Pay Attention

I was wondering about our modern lives with our modern technology and thinking how technology is meant to better our lives. When somthing you rely on eg fridge freezer, washing machine, car, heating system, etc, is unable to look after itself and requires constant looking after, eg feeding electricity, fuel and a lot of maintanance, this ends up being quite a pain.

I accidently stabbed my finger at work, there was a big cut and all I did was suck it and let it be, I didn't waste time fixing my finger. Basically biology can look after it self with out wasting any of our attention trying to fix it.

Most of the time I'm paying needless attention to very mundane things to get by because of the technology I rely on, looking at bills, being stuck in traffic, earning money to pay people, shopping, making sure the cars working.

Nature provides every thing, it does not require our attention to maintain it, instead nature is being demolished and replaced by a technology that requires our constant attention to maintain.

I believe all our pains and joys come from what we pay attention to.

With technology we become more specialized. You need to focus on creating money to solve the problem of heaters cars etcetera. but i mean you can use your money differently as well. Like instead of buying a car take public transit or once in a while take a taxi. I mean if it's not that far you can take a bike too! I mean some people feel that taking transit is a waste of time but I mean you can do other things that you wouldn't be able to do while driving. For instance you can read. Why don't more people read on transit?

Or like instead of buying books, use the library or a second hand store.

I guess what I'm getting at is there are ways to utilize your time and money so that technology works for you.

I would also disagree that nature provides everything. Like how many mass extinctions have there been? Just off the top of my head nature didn't provide for the dinosaurs. Lots of things in nature are bad for humans, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami's, droughts even diseases like cancer, diabetes, aids. like the list is endless.

Agriculture, proper plumbing and waste removal. These are things that have caused the massive expansion of the number of people and their life expectancy. All of these things are technologies. I would way rather fix or pay someone to fix my heater than have to spend the next three months chopping wood for the winter. Think about what your salary would be during those three months. I would way rather have technology and pay people to complete tasks through a means of exchange. What we got from nature, the chopped wood, is what we need to survive and really those resources are extremely limited and eventually one day we will have to solely rely on technology for the means of the people I guess fixing the radiator is a way that more people can enjoy life because of the Earth's scarce resources.

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Nature provides every thing, it does not require our attention to maintain it, instead nature is being demolished and replaced by a technology that requires our constant attention to maintain.

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If we didn't have freezers, fridges, cars, washing machines, how would we be able to maintain a static lifestyle?

In my view, technology certainly does make our lives easier than they would have been in our hunter gatherer times. As jacker says, it also allows us to "become more specialized" and focus on things other than basic survival needs.

If you didn't have any of these technologies, I think you would be more focused on the labour of completeing all of these tasks by hand and it would take up a lot more of your time. Nature certainly does require effort to maintain when you think about how much effort you would have to put into looking after your crops and tending the animals.

Without a washing machine, you'd have to handwash and scrub everything in a basin all of the time. Without the technologies of fridges and freezers, you'd have to hunt/kill animals a hell of a lot more than you do now and prepare them from scratch - skinning, deboning, gutting etc. You wouldn't even be able to enjoy a great varitey of foods without technology, as some countries need to ship certain products over in order to have them available for you. You'd also have to tend your own garden with a reasonable variety of vegetables and fruits. All of this is a job in itself - farming.

& this all assuming that you live in an adequate environment that can provide these things to you. You'd be incredibly vulnerable in the face of natural disasters.

Squarepants,

I think I understand your frustration when it comes to the modern lifestyle. I often had these same feelings when I was working a job that I absolutely hated, because then not only do you have to earn your money in a way that doesn't satisfy you emotionally, you have to spend it on things that don't fulfill you in the way you need to be fulfilled.

You get trapped in this horrible cycle of having an unsatisfying work-life and not being able to do what it is you truly want to do. And it is so hard to get out of, sometimes it feels impossible because you don't even understand what you would be happy doing.

In this way, going "back to basics" seems really romantic, because it represents freedom from this cycle, the freedom of not having to pay attention to these mundane things and doing what it is you really want to do, what excites you. But when you think about it (well when I think about it), going "back to basics" isn't the easiest and most carefree way to live, realistically. The mundane tasks would only become that much harder and time consuming.

I guess I'm responding to you this way because I realize that if I'm spending my time doing something that I enjoy and love, the mundane tasks aren't such a big deal anymore because I'm gaining a higher fulifllment and satisfaction within my life.

