It's hard to hear. You're doing too much at one time. You're trying too hard. Don't let life pass you by. Steady and slow wins the race.
Charlie Chaplin in the above video seems to express an oft-shared sentiment: we are living faster lives but not better ones. Our quantity of communication via online networks has increased exponentially in the past decade. We now all(well, almost all of us) have Facebook accounts; fewer little have Gmail; many of us blog; others use Twitter or Instagram to express the importance of an instant. It is now not a matter of whether you have access to the Internet(if you live in the U.S.), but what you do on the Internet. Many of us learn new things on the Internet—I have on Reddit and Wikipedia. And some of us use chat; we spend time trying to figure out what to post as a status or how to talk to someone you have a crush on.
I am the worst consumer of content on the Internet that has ever existed. I am mere cannon fodder; I am a child on the Internet. I give into my desires—meanwhile, I pass over educational content that could make me a better and smarter person. Not that you can learn everything on the Internet but that we could, each day, learn at least something. We could donate to worthy causes; we could help people by listening to our friends and counseling them through their problems. You and I are not naturally inclined to use tools like the Internet well and for its intended purpose: greater communication.
Greed has poisoned men's souls. We need humanity over machine theology. Chaplin is right—the Internet is a tool and a powerful one at that; now, if the Internet is a tool, where is there room for love? Between the fanaticism that the Internet creates through its loyal fans and fanbases of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc, where is there room to express our love for one another? Perhaps you'll say, Match.com or eHarmony or OKCupid. I am sure loving relationships can start online, but they really take place in real life. They take place in restaurants and cafes and even libraries. Moments of simple teenage adolescence happen in movie theaters; they hold hands and fall asleep on one another.
Greed is not love and love is not greed. It will never be. Jesus said two thousand years ago: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money" (Matthew 6:24). This is true. You cannot devote your life to getting a steady job and getting financially stable and expect to have love waiting at the door. Now I guess at this point I've revealed my biases: I'm writing this blog post to affirm a basic Christian point. Yes and no. Yeah I care about spreading basic Christian points, but no, this blog post wasn't written to convert you. It was to affirm you and your thinking. It was to encourage my atheist friends in ways I don't really understand.
If we cannot serve both God and money, then, who do we serve? We serve one another. We use the Internet to shape and improve lives. We take time to make sure what we are writing is sincere; what we read is helpful to us and others; what we watch is genuinely interesting and not dull in the most evil way: insincerity. Because honestly every guy I know watches obscene material and either feels good about it or doesn't. Some don't; those people are destined to become holy men or gurus or get to Heaven, heh. My opinion on pornography is that if it makes you happy, so be it.
What greed really has a monopoly on is speed. Our need for speed. And again I'm the worst violator of this: I go way too fast on the freeway (I've gone 110 mph before) and I am constantly impatient with people. Sometimes in my rush to get things done I forget that I am a human being and not a machine. And of course, being in a rush will always hurt you in the end; you'll get speeding tickets or pass over a person who could have loved you for long. Let me hypothesize for a second and apply this to myself; my last two relationships failed because I was in such a rush to experience love. Yet, again, I will quote from the Bible: love is kind and patient. Love looks over faults. Love will understand when you fail. Love destroys greed because once you have love, you'll need nothing else.
It's hard to hear. You're doing too much at one time. You're trying too hard. Don't let life pass you by. Steady and slow wins the race.
We cannot love machines because they cannot love us back. We cannot love the Internet because it cannot love us back. In this race(or marathon? or perhaps it's not at all productive to think of life as a race) of life, your ability to be a steady person will allow you to become a steady boy and girl friend. No amount of speed will help you appreciate others; being in a rush will encourage you to ignore momentary beauty and beautiful people. Computers threaten to rule our lives; let's show them we have in our heads subtypical programs of the most powerful computer ever devised by nature: the ability to love.
