In 2014 one third of the American households are in collection regarding credit card debt. I am of an age that if we wanted a new bicycle our parents told us to cut lawns or throw newspapers.
You ask, “Don’t you know about the benefits of the computer and the convenience of having credit cards. It is obvious you are reading my words because you have a computer, which you more than likely bought with a credit card. I admit that both have their conveniences but my job is to make you think. Watch how you use your computer and pay off your credit cards–set limits on usage of both.
