A Simpler Life

As a computer science major in college, I deal with information a lot. My classes daily unload new knowledge into me, which I am expected to retain (at least until the final exam). Beyond that, I spend a lot of time on the computer, doing homework, playing games, or socializing online. Over the past few months I've started to feel a bit overwhelmed by all this information being pumped into my mind on a daily basis.

Part of me has begun longing for simpler times. It's a recurrence of a desire that's been in me for a while. Not too long ago I ran across a website that collects American TV sign-offs, which were played when a TV station shut down for the night. That's right, TV stations used to shut down. I don't remember them, but boy do they bring back nostalgia of simpler times, before information and the Internet dominated.

Another part of me thinks back to the Middle Ages. Back then, there weren't nearly as many possibilities and media as there is nowadays. Your collection of friends was limited to who was in your village. Long-distance friendships were probably maintained by sparse meetings. There weren't hundreds of different jobs you could take. And while I certainly wouldn't want to live in the Medieval times, there's something... quaint about the comparatively simple lifestyle they had. You worked, you dined with the family, and on Sundays the entire village gathered for Mass.

I've spent a lot of time musing on what it is that I desire. My thoughts have led me to a few things actually.

First, I miss the lack of information overload. You know how Facebook has that mini-feed in the upper right corner of the screen? It shows in real time what your friends are doing. Honestly it just clutters the screen with a distracting moving object. I hid it with the online friends list, and I've felt better about it since then. I still check once in a while but I'm not being spammed with information. Media is another big thing for me. I think the biggest problem is the Internet. There's so much information available that I take in on a daily basis. I don't think the mind is supposed to have so much dumped into it on a daily basis.

Because of all this, I have learned about so many systems of thought and ways of life that it's really caused some internal confusion. I feel like there are too many things that have my interest, too much I want to know about. Every time I learn about something, there becomes more I am curious about. Before the days of the Internet, we couldn't satisfy every curiosity that we had. Now we can. Perhaps my desire is to limit the information dumped into me. Stick to the things that interest me, and stay out of other stuff. To some this might seem to be a call to ignorance. Perhaps it is. Not trying to understand everything perfectly would lead to me - gasp - being wrong about things! Yet as I've seen, we humans are wrong about many things, and still we've survived.

The second thing is genuine friendships. It's so weird how I could be friends with someone who lives a thousand miles away, yet never say a word to my next door neighbor. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide us all sorts of means of staying in touch. Yet it seems that people are more depressed and lonely than before. Why is that? I would wager it's because we've picked up a method of socializing that isn't natural to us. We're not built to have friendships with people on a screen or a text box. We're designed for person-to-person interaction. It's almost embarrassing how infrequently I see the people I consider my closest friends in real life. While a good, long chat on Facebook is satisfying for me, there's something quaint about hanging out with someone in real life and bantering.

Third, there is the matter of planning. I work best and feel the most at ease when I have things planned out and organized. It makes it easier to make decisions and get stuff done. One of the biggest blocks in my daily life is when I don't know what I should do next, or I don't know how to do something. This sort of ties in with my first point, where possibilities were more limited back in the day. It meant less distractions and (hopefully) somewhat clearer ideas of what one was going to do in the future. Back in the past if you needed help you would ask for it. That's something hard for me. I prefer to do stuff alone, figure it out with my own brainpower. Which is kind of foolish because a problem that I might stress over for hours could be figured out in mere moments by someone with better expertise than myself.

So, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to have this "simpler" life, what kind of things would I do? I think the number one change would be connectivity brought on by the Internet. The Internet becomes a novelty for me. I use it for school, but not much else. Perhaps in the evening I would give myself a chance to browse a bit. I certainly wouldn't spend forever on sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This would probably have the effect of clearing my mind out a lot. I would be able to focus on the specific things I like or need to do - school, writing, gaming, etc. I would still use it, of course, but this time to pursue my interests. I feel like the freedom from excess information in the past allowed people to better specialize in things. Another thing I'd do is try to spend more quality time with those around me. To be honest, I won't talk to most of the people I've run across in college after I graduate. Most friendships tend to be, by nature, transitory. Life just happens. I would also look for help more. College provides all kinds of support systems that I would do well to take advantage of.