Like ravening wolves, we devour information until we weary from the effort. We have somehow found the evolutionary express lane as we morph into computer generated graphics going about executing the programming given us by our virtual masters. Most of us feel a certain “something” missing but we just can’t seem to find it. It’s just beyond our reach like the appropriate word or name is behind a frustrating fog for the Alzheimer’s victim. We are certain that somebody out there knows – we just don’t know who.

I am no Luddite. I use technology every day in my work and leisure. There is no evil world domination plot occupying my thoughts. All the same, we have changed – and not necessarily for the better. In joining the online world many of us disconnected from that which we can feel and touch. Our perception of reality is changing rapidly. This “new real” is quite different than what we grew up with. You need not touch, smell, or understand a thing in any normal way for it to be real. The virtual tells us what is real and we adjust our perception to agree.

Connected to this, I believe, is a general trend towards aggressiveness and acrimony. It is as though this pervasive sense of wrongness agitates and stirs human passions better left unmolested. We work to win every contest at any cost irrespective of ethical or moral considerations. Our hero’s are those who prove that success obtained by any means brings fulfillment. We look into each other’s eyes and know it is so but we continue on, like electronic marionettes, dancing the dance given us.

There is something within that wants to touch and feel a thing to know if it is real. A link to our simpler selves that doesn’t quite get that things have changed. The nineteenth century Russian philosopher Dostoyevsky said that beauty will save the world. If that is true, then we should all be about creating enduring things of beauty. Our ability to create beauty must begin with learning to appreciate or desire beauty. True beauty costs, it requires something of us, it is never quick or easy. It is the antithesis of virtual, it is real reality. It’s never cheap but always fulfilling. It’s worth the effort.

Akylina Lee is mother to three adult children and an observer of life

http://www.whybuyplastic.com

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