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Healthy Living: The abundance of less

You would probably have to look back about 600 years in human history to see where rapid change in technology has had a similar effect on our brains and behaviour as the iPad, that sits in a seemingly harmless way, in my hands.
Healthy Living Powell River

You would probably have to look back about 600 years in human history to see where rapid change in technology has had a similar effect on our brains and behaviour as the iPad, that sits in a seemingly harmless way, in my hands.  

In 1440, German inventor and blacksmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press and book printing technology that started the path, through the sharing of knowledge and scientific revolution, that eventually leads to our digital information age and this small, flat device I’m staring at.

In a way, Gutenburg was the Bill Gates of the 15th century.

Recently, for various reasons, the type and amount of information is intensifying to create a borderline information overload situation. If humanity had a little “check engine” light on its dashboard, it would be glowing a disturbing shade of red right now.

A level of anxiety and bewilderment, or worse, is probably a normal reaction to the gluttony of information we have to sift through daily. The last 500,000 years of our species and its evolving brain simply hasn’t prepared us for all the hyper-accelerated changes the silicon chip, and technology in general, has unleashed on our thoughts and actions.

In his book The Paradox of Choice, American psychologist Barry Schwartz argued that our main source anxiety and unhappiness is a constantly cluttered mental landscape of choices and information. Fear of having regret leads to bad decisions and too many self-sabotaging “what if” moments.

When you combine Swartz’s ideas about the pitfalls of choice and the accelerating delivery of information from our high-tech devices, it seems like the cards are stacked against any chance of happiness: the game is fixed and we don’t stand a chance!

Well, it seems the antidote to this soul-crushing crisis of too much information is shockingly simple. It’s trying to simply, or specifically, return to a quieter, less complicated place through simplification of our thoughts and lives.

In a way, we can try to make a decision to create a personal environment that leads to having to make fewer decisions.

Simplicity as idea is not a new or innovative concept. Zen buddhists, for example, have offered this roadmap to mental and spiritual wellness for thousands of years. That being said, with global problems like mass species extinction and climate change, the message to simplify life has urgency that feels new and specific to current life. It might be the healthiest, most effective reaction to the complicated web of gluey information we have ourselves stuck in.

Evidence of positive movement toward living more simply is accumulating all around us: the popularity of “tiny homes” is simplifying domestic life and reducing our consumption of resources. The quiet, gradual transformation of our cars, trucks and other modes of transport to cleaner fuels seems to be an irreversible trend. Technologies for creating alternative power, like solar or wind, are getting less expensive and more efficient almost yearly.

Humanity’s red “check engine” light might be illuminated, but the fix might be more simple than we think.

Robert Skender is a Powell River freelance writer and health commentator.