Are more people getting lost?

I have recently noticed that more and more people are driving with GPS devices in their cars. This was noticed not on an average week day but a Sunday, a day people go to shops or church or friends, depending on your choice of “religion”. So why do people need GPS navigation on a Sunday?

I can understand the functionality of this product for a sales guy, or a delivery fan or if you are in a big city or country for the first time, but Sunday morning outings? Is it that people have become bored to such an extend that they need some sort of distraction in the form of global positioning to make their drive more interesting? Don’t we already have cell phones, car entertainment systems and the act of driving to keep us busy?

What about using this time to have a conversation with the people next to you or if you alone, give yourself some time to reflect and think as per my previous post? These devices take up a fair amount of space on the front window and limit the road view extensively. This coupled with other distracting devices like cell phones, must make using the road a lot more dangerous for everyone else.

But my main concern here is for the individual that need this device for their average daily use. Have these people stopped using their minds? Are they constantly lost? As one manufacturer says; “You are lost without it”…come on, you might loose your mind without it because you might stop thinking! I’ve seen people becoming passengers in cars; they don’t focus on their directions and therefore get lost. These devices have the same effect.

Already stories of people turning into walls and drive into rivers or dead end streets, following the prompts of the GPS navigator as if they are driven like robots. People don’t consciously think anymore. They just listen to another “authority” to obediently follow and observe just like a machine. But maybe we are taught this way? I see many lost people in this world.

Time to think

Someone recently told me, referring to my blog, that I should write more. This made me think about my reasons for not writing more frequently. Life has become a marathon. Everyone I speak to, myself included, comment on how busy they are. What happened to all those advertised products that were supposed to give us more time?

People don’t have time to make food, so they buy processed food. Our computers get faster processors to make us working more efficient and faster. Our cars get more powerful and faster even though we don’t need more speed. We get irritated when service takes longer than we think we should be served. It feels like we are being programmed to act like machines. Work faster, quicker, more efficient year on year because our rationale is to make more money or to be able to pay the bills or to have more time for ourselves. But this seems to never to happen. We might make more money, but then we somehow find more things to buy, to save more time, which never happens.

We are so busy doing things that we struggle to do nothing. Have you observed people at a seminar? They constantly fiddle with something. Either a phone to read their emails and SMS or they make notes of things they have just remembered. During breaks they rush of to listen to their messages and return calls.

I thought of these things today during a mountain bike race. It is strange what fatigue can do to you. You reach a point where you get tired and exhausted and that’s when your body seems to move into an element of its own. Your mind become clear and you stop worrying about the daily stuff. You focus on what happening to you and your body there and now. It is as if you now have time to really think and focus on what is important.

Many philosophical books have been written on this subject. Some say you can reach it during meditation, others by means of physical endurance. People like Gurjief used physical labour in his teachings, Carlos Castaneda writes about the time he spend in nature in complete silence to be able to “see” and some religions like Buddhism makes use of meditation to quieten the mind. Not that I think religion per se is a good example to get yourself time to think more.

Listening to a preacher, rabbi or cleric is about as good as sitting in front of the television watching a soapie. It is just another form of hypnotising and won’t make you think more. In fact religion bars critical thinking; you should just accept everything you’re told, like a machine… We are constantly being fed by lots and lots of information, but we don’t have time to reflect and think. Maybe if we do, we will see more things in this world.