Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days


  • The Main Focus

    When did we stop paying attention to the world around us?

    A teenager cruises through an intersection on a bike, one hand on the handlebars, eyes focused only on the cell phone in his other hand. An office worker charges off an elevator and into a tray of steaming, hot coffee, her eyes never lifting from the tiny screen. A distracted businessman steps onto the crosswalk on a red light and a car with the right-of-way narrowly misses him.

    I’m not surprised, but I am bewildered. When did our handhelds become the main focus of our lives?

    Nobody can doubt or discount how beneficial our mobile devices have become to society. We have access to information, essentially, wherever we are. We can communicate, share photos of our pets and partners, seek advice, and get directions to wherever we are going. We can shop, do our banking, and be entertained by social media.

    It is wonderful, yes.

    The thing is, we are forgoing what used to be considered regular, everyday, activities and allowing our cellular phones dictate what we do, and how we do it.

    We are, quite simply, spending too much time staring at our screens. I did say we because, I know, I am doing it myself.

    I’m trying to cut back. I should have snapped a photo of the careless teen, but my phone was stowed away in my messenger bag; I’m making a point of putting it away when I don’t need it. I decided I was needing it too much.

    I’ve sat down for lunch with coworkers and instead of talking about weekend plans, politics, sports or art, each of us was catching up on whatever was on our phone. We didn’t share what we were absorbing. We even tried to converse between bites of a sandwich or salad, but the content of our discussion was about as meaningful as most of the stuff I was catching on my newsfeed.

    Do we need to take frequent breaks from real life to watch the latest nonsensical sound bite emanating from the floppy jowls of the attention-seeking politician? Or do we need to read, right now, the ramblings of an ordinary guy who believes we all spend too much time gazing at hand-sized screens?

    Couldn’t it wait until later? Like maybe when you sit down for your next bowel movement?

    We are missing out on what’s really happening. I have seen people miss transit stops, or walk by an intended destination, because they were too busy reading or watching something that has totally taken control of their mind.

    What’s so important that you can’t take the time to walk down the street and actually look up to see the latest fashions in the windows, flowers in the park, the artwork of a fabulous tattoo, or all those smiling strangers (those who aren’t face down and blindly stepping forward) passing you by on a glorious summer day.

    We haven’t simply become addicted to our devices; we are being controlled by them.

    We’ve been manipulated into watching content and commercialism that algorithms have determined will be of personal interest. All social media platforms are programmed to distract you. Service providers, browsers, and platforms, are all collecting data. If you click on a travel site one day, soon you are flooded with offers, suggestions, and other destination opportunities. If you do a little online banking on your coffee break, and you’ll soon get hit with credit card offers, payday loan proposals and interest rate alerts from other financial services.

    It does not stop. Each click, each time you move from site to site, little bytes of information about you and your viewing habits are being collected. We are being manipulated into looking, seeing, and buying. Our reality is being hijacked.

    What are you missing out on?

    p.s. This ordinary guy thanks you for reading my ramblings – I do appreciate you taking the time.

    ©2018 j.g. lewis

  • obvious

  • Of Memory And Memories

    What we think of today is not necessarily important, but what is remembered tomorrow most certainly is.

    Information flows at a faster rate than ever before, in a volume greater than we are able to control, comprehend, or absorb. Scientists have resolved that human beings take in five times as much information than we did 30 years ago; the equivalent of 175 newspapers (given the dwindling size of today’s newspapers, this comparison is indeed subjective).

    Not including what we take in on a need-to-know basis in our working lives, it is estimated we process more than 100,000 words, or 34 gigabytes of data, daily, exclusive of the idle hours spent in front of the television, or clicking away at video feeds on our laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

    The impact of this information overload not only impacts our memory, but our memories. I am fascinated not only by what we can remember, but also by what we forget.

    The human mind is an amazing commodity. We can marvel at what we, or others, think of, but even more remarkable is where our memories come from, or how they are stored. In the most simplistic terms, our memory is a filing cabinet where we tuck away thoughts with scraps of knowledge, addresses and directions, useless facts, and an assortment of utter bullshit. A more digital representation is one of folders and files we store on our organic hard drive.

    It was once thought there was a central point in the brain that stored all this data, but developments in recent years indicate there is not one particular place, but memory is distributed, albeit inequitably, throughout our grey matter. Further confusing is that several parts of the brain must work together to remember one simple task.

