Prompted by Em’s drastic ‘deactivation’ of her Fa(r)cebook account;
I again wonder what are we doing… “Amusing ourselves to death” (as Neil Postman wrote).
When I asked, where have our souls gone? a friend recently commented that “we’ve concreted over them”…
The word/idea “soul” is probably an adaptation of an early translation of Greek ψυχή psychē “life, spirit, consciousness”.
Arguably, our essential life, our essential spirit, is not found in the digital sphere.
The digital sphere is a fabulous but insubstantial temporal window onto a rich vibrant world “out there”.
The word concrete comes from the Latin word “concretus” meaning compact or condensed. This is to a certain extent what our digital postings do.
They condense our thoughts and feelings in to compact forms. The conglomerations of these forms build strong and often overwhelming but gratuitous structures of intrigue and wonder.
The usage of concrete, world wide, is twice as much as steel, wood, plastics, and aluminium combined. Concrete’s use in the modern world is only exceeded by the usage of naturally occurring water.
Ah… Off for a glass of water!
Jules P Richards 