What sort of
knowledge does the modern information age impart? Does it in any way approach
Wisdom? Or does it rather primarily impart "anti-wisdom?" From what
we have said before, it certainly provides us with a wealth of information. Yet
all these mega-bites of information amount to very little knowledge and even
less, if any, wisdom. As a matter of fact, the over-abundance of information
actually hinders knowledge. We cannot see the forest for the trees, as it were.
Thus, at best the cumulative result of all the information we receive is a very
superficial knowledge. Remember: what can superficial knowledge do to us? It
has the potential to draw us away from God.
Even secular
sociologists are coming to similar conclusions. In his book The Future
Does Not Compute, Stephen Talbot points out the following:
It is hardly novel
to comment on the personal scattering so readily induced by modern culture.
Daily newspapers present my sweeping glance with a collage of the most
dissonant images and stories imaginable, each allocated a few inches of space,
a few moments of my time. The suffering in some African war immediately yields
to an overjoyed lottery winner, who in turn gives way to a dispute in the city
council, followed by survey results on American [physical] habits. The weather,
comics, sports, book reviews scanning—all this is how I prepare to meet the day
ahead. My attention, rather than engaging problems at hand in a deepening
meditation, is casually, almost unnoticeably dispersed.
In a similar way,
the television sound bite has become notorious; so, too, the dizzying
succession of images in movie and music video. Magazines and billboards, the
chatter of boom-boxes and the endless miles of retail aisle-ways heaped with a
fiendishly beguiling array of merchandise all compete for a moment's subliminal
notice from an otherwise absent subject, so that someone else's intentions can
have their way with me. Everything is calculated to prevent my standing firmly
within myself, choosing my own way in conscious self-possession. Left helpless
to digest much of anything in particular, I have no choice but to go and move
with the flow, allowing it to carry me wherever it will.
The critical law
at work here is that whatever I take in without having fully digested it,
whatever I receive in less than full consciousness does not therefore lose its
ability to act upon me. It simply acts from beyond the margins of my awareness.
Nothing is forgotten; it is only neglected. This is as true of Muzak as of the
film image, as true of sound bites as of retail advertisements. To open myself
inattentively to a chaotic world, superficially taking in "one thing after
another," is to guarantee a haphazard behavior controlled by that world
rather than by my own wide-awake choices.
The correlate of
scattered (mental) "input," then is scattered "output."
Car, telephone, computer, fax, television, VCR collaborate in this scattering
by affording "freedom" of action that tends to enslave me. It becomes
so easy to go somewhere else, whether via screen, phone lines, or
gasoline-powered engine that the whirl of ceaseless goings substitutes for the
hard work of inner attention to the fully dimensioned present. Encouraged to
veer off wherever I wish with scarcely so much as a moment's forethought, I am
never fully here or there, or anywhere.
But, someone will
say, "Fr. Gregory, you are overlapping my different activities. I have a
time for prayer, a time for contemplation, and there is a different time for my
other pursuits: the newspaper, the computer, the television and so on."
But can we really
compartmentalize our spiritual life to such a degree? Can we say our morning
prayers and then forget about God, about spirituality, totally transform
ourself into a completely secular being, like some Jekyll and Hyde, to become
spiritually active once again only when it is time to say our evening prayers?
Or conversely, can we possibly stop our scattered brain which has been
subjected all day to Informational Sensory Overload from trying to make sense
of it all, as we futilely attempt to concentrate on our evening prayers? I am
sure that the Fathers here present will all confirm that the most common
complaint heard in confession is the total inability to concentrate while
praying.
This is, of course, not at all surprising: after a day of hustle and
bustle, when we stand in front of our icons in the evening, this may be the
very first time we have stopped rushing about, since that morning. Physically
we have stopped for the moment, but mentally the wheels keep spinning. We would
all do much better if we were to follow what Apostle Paul entreats us to
do: Pray without ceasing (I Thess. 5:17). This means that
after the completion of our morning prayers, we continue being conscious the
entire day of being in the presence of the Lord.
A good way to practically
accomplish this is to say the Jesus Prayer at every possible moment that our
mind and lips are free: O Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on
me a sinner, or, as Theophan the Recluse advises, to simply remember in
our thoughts that God is always present with us. Even at the times
when our mind is intently busy with the tasks of the day, if we constantly
realize ourselves to be in God's presence, then it will be easier for us to
attain virtue, harder for us to sin, and when the day is done and we are before
our icons at home, we will not feel so alien, so far away from God. We, after
all, would have been conversing with Him all day.
An excerpt from the following article:
http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/infoage.aspx
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