I'm wondering if this might be the case for you at all? That you are not satisfied with your job, or haven't discovered a passion/hobby that you can gain a higher fulfillment from?

Farming is not for me natural or self sustaining its another constant pain of maintanance, I'm not saying every invention has become a nuisance but most people I know don't know a world without it and have become dependant on the technologies they grew up with.

Here's one invention I like(Permaculture) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7mQZHfFVE.

With a combination of wisdom and empirical science we can have a good hybrid coalition of nature and invention to make our lives easier.

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In my view, technology certainly does make our lives easier than they would have been in our hunter gatherer times. As jacker says, it also allows us to "become more specialized" and focus on things other than basic survival needs.

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I personally don't like to be speciallized, spending all that time in the day focusing on one thing so I can afford to shop and then eat. Personally I believe most people would be happy to skip the being at work bit and just go and get the food.

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I'm not saying every invention has become a nuisance

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To me, you do appear to be saying that with your original post.

You express frustration at having to maintain washing machines, your car, your freezer fridge, but wouldn't you still have to maintain all of this technology even if you lived in an area that lived off permaculture?

By specialization, I at least, mean that we are able to focus on the skills and interests we have that we enjoy putting to use.

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Personally I believe most people would be happy to skip the being at work bit and just go and get the food.

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So to you, no one enjoys what they do in terms of their job? Are you saying this because this is how you feel about your job? You don't enjoy it?

The over reliance of a technology that can't look after it self has become a drain. Our needs are provided by nature, food from the land, water from the sky, warmth from the sun.

My real frustration is where the drive of the invention is coming from and thats about making a profit instead of bettering life.

My job is a very hands on job where I don't have to think, there for giving me time to think about things I like to think about. I believe most people would not turn up to work if they were told they were not going to get paid.

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My real frustration is where the drive of the invention is coming from and thats about making a profit instead of bettering life.

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The technology you have listed, all make it convenient for us to focus on what we enjoy, making it easier for us to get from A to B. They all have a market and people make profit selling them, but their existance as I see it, is due to our desire for a more convenient lifestyle where we can pursue other things we enjoy.

In my experince, these technologies make it easier for me to get by with the mundane tasks and focus on what I enjoy.

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My job is a very hands on job where I don't have to think, there for giving me time to think about things I like to think about. I believe most people would not turn up to work if they were told they were not going to get paid.

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So, does your job give you a sense of fulfillment and happiness?

What are your thoughts on my second reply in this thread?

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I believe most people would not turn up to work if they were told they were not going to get paid.

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People who wouldn't do their job if they weren't getting paid, obviously don't particularly enjoy their job or gain any sense of fulfillment doing it.

People that are passionate about doing something, or enjoy it immensely, actually crave to do work in whatever field interests them. They'll want to do it, even if there isn't any money involved. Sure they might have to find another way to make a living, and for some people that can be really hard, but on some level they are able to gain a sense of fulfillment and happiness through their outside interests/passions, as long as they know what those are.

This is why if your job is actually uninspiring and making you unhappy or bored, and you don't have something in your life that you enjoy doing and gives you some sense of fulfillment and achievement, you should really try to focus on how you could attain that in your life.

The thing is Vigil I could get paid £50,000 a year for simply being my self, its not going to take away my dependance on a technology that needs another human to maintain its existance and its a complex technology that I need the help from others.
Where as trees, vegitation and animals do not need our attention to maintain their existance.

Well, I'm guessing there aren't any realistic solutions to replace the technologies that you've said you have a problem with.

Although there are those self-sustaining communities that exist, that live without a great deal of technology, where people live off the land and everything. Have you heard about those? Why don't you put some research into that and see if you can become a part of one, one day?

Here you go Squarepants, I took the initiative to look it up for you. They're called Ecovillages. I did a normal name search on this page and clicked the first one that came up, and one of the things they listed as a focus was permaculture.

http://ena.ecovillage.org/eng/pages/ecovillage-directory.php

What do you think?

Thank you very much Vigil thats thoughtfull.

Me and my partner are hoping to move near to a transition town soon and that made me think about technology, so I thought I'd think out loud on here.http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

That's very interesting Squarepants, I've never heard of transition towns before.

I never knew people where trying to get these things happening in cities too, it's so large scale. http://www.aboutfacecollective.com/

You and your partner must be super excited to be moving somewhere that shares your values and concerns. I know I would be.