    Remember the adage It’s like riding a bike? Well, that alone requires the brain to use several components of this stored memory. The recall of the body’s physical motion comes from one part of the brain, the memory of how to operate the bike from another. It becomes further complicated when you throw in the reason you climbed on the bike in the first place, and decide where to go (the nature of how much thinking is required to ride a bike further reinforces the need to wear a helmet).

    So why do we remember what we do? And why do we forget the important stuff, or what may have been important at the time? Age, and absorption of facts and figures, does enter the equation, but it still does not account for both the trivial and important information within our recall.

    For instance, I cannot remember many (read most) of the periodic table symbols I was forced to commit to memory in high school, but I can remember brand logos of ski equipment, beer, and record labels from the same era.

    I can’t remember the name of the company’s recently appointed regional vice-president (whom I have met twice), yet I can easily recall the name of original Police guitarist Henry Padovani, or the redheaded girl I had a crush on in Grade 7. I remember her address, her brother’s name, and, damn it; I remember the hurtful words telling me I wasn’t the one.

    The names of musicians who played on hundreds of albums easily come to mind, but I cannot list all of this country’s prime ministers. I remember all 14 victims of the Montreal massacre (and can’t forget the man responsible for the slaughter), but could not tell you an equal number of newspaper colleagues I worked with at the same time.

    My phone number from 40 years ago, or 20, is lodged in my head, but I can’t recall numbers I dialed regularly as recently as two years ago. Granted the convenience of storing the digits on a mobile device has made life so much easier, but that’s beside the point.

    I remember my sister’s birthday ever year, but usually forget to send a card.

    It has to be more than selective memory for, if that were the case, I’d remember more of the better and far less of the worse. Also, the short-term and long-term rationale seems to be hit and miss. Why do we remember what we do, and why do we retain some of the useless stuff (see above Police guitarist) and allow the important information to get lost in the files and folders within our minds?

    There is a theory of limitations about what we can take in during a day, and much of the time the internal files fill up or become corrupted by the useless questions, comments, and responses that just happen every day. Do you need room for dairy in your coffee? Do you have a rewards card? Do you want fries with that? Can you spare a dollar? Slight, random, seemingly innocuous interruptions, that are not only harmful to the thought process, but they hinder true progress or performance.

    It’s like trying to squeeze an extra 4.0 gigabytes of data into the 16 GB on your phone, or jamming another 156 pages into a 1.5-inch binder; there simply is not the space, and you will have to take something out to fit it all in.

    You also have to remember to leave the important stuff where it is, and not overlook its importance as the new material comes along.

    With all these questions, all this information, coming at us, we are forced to put aside what may be truly important, just to get through the day. We also have to decide if it is important, or valuable, enough to be remembered, while we are paying attention to what we truly need to know.

    Once remembered, will it be remembered when it needs to be remembered?

    I believe that in dealing with the daily decisions, directions, and distractions forced upon us, as it comes at us, we seldom take time for mindful thinking and processing of what is truly important. There is not enough meditation or contemplation; just outright sitting and thinking of what needs to be thought, and not struggling with in-box clutter and credit card statements that simply prove what we bought.

    If forced to think, or over think, make sure you find time to make some of the thoughts good. If it is important, make sure it is more than a memory.

    ©2015 j.g. lewis

  • explanation

                     dialects         accents
       enunciation

                                      vocal inflections
    we speak
         one language or another

           our mother tongue
                                                       among others

    we understand
                             what we can
            we listen               we read
    meaning into messages

             communication
             takes effort                 how can I explain?

         we criticize another human’s
                                broken english
    not considering the words
         are foreign                and she or he
                              or they
         speak another language

    naturally

                           where I speak only one language
                 I cannot fully understand
       any of the others

                             they are foreign

                                                                     to me

    © 2022 j.g. lewis

     

  • Hard Reality

    What ever happened to
    the peace and love we spoke of,
    decades before? Our realism of idealism
    before capitalism; humanity above profit.
    Conscious thought. Truth.
    Was this a concept
    within a dream, altered by greed
    and get-rich-schemes
    that became the way of the world.
    Do we know how it happened?
    Can we understand? Why?
    Each generation judges those before,
    every generation knows a state of war.
    This reality becomes hard
    when the violence is right there
    in your backyard. Fact.
    Something is not the same.
    We were young once. Age
    now testimony to where we have been,
    what have we witnessed, and
    how we have failed those
    who shall follow. Evolution.
    How do we speak of freedom?
    Can we hold a stranger’s hand?
    Are weather-beaten symbols and
    time-ravaged slogans relevant any more?
    Honesty. Do we remember
    how to make love, not war?

    © 2019 j.g. lewis