50. The speed of change is out of control but there is hope

By Tom O'Connell

In our times the speed of change is out of control, and one of its key effects is the widespread use of addictive drugs and behaviors to try to calm our nervous systems in the face of the terrifying onslaught of daily stress that impacts on the average person.

When author Alvin Toffler wrote the best-selling book "Future Shock" in 1970 he was looking into the future with great accuracy, and what he predicted has hit us already. Future shock, he explained, was a psychobiological condition induced by subjecting individuals to "too much change in too short a time."

The result was that people would no longer be able to adapt. "Future shock, " he wrote, "is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future...unless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown."

What has happened? Last December Professor Stephen Bertman of the University of Windsor in Canada gave an overview of recent trends in an address delivered to the United States Business and Industrial Council Educational Foundation at Madonna University in Michigan. His remarks are thought-provoking and very sobering.                            

Bertman notes the power of television and computers in speeding up the rate of change in our society. And he points out that although the changes can be exhilarating, they also add to our stress.

He cites a survey done at the University of Maryland in which 25% of the people surveyed in 1965 said their lives were "rushed all the time." In 1992, at Penn State, a similar survey put the figure at 38%, and can you imagine what it is now?

Bertman also noted that there are more than 900 books currently in print on the subjects of stress and time management. And he describes us as "combat veterans" in the "wars between the slower pace our minds and bodies crave and the faster tempo our technology demands." 

He says we're approaching a velocity that was called "warp speed" in Star Wars. And this can "warp our behavior and our most basic values." Obviously, it can move us into a host of addictions as we try to cope with the escalating intensity and insecurity of life in these times.

Looking back on his own life of more than 30 years in higher education, Professor Bertman says he has seen changes that parallel changes in society. He has seen courses in natural and social sciences multiply, and courses in religion, philosophy and literature decline.

He says, "The typical university of today teaches customers how to make a living instead of teaching students how to live. It mistakes data for wisdom, while its classroom become more networked but less intimate, more virtual but less real."

What is lost in the process? Professor Bertman mentions time-intensive activities such as contemplation, reflection, meditation, and appreciation. Also, there is a sense of disconnection from history which eliminates the very standards we need for measuring what's going on in the present.

"Materialism and technology have in effect revised the curriculum...In a world with so many forces arrayed against the flowering of the human spirit, it is precisely the humanities that society will so desperately need. The humanities are not all we need or will ever want. But without them we will remain forever poor."

Poverty of spirit tends to move people into the addictive mode. "Hey, who cares? Why bother? Live for today, pal. Set 'em up, Joe. Gimme one for the road. Come to think of it, gimme two before last call...two doubles..."

For more than fifty years, 12 Step mutual help groups have been helping people to make a different kind of choice for dealing with the stress of modern times. And one of the key ways to do this is to put the spiritual dimension first, through prayer and meditation designed to bring us into closer conscious contact with God.

When we enhance our awareness of who we really are -- children of a loving God, and not robots in a technology driven society -- we find ourselves entering the powerful eye of the cultural hurricane where it is amazingly peaceful and quiet despite the raging winds outside. And this awareness helps us to open our minds to the observations of people like Professor Bertman.

Given that the complexity of modern life can be daunting and overwhelming, who created it? Did it just spawn itself? Are we powerless over the results of our own love for speed and the changes this has inflicted on our brains, central nervous systems, and our human spirits? Or can we do something, as individuals and as a society, to adapt the speed of change to our own lives instead of assuming that it's up to us to adapt our lives to the speed of change?

Quoting three important ideas from his own book, "Hyper culture," Bertman says there are actions we can take in the face of such overwhelming stress: "restrain our technology, retain our history, and regain our senses."

If we do this, he says, "we may, just may, reclaim our lives."

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