Swim or Drift?

First, a brief correction to my fermentation post. It’s not Napa cabbage that we grow, but Bravo. Not sure where the hell Napa came from. Musta been thinking auto parts. Anyway, we like Bravo because a) it’s big, b) it’s big, and c) it’s juicy, which means it pounds out real nice and makes lots of moisture. Also, I realized my version of “loose” in regards to screwing on the jar lids might not be the same as everyone’s version of loose (what with me being so rugged and all). To be clear: Not loosey-goosey, but not mighty-tighty, either. Just somewhat less than cranked down. Then, once the initial ferment is over (again, 3 to 4 days at room temp), you can really give’r.

There. See why I’m scared to do too many how-to posts?

         •     •     •

So the story I did for Outside is getting a fair bit of play, at least judging from the number of emails I’ve received and the amount of “shares” over on Outside’s website. That’s good, I guess, though I have to admit it makes me a little uneasy. It’s funny: You get so accustomed to writing for a particular, small audience, and then when you’ve suddenly got a bigger audience, which you’ve always secretly hoped for in a way you’re half loathe to admit, you don’t really know what to think. You don’t know if it’s good or bad. If it matters.

Anyway. Over in the comments section of Outside’s site, someone left this question:

What advice would you give to families that try to homeschool or unschool and are constantly confronted with the computer issue? In a city setting, computers are everywhere.

It made me realize that I’ve never really addressed the technology issue head-on. Partly, that’s because I’m a little afraid of it. It seems to me as if there’s a lot of high emotions and defensiveness surrounding the nexus of children and digitized technology. Honestly, I think this is because most parents are immersed in it themselves, and for all the complaining they might do about its impact on their lives, they actually like being immersed in it. Or maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s more that they’ve become so accustomed to being immersed in it they can no longer imagine life without it. This is not a judgment. It’s merely a theory based on personal observation.

Obviously, we have computers. Two, actually: My laptop and a “family” desktop. We have high speed internet. We listen to music on a computer and Penny manages her photos on a computer. During the winter months, or on cool, rainy evenings like last night, we watch movies on the computer, though never more than once per week. We even have a cell phone, one of those cheapo things you get when you buy the pre-paid minute plans. We have never received a call on our cell phone. I couldn’t tell you the number if you put a gun to my head. But we have it, mostly for my occasional travel.

For us, the trick is to figure out how to make these technologies captive to our needs, rather than allowing ourselves to become captive to them. I think that’s a surprising hard balance to strike, particularly in a world where these technologies are so ubiquitous. This is the aspect of modern smart phones I despise so very much: It’s all in our face all the time and we forget what it’s like to not have it in our face and we begin to use these technologies out of simple habit. And as that habit builds, it becomes something more than a habit. I won’t say addiction, though I suspect that’s possible. But I will say that we forget we don’t actually need these devices and all the information they convey. We forget that much of that information – most of it, probably – does nothing to enrich our lives. It just clutters them.

I can’t say we’ve got it all figured out. I can say that we’ve shunned certain technologies (or more accurately, certain manifestations of technology) entirely. Video games. Mobile devices (our archaic and little-used cell phone notwithstanding). We don’t have a television. There’s no GPS or DVD player in our car.

But the way I see it, our shunning is not so much a rejection as an embrace of all the things we experience in the time we’d otherwise spend engaged with these machines. I guess the way I view all this stuff is through the lens of the life I truly want to live, the one that feels most honest and healthy and fulfilling. Do I want to feel as if I am tethered to these technologies, or to the people, land, and animals around me? Maybe these things aren’t mutually exclusive, but for myself and for my sons, I’d rather not take the risk.

And I’m just now realizing that I haven’t yet answered the original question. I guess that’s because I’m not certain I have a satisfying answer, or that I’m qualified to answer. I do know that it is always more difficult to swim against the tide than to drift with it, and that’s really what the commenter is talking about, isn’t it? Do you swim, or do you drift? Or can you do some of each?

So maybe I’ll turn this one over to my readers, some of who live in cities and are maybe confronted with the same dilemma. What do you all think?