I hear people on the media complaining about how technology is changing our lives and distancing us from each other. They have a point, at least 100,000 years late, because without language our experience of the primordial, God, is greater. But language is what allows us to express our humanity beyond the range of touch and the present moment.
I have acquaintances who I've mentioned this idea to. One, a software executive, says she means technology in terms of physical machines and software. Another, a spiritual teacher, who is worried about technology in the sense of automated machinery. Technology, language, is so much a part of us that we no longer notice it. I have heard people say "Well of course that is obvious, but not what I mean."
I want to use technology/language, not let it use me. I try to hold primordial awareness simultaneously with the use of language.
This is not a new idea:
"The map is not the territory." -- Alfred Korzybksi;
"Language is the house of being." -- Martin Heidegger;
"[Human] Consciousness is conceptual" -- Ayn Rand;
"Remember yourself always and everywhere." -- G. I. Gurdjieff;
"And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field;" -- King James Bible
Caution: Language allows of mechanizing the mind when the user becomes identified with its abstractions (words and symbols). This may result in feelings of sadness, isolation, thoughts of suicide and other non-functional behaviors.
