AT LAST: SOME THINGS ARE BEING MADE EASIER BUT SOME FIGHT CHANGE

After too many recent years of things changing immediately you have made a purchase, other tasks are being made more difficult,  like getting to a real person after a telephone maze; take heart.  There are a few good changes,  For example, petitions when signed online can be directly posted to your Facebook page and the cause you believe in sent to all your friends on Facebook.  This worked for me suggested by a Service Company who found a contractor for me.  Since the contractor had done a great job,  I was happy to praise him to anyone who reads my Facebook

Thinking over the many changes that have occurred in the past couple of decades, I feel sad for those who cannot accept that the world will continue to change and the pace will even be accelerated.  Technology will continue to advance so that new products will be required by those who feel the need to stay current.While there are still people who don't own home computers, cell phones, CD and DVD players, digital cameras, they are fast becoming a developmentally arrested  minority.

The inability to change will leave some with no ability to do many things.  If it were not for phone cameras we would not have caught as many police brutality incidents and other illegal acts, nor captured pictures which would have remained images inr heads only.  At one point most of us were tied to wired telephone lines.  Now we can use the Internet or Satellite connections. The advances in making everything smaller and lighter allows us to carry more equipment on our bodies...such as phone, camera, games, GPS, photo albums, instant resources, and so much more.

The down side to it all is that every changer requires another learning curve.  You really have to pay attention because the dials and buttons are not where you were used to having them. It takes a while before new things get established in your cerebral cortex.  However, resisting learning and making the change only leads to deprivation, and being left behind the majority.  Naturally, keeping up to date by charging purchases of every new toy that comes along is not an answer either!  Everything in moderation and within your budget works the best.

LUDDITES OF 2010

It is understandable that people out of work or with little money will not surround themselves with all the newest technological toys like iPhones, NotePads, Kindles, your favorite music delivered intravenously, texting language outside of Merriam-Webster, video more real than your lying eyes show you, and too many products to make your life beyond anyone else's.

However, it is not just poor people.  Small town people often breed small town minds.  I used to think it was only seniors who were Luddites.  It is not.  I have neighbors in their fifties who don't have a computer in their house.  People who have lots of discretionary funds have even given up television.  There seems to be a hesitancy to find out what is going on in the world.  Granted, TV is mind-boggling these days.  Whoever is coming up with the programming apparently didn't make it out of kindergarten or may have joined the Rupert Murdoch Club to Dumb Down  USA Citizens.  Whichever, cable providers advertise hundreds of channels available for viewing.  When people confined to wheelchairs, with little else to do with their senses and limbs, turn the TV off, someone ought to take notice.

I've noticed that when I turn off the cable box, it  often turns itself back on.  Now how can that happen if it does not happen by a flip of a wrist in Verizon Central?.  It certainly makes this suspicious person wonder what statistics are getting padded.  After all, advertisers need to see NUMBERS UP.

But, I digress.  Recent research has shown brain differences in those who can accept change and those who are unable to do so. In 1996 a book was written by Kirkpatrick Sale.   To read Sale's opinions, click here.  It is an interview by David Kupfe;   Rebel Against the Future.  Sale offered the argument, "To believe that what has happened to humankind in the last 200 years is "progress" is to fall into an industrialist trap of: "Anything new is better and everything is better tomorrow than it is today because we have more material advantages and more ease and speed in our life and this is good."

The sad part of this is that people would suffer more painfully before death rather than benefiting, suffering less and living longer due to the modern 'miracles' that technology has brought to medicine. If corporations were less greedy, they would make more products in the U.S., put more Americans to work and help the economy rather than draining it for personal gain for the top few.  When workers feared that machines would put them out of jobs, what happened?.  When horses were replaced by cars, mechanics had work.  How did this come about?  People have to be educated.  Companies that offer courses to train their employees to take on new tasks assure them continued mutual work benefit.  Creativity can really only blossom by knowing how to make your ideas come to fruition.  In the fifties, science fiction fed the scientists with ideas that only those from places like MIT,  Cal Tech, and the like could turn into reality rather than fiction.  No Luddites they!

To understand Ludism (also spelled Luddism) today, I found an interesting article..  Writing about the rise of computers and the Internet, it states:  "The single most widespread sign of technological change in the last decade or so, the Internet, seems to provide novel opportunities rather than eliminating old trades. If anyone wanted to destroy the Internet in order to safeguard their own job, they would have to be a very skilled computer hacker with a lot of cunning, time and energy. Information technology is so entrenched in our civilization that attempts to wreck it would require almost biblical destruction. The Internet was built with resilience in mind"  It touches the degree to which progress is held back by people who resist change and progress..Not all of them want the world to run as it was presumed to in the Holy Bible, either.

LIFE CHANGES FASTER THAN WE DO

Living in today's world for people who don't like change is getting impossibly difficult.  There was a time, only a relatively few years ago when life could be lived without adjustment to too much change in one's life.  Religious sects like the Shakers lived simply but died out when they refused to allow sexuality even for procreation.  Religious practices are getting harder and harder to maintain when one moves elsewhere in the world where they are not supported as with Muslim women who want to cover themselves totally.  When Florida refused to issue a driver's license to a woman who would not be recognized on her driver's license, some people were shocked. In France, the practice of covering one's self is now forbidden.  If you are interested in learning more about the 'hijab', click here.  Covering up is not mandatory but a choice as are practices of walking, not riding, on the Sabbath for Orthodox Jews.

Many do not want their lives cluttered with computers, TV, microwaves and other bits of technology so crucial to others.  Nevertheless, choosing the 'simpler' life style may be getting more and more difficult rather than simple.  There are many things that can't be done without technology.  People have to pay more (such as the purchase of plane tickets) without doing it using a computer.  Even paying some bills by phone can no longer be done without an extra charge.

In addition to cost, all that one might need to live comfortably may no longer be within one's physical range.  Those without cable TV will no longer be able to absorb a sense of the world of politics, changes in laws, availability to update  information and easily have access to their own medical records.  I used to think those limitations, self-imposed, were only by old people but have found many people (still in their fifties or less) who do not own computers nor know how to use them.

One can only wonder what will happen to people who cannot adapt to current life.  Today we feel the difficulties in getting laws changed to fit the world and needs of today.  Resistance can be so powerful as to hurt many...we all saw this resistance to the Health Care Bill being passed.  How long can we who wish change be held back by those who fear it and refuse it?