5. Overload

 

"I had just returned to Swarthmore from a two-day conference in Washington, which had brought together fifty scholars from around the country. An urgent fax from Spain lay on the desk, asking about a paper I was months late in contributing to a conference in Barcelona. Before I could think about answering, the office hours I had postponed began. One of my favorite students arrived and began quizzing me about the ethnic biases in my course syllabus. My secretary came in holding a sheaf of telephone messages, and some accumulated mail, including an IRS notice of a tax audit, and a cancellation notice from the telephone company. My conversations with my students were later interrupted by phone calls from a London publisher, a colleague in Connecticut on her way to Oslo for the weekend, and an old California friend wondering if we might meet during his summer travels to Holland. By the morning’s end I was drained(48)."

–Kenneth Gergen, "The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life"

 

 

"[T]he degree of complexity is increased until a rationally coherent stand is impossible. In effect, as social saturation steadily expands the population of the self, a choice of candidates [for example] approaches the arbitrary. A toss of the coin becomes equivalent to the diligently sought solution. We approach a condition in which the very idea of ‘rational choice’ becomes meaningless(49)."

–Kenneth Gergen

 

 

"Part of the answer, it seems to me, is that the speed with which television brings the force of events to bear on public consciousnesses requires simple but subtle, standardized but interchangible narrative constructions(50)."

–McKenzie Wark, "Virtual Geography: living with global media events"

 

 

 

–David Potorti: Concept, Lisa Thompson: Photo Illustration

 

 

"But active, concerned people don’t have time to spend leisurely, walking along paths of green grass and sitting beneath trees. One must prepare projects, consult with the neighbors, try to resolve a million difficulties; there is hard work to do. One must deal with every kind of hardship, every moment keeping one’s attention focused on the work, alert, ready to handle the situation ably and intellegently.

"You might well ask: Then how are we to practice mindfulness?

"My answer is: keep your attention focused on the work, be alert and ready to handle able and intelligently any situation which may arise–this is mindfulness(39)."

–Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Miracle of Mindfulness:a manual on meditation"

 

 

 

 

 

"Gergen’s story seems hardly unique. If not fully as hectic as his anecdote, I think most of us feel that life is picking up in pace. As an increasing multiplicity of subjects present themselves as items to focus our attention upon, our ability to choose our life-paths, navigating these increasing numbers of decisions, seems to decrease. Wark then brings up A political ramification of this inability to choose.

"Howerver can we extricate ourselves? Echoing, or participating in the recent simplicity movement, Portori and Thomson pose a solution. Maybe we should learn to readjust our habits to include more silence. It is ironic to me that Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and thus one whom we’d expect to heartily agree, in fact exposes some of the falseness of this proposition. Hanh rejects even holding silence as an ideal to achieve, instead focusing on mindfulness in whatever activity we engage.

"Perhaps despite the incredibly hectic pace of outlives, we can learn to be present and thereby achieve some measure of peace."

–Josh Knox