Stop and think before condemning modern Technology!

Have you ever noticed how much we are surrounded by technics nowadays? Maybe you haven’t because we are all just getting so used to it! There are electronics everywhere, everyone has a mobile, each house has at least one TV, people cannot imagine living without their fridge. This is not going to be a ‘back-to-nature’ or ‘away-from-electronics’ article. You can see it as a reflection on our use of all those useful, practical items and gadgets. Or you can see it as a prompt to be thankful for having all of them!

It has become quite popular in the spiritual scene, among yoga people and others, to talk against all kinds of electronic items. They make you dependent, they have electro-magnetic fields that are bad for you, you forget real life and you don’t know anymore how to live without them. I agree to all these points to a certain degree. In all the usual arguments and articles however I usually feel that there is something missing: the appropriate amount of happiness and thankfulness that those things exist at all.

It does not help to condemn all kinds of electronics and tell people to go and live out in nature without any of them. It is not practical, people would get actually further away from the real world and you would definitely make them deny any kind of technical progress and scientific development. I would never give such a condemning statement about all those things that work with electricity and are part of our daily lives.

Instead I recommend becoming aware of all these things from time to time. We take them for granted, we have all the negative effects people speak of but we also don’t realize how great all of them really are.

A power failure, an electrical blackout is one of the situations that forces you to remember how many things work with electricity which we usually take pretty much for granted. In most western countries the electricity supply has become so steady that a power-blackout of several hours, as it is usual here in India, would cause a mass panic. We have an emergency battery to run the most important things for a certain time but if it happens like a few weeks ago, when half of the Indian population was for a complete day without electricity, our battery also gave up. This is the point where I would like to bring you today – to appreciate the benefits of even the basic electronic machines instead of condemning the disadvantages of the fancy ones.

Realize that the same technology that makes it possible today to call you wherever you are, was the base for the invention of the landline telephone, too. You can now call people on the other side of the country or the world! Go more basic and look at your kitchen. You have an oven and maybe an electrical stove – to heat up food for which you would otherwise have to take gas or fire. You have a fridge! A container that keeps food cool and prevents it from getting bad – something that none of the families of our schoolchildren has! In the same way you have air-conditioning or fans in summer and a heating system for cold winters. Imagine using blankets for the warmth and a hand fan against the heat! You have light even if it is dark. You have bulbs and not gas lamps. You have electrical lamps that you just switch on instead of a fire that has to be taken care of.

Enjoy these things. Enjoy modern technic. Use it and realize that it is great you can use all those functions your grandparents and parents never even dreamt of! Be aware that they are an addition to life, of course, but don’t condemn them – technical development has brought us a lot of benefits!