Greatness: An Anachronism?

Technology. It's an amazing thing. No doubt about that. The fact that I can write this now, push a little 'post this' button, and then have this fed to you in little over a few seconds is a pretty amazing thing.

The fact that people across the world can tell what their polar neighbor is up to, via satellite image, is pretty cool.

And having all the information of the world [or at least 99.99% of it] at my fingertips, that's pretty nice.

But let me get a little Ludditic on you. I know, step back. Dave's going to say something NEGATIVE about technology? How could this be possible! Say it ain't so!?!?!?!

I've just been thinking: does all this greatness of the connection mean that greatness in individuals isn't in the vogue anymore? Is individual greatness, quite literally, an anachronism?

When I say this, I mean this mainly in regards to myself. In regards to the life I'm living right now. I consume information like, well, a fat kid eats candy. A good two hours of my day must be spend, on average, reading some sort of RSS feed of people like me [well, they tend to be a heck of a lot better than me....] ranting about life, living, science, Buddhism, religion, philosophy, technology, penises, etc. I get that nice full feeling. But then I realize that at the end of day, I haven't learned anything. Okay, well, I've learned plenty of things. But I don't know anything new.

And the rest of the day I spend looking at e-mail, wondering if maybe, just maybe, someone's left a new comment on my blog, or a new Facebook wall post, or any other vicarious form of communication which I'm sad to admit I look forward to maybe a little too much. E-mail has all the elements necessary for addiction (intermittent reward, daily necessity [because in honesty, sometimes you really DO need to check your e-mail], social tolerance, etc.)

The moments in between I might write a decent blog post, like [hopefully] this one. I might read a really good book. I might listen to some music. And I might go out for a nice walk / run / other outing.

All and all, a fulfilling life. But I think that might be the problem. It's a fulFILLing life. Not a FULL life. Not something worth talking about. But does life have to be something mentionable? Isn't that just for movie stars and pro athletes?

It makes me think of the show House. Gregory House is an amazing Doctor. And yet he spends a good part of his day watching Soap Operas or other miscellaneous shows. But he's earned that 'crap' time because he spends the rest of hist time making brilliant life / death decisions.

Maybe that's my problem. I haven't earned the crap time yet. I assume that crap time comes with the territory [with being an adult, white, middle-class male in a capitalist, well-off country]. When on the contrary I should get those things as a reward.

I shouldn't award myself for mediocrity. That just doesn't make sense.

But yet I think I'll just fall back into mediocrity again. I don't know how many times I will fall for this trap. Probably until I wake up one morning and realize that 'tomorrow' never came, but old age did.

Damn. Memento mori.

But how, in our digitized, antiseptic, antitruth society?