I was interested in Pastor Cwirla's blog post from early last week on "avatars." (Whatever they are! Something to do with internet communication. Try telling that to an inept techno-dunderhead like me.) The part of his article that interested me most was about being with people in the real world as opposed to interacting in cyberspace. One paragraph begins, In my opinion, it isn’t terribly healthy for human beings who are made by God for communion to spend inordinate amounts of time engaging in compulsive, raw communication in a virtual world. In some cases, it can be psychologically debilitating.
This fits with my opinions about television. Addicted to it though I may be, my reasonable brain says television is not a good thing, as discussed in Marie Winn's book The Plug-In Drug. We've struggled back and forth with tv, banning it, allowing it, banning it again, trying to control it, then back to admitting our failures and attempting (with varying degrees of success) to harness our addiction to achieve a little bit of something good.
The computer games seem even more addictive. So are email lists and forums and blogging and a variety of other ways to spend time on the Internet. So we pendulum back and forth, trying to find a comfortable middle spot of allowing such things without being consumed by our lack of self-control over them.
So tonight, as we're talking in the half-hour between "American Idol" and "Lost" [TV shows, doncha know?], I realize that five people are sitting in the living room with THREE computers lined up in the space of a few feet. And munchkin is using a cell phone to call the kitchen, a whopping 10 feet away. I probably should cry, but instead it just made me laugh!
I'm on an introvert theme today....
ReplyDeleteI see his point, and to a certain extent I agree. But I also know, that as introverted as I am, I would interact with people a lot less than I do now over cyberspace. And in reality, these are people that I am communing with through the reality of being part of the Body of Christ. I am edified by them and hope that I help them, too. Sometimes it is important to be able to say, connect with other confessional homeschooling Lutheran pastor's wives who are dealing with nutty parents, curriculum issues, and Diet Coke vs. kombucha (still like Diet Coke better). God blesses these kinds of interactions, too.
But that should not be instead of the real interaction that is processed through the five senses that you have with your family and the people that God has put in your life for you to show love to and to be loved by(and that includes in the congregation).
I am at varying points of the spectrum on each of the afore-mentioned digital mediums:
ReplyDeleteTV: Since we've gotten rid of the satellite service (a choice no logical part of me could oppose), I no longer watch any TV just for the sake of watching something. I only watch shows I specifically want to watch - and at the moment, that's just Lost and Gilmore Girls. Furthermore, I refuse to watch commercials at all, and thus either record a show to watch later, or download the show off the internet.
Games: I actually don't spend much time playing computer/video games, any more. If I get a new one I may play it more, and there are periods when I don't play them at all, so I think in the long run I average about 45 minutes a day (which is not an insignificant amount of time, but it's something I'm comfortable with).
Internet communication: This is a big one for me, both in the respect that it is a large part of my life and that I am not eager to rid myself of it. While I think e-communication is never comparable to *real*, human interaction, the fact is that of all the people I would consider close friends, there is only one whom I see more often than every few months, because of distance. As long as it is not within my power to change this, I am willing to sacrifice my time and energy (and eye health) on E-mail and AIM and forums.
Though, for what it's worth, I spend the most time simply wasting time on the internet, an activity at which I am a master. Oh well. :P
Hey, Nat, my dear, it's your fault that we were watching "Lost" last night! LOL!
ReplyDeleteAnd yup, my reasons for email communication and blogging is like yours. It's a cyber-way to keep in contact with real-life friends that I don't see as frequently as I'd like. And my need for that is probably why I can't bring myself to interfere with my kids' need for it too. But I sure do think it's much much nicer to be with you in person! Thanks for letting us descend upon y'all last weekend; I muchly appreciated it!