Posted by
vonryansexpress on Monday, May 18, 2009 8:57:21 PM
Mr. Hengler posted a serious sociological blog piece today titled, “High Schoolers Face 'Withdrawal Symptoms' & 'Confusion' After Going Without Cell Phone, Computer, Or iPod For 10 Days.”
This is one of the critical issues facing our culture. How to breed and develop a class of citizens that have something in common with their land and fellow citizens beyond the ability to play in cyber.
Apart from the atomization that cyber creates per se, is the deracination that occurs when young gadget addicted citizens do not have any contact with anything that came before the immediate cyber moment.
Being an American means knowing something about the America that occurred before your own birth. When I was a child in a small Texas town, I'd go into that small town library and read serial books that had been written 50 years before my childhood. In those texts, I learned and thrilled at "running boards" on cars and tapping trees for sap and all the cultural expressions that came from decades before my own.
In movies, in a small Texas town, I could time travel to America in the inter-war years, learn about the Klan, Prohibition, the golden age of aviation and then the great portrayals of America at War in the Nineteen Forties.
Being an American requires more than the immediate satisfaction of communication and access. Being an American means that you know something about the culture that created the America you live in.
Cyber and the 'gadget' empire may deny many the appreciation of and the foundational knowledge they need to know and appreciate their own country.
Nothing to excess.