DIGITAL LIFESTYLE (2)
What I never got around to yesterday was wondering how technology can be so threatening to so many people when I find that technology enriches my life in almost every way. I have read a number of times, but forget where, that in many ways this is the golden age. We live longer, we get sick much less, everywhere our standard of living is higher, there are even longer periods of peace and fewer wars. And yet there is a doomsday feeling that things are falling apart and we are under threat.
But of course my feeling that things are going well could just be because I was born a citizen of a very rich country where everyone does well and I am just along for the ride with good health care and social security, my parents were well educated and well traveled so I was to. In short, I’ve been privileged and not everyone is. I know because in my trips to India I can see what would have happened if I had been born in a village or grew up in the slums of a large city.
My privilege is accidental and I don’t deserve it. But, maybe because of this privilege, in my old age I have discovered how rich and full life can be even on a very modest income. I have discovered while traveling that all I need to be comfortable is a single room with a bathroom and a kitchenette and that I can take everything I need to live a full life in a carryon bag and a small backpack. I can even imagine living quite comfortably in a tiny EcoCasule, a self sufficient tiny house twenty feel long that can be towed from place to place which I have considered moving into. Travel itself is cheap and has never been easier, even in my mid 80’s. In my backpack are more than 1000 ebooks and all the music of the world including video concerts that I can see on a huge virtual screen even in a tiny room. I can visit daily over FaceTime with my family and anyone else.
My current small house is way too big for me. The more I get rid of and the less I have to maintain the freer I feel.
Of course to live this way I do have to have expensive digital devices, but they are getting cheaper and cheaper, and an Internet connection. And I do need some kind of health insurance. So maybe I have to be quite privileged to live this way, certainly more than the village Indians I’ve visited.
But compared to a great number of well to do Americans I have almost nothing and can live as full a life as they with their large houses and cars and standard American lifestyles, a fuller life maybe because I have nothing weighing me down and am free to move from place to place.
Other people can only travel for two weeks a year, if at all. Other people have little time to attend virtual concerts or read books. Shifting out of their routine is too difficult to do. They think that I must be rich to travel so much.
Maybe I haven’t thought this through enough or am missing something. But I’m guessing that in this new digital world people could live more simply and lead an unharried life if they would just let go and live a simple digital life in a small space with others doing the same thing. It seems to me that the new digital world offers all kinds of possibilities that we have to let go and open up to. And if we could do this there might be plenty to go around so that everyone could live decently and happily.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 