As I was getting ready for church this past Sunday, the radio was playing in the background. I had it tuned to NPR; a show called Being happened to be broadcast at that time. The host was interviewing Jon Kabat-Zinn. They were discussing mindfulness as a way of life. I was only half listening until I heard them talking about our Stone Age bodies and how we aren’t equipped to handle the stresses of today’s technology. He went on to talk about how stress dampens our ability to empathize. That’s when I became interested. I immediately thought about several of our class discussions and how this show related to them. In particular, we touched on this while discussing Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (As a side note, Kabat-Zinn led a meditative experience at Google’s corporate headquarters in 2007. This makes me wonder what kind of effect Google was, and is, having on the employees of Google! Would they need to learn about mindfulness meditation if technology wasn’t having a negative effect on them?)
Jon Kabat-Zinn has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT. He has written several books and, through scientific research, has helped bring mindfulness meditation into mainstream medicine. The radio broadcast focused on this mindfulness as a way of life, but it also touched on its immediate relevance to the stresses of living in a digital age. This is what I focus on here.
Regarding mindfulness and meditation, Kabat-Zinn said, “How you pay attention in your life actually can change your life and your biology and your brain.” (This parallels some of what Carr was saying.) Before he began talking about technology, he said something that I found quite funny — and true! He was talking about how we’re born with the ability to think but have never been trained in the ability to pay attention. He went on to say, “...when the teacher thinks we’re not paying attention. Actually, we are paying attention, it’s just to something other than what’s on the blackboard.” Does this remind you of how clicking one link leads to clicking another and another? Where is our attention? With this discussion, he went on to say that mindfulness is a way of being — of being awake. He stated that “it’s not just the e-mail and the Internet...and the World Wide Web that are carrying ourselves away from ourselves....It’s the human condition.” Then he and the host went on to talk about time and how we don’t have enough of it and how we are stressed out. This is where the discussion of technology came in.
During the last part of the show, Kabat-Zinn talked about the challenges of having a Stone Age mind and body in a 24/7 digital world. Recently, he conducted an experimental public forum in Minnesota. It raised some questions about technology’s involvement in alienating us from each other. Ironically, this forum used technology to bring thousands of people together virtually.
Mr. Kabat-Zinn went on to say that living in this digital world has huge repercussions. He often hears people talking about how they need to take control of technology, rather than letting technology take control of them. I, like Mr. Kabat-Zinn, grew up in an analog world. I remember what it was like. Most young people today, on the other hand, have grown up in a digital world. They haven’t experienced life without technology. An important point that Kabat-Zinn makes is that we need to be aware of how technology is an object of attention, and we need to see how much it improves our lives versus how much it turns us into slaves of the technology. As we mentioned in class, he agrees that technology is addictive. He even goes so far as to say it is “seductive.” He mentions the “workweek” and “workday” of the past. Before technology, a workweek had a beginning and an end. So did a workday. But with technology, there is no end — or beginning. We can take our digital workplace with us everywhere, 24/7. But wait, our bodies and our minds aren’t ready for this! The stress this brings can have devastating implications. Scientists understand that stress dampens our ability to empathize. This, in turn, can lead to people make less moral decisions that can have real economic consequences. Could it be that many of the poor decisions that were made by CEOs over the past several years were the result of stress caused by technology, which then led to poor judgment? Could it be, as Mr. Kabat-Zinn mentions, that people begin to feel extremely powerful, more so because they can make many decisions in a rapid sequence and see almost immediately the positive consequences of those decisions, and this leads to a loss of moral judgment, compassion, and clarity? We don’t want technology to make us delusional.
It is important for us to be aware of the power of technology — and the issues that go with it. We don’t know what the digital future brings. That in and of itself creates stress. He ends his interview by saying, “This is far too serious a matter to take too seriously.” Be sure to hold on to your sense of humor!
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