Life – Only Better!

Life – Only Better!

Recognize the slogan?

It’s from the sci-fi movie, ‘Surrogates.’ It is the motto of the company in that movie which makes robots that people live their lives through vicariously.

I do not recommend it.

In this, the real world, I believe that limiting our time with our appliances leads to life lived better.

Don’t get winsome about your washing machine.

Don’t pet the push mower. Don’t cuddle your computer.

Maybe you could start small – take baby steps. Limit time spent watching entertainment, sports, Internet viewing, listening to wall-to-wall music, talking on cell phones with an eighteen-wheeler bearing down on you, or texting while crossing the street against the light.

What you are doing is insulating yourself against the influence and company of others. And mixing with others is how we live, and learn and thrive. We are social creatures. Don’t believe it? Watch a horse sometime. They are social creatures like us and want to run with the herd, not by themselves. They find identity with others creatures and learn to socialize, and they thrive because of it.

Machines both limit the time that we should spend really living and waste the time we have by chewing up precious resources and initiative.

Guess what?

I just bought a new computer. But, that computer sits in the back room, gathering cobwebs. I use my old laptop now – but only sparingly. That way, I can just put it to the side, and get up to do some activity that contributes to my mental or physical health.

One learns by simplifying. That means mechanical devices should be seen and not heard. Sometimes, not even seen. The proper role of machinery is to sit in a corner and be quiet until needed… no bleeping…no blooping… no blinkylights… just silence.

Look, it isn’t like we haven’t been warned about all this stuff before-that is, machines taking over.

Last century there was Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty- Four,’ or Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’ In more modern times, in movies, ‘Network’ speaks to the dangers of the mass media, and in ‘The Terminator,’ of the Rise of the Machines – as it calls it, and most recently in the television series, ‘Mr. Robot,’ there is the grave warning in the last episode from Season One that it has already happened and it is too late to change: That we cannot take back our humanity – that the machines have already won, and that the leisure and conveniences have isolated us, and have bribed and lulled us into complacency and slavery.

So much to say about this, I haven’t the time or space for it all. Here are a few matters to consider, even if your machines work perfectly fine, because we often find that we are literal hostages to them.

It’s a vicious cycle. We use the modern contrivances, then are snookered into some scam and sold a bill of goods by unscrupulous sales gimmicks that make the claim that we can’t live without the latest Biggie-Dynamo-Gadget-Twenty-Sixteen Model of Whatever.

And these offers spiral out of control and soon… we are on the hook for bills we don’t need and cannot afford. Remember the old days, when you didn’t spend two-thirds of your weekly paycheck on Internet, computers, phone lines, cable, fancy handheld devices, GPS, security systems, and the like?

I do. I remember my family getting by on a couple hundred a week.

Heck, everybody did!

But, today there needs to be space between us and this mechanical spawn of Satan.

Now, I am no Luddite. I know that society will not stop industrialization, and that mechanization in on the table for all our future years. But, neither should we be beholden to machines, nor subject to scams associated with using them.

What I DO KNOW is that machines were originally made to serve US.

And if they do not do so at present, then it is not the machine’s fault. It is OURS.

Time to be the adult in the room. And believe me, if you and/or your grown family members are in a household full of modern mechanized, digitized, electronic, binary-operated, coded, power-sourced electrical contraptions, then HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ADULTS IN THE ROOM.

Because as far as I know, no machines have taken to wearing pants.

Yet.

That means you are still calling the shots.

So, unplug for a while.

How about that book you’ve been wanting to read, or that grandchild you have been wanting to hug, or even that poor dog of yours that needs a daily walk or is dying to play with you, or you – just taking some time off for a vacation?

Take time to do THAT.

Take time to be human. Others care about you.

Machines don’t.

By Robert L. Hall