The information age is totally out of control. I cannot believe how much time I spend just mentally and physically sifting through information that is not relevant to me. Well, it may be relevant, but I have to decide. I have to make millions of these decisions everyday. It is too much!
I get e-newsletters from Sojourners (that's new but uhh okay), Speaking of Faith, Relevant, NPR, the Writer's Almanac, Yahoo, the US Postal Service, Wheaton College, Brewing Culture, Mitch McVicker, Jars of Clay, Rascal Flatts, Rob Thomas, Human Rights First, the Chamber of Commerce, John Edwards, the DNC, and SO SO SO MANY MORE! I'm just naming a few here.
This doesn't even include all the businesses that email me various bills each month (cell phone, landline, car insurance, student loans, etc.) and it doesn't include the fact that I write e-newsletters for a living. Yes, I participate in the evil deed itself!
It doesn't include the news that comes at me on television or in the newspaper. Or on my google homepage. Or in a variety of other advertisements online.
It doesn't include the junk mail that I throw away from my mailbox everyday. More trees dying... yep. The credit card solicitations alone are enough to make my blood pressure rise. I DON'T WANT THE CARD. Stop it already!
This doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of beautiful looking, brand new books and magazines that assault my eyes when I step into Barnes and Noble or Borders. (I honestly usually have to pause for a minute to visually look around the store, breathe, and take it all in.) Or the magazines and package covers everytime I go grocery shopping. There's always a new line of yogurt... a new way of putting together cookies and candy (yuck)... a new way to bake or flavor what should be a simple cracker.
Everything is commercials. Everything - advertising. Information. Knowledge is extremely cheap these days. Knowledge is like a prostitute and I've lost respect for her.
I kind of just want to be ignorant. I want to go back to a place of silence in some ways. Don't get me wrong.. I do love stimulation. I'm as web-saavy and ADD as the next 20-something. I just think we all just need a collective break.
PS. Doesn't even include myspace... or itunes... or so many more infinite things. Mwaaaahhhhh
PPS. Reminds me of classic Walt Whitman... who I love. Don't be hating on the Whitman. You know who you are. I put in BOLD the part I am thinking of... but the whole excerpt I love.
I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance,
always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction,
always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
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