Divorce

 Not as dramatic as the title suggests, although I have gone through 3 Divorces in my life so far. Today I took a stand against a growing concern I have observed for quite some time.

I do enjoy technology.  Years ago I decided to splurge on an Amazon Echo Show. A handy device that offers all the functionality of an Echo Dot (the ability to ask Alexa anything) with the added feature of a 10 inch screen that has a multitude of visible display options and includes a video camera (for video calls).  I don't need or want an imagined digital assistant to tell and show me all things in my life like reminders, messages and a thousand ideas. My desires were basic and all I wanted was a 10 inch display that shows the time with my personal favorite wallpaper images. Nothing more. Occasionally I might ask a few basic questions (like todays weather) or have it read my audio book before bed.

We all know that our devices are reading or listening to us, algorithms are compiling data to send out to thousands of clients who pay to know what we talk about or mention all in an effort to sell us more stuff.  What we have is not good enough for anyone because we can always buy more. Marketing teams are just compiling more and more stuff for us to buy. If people spent a tenth of the time trying to produce quality or necessary items for people as they do just trying to sell we might have a better society someday. However, this is not the HUMAN way.  As much as I tried to stop it, my Echo Show consistently continued to audibly add suggestions to questions I asked or, more importantly, displayed products to buy. Even after going into the settings and turning off ALL the suggestion topics (and there are a lot of them) the display rarely showed what I wanted to see when I looked at it. The marketing department just has to have their plugs into everything we buy because we NEED to buy more.

After a 2 am argument with my Alexa, it ended up unplugged and on the floor. I am officially divorcing you and putting you on notice. Today my new digital clock sits where she used to. I cant fight this greedy system any longer but as I have learned the only way to win is NOT TO PLAY. As useful as Alexa, or Google Home or etc is I don't see it that useful if I have to live in your world. I would like to say that I was going to cut myself off from Amazon completely but currently that is not an option, however tomorrow I will be spending less. Time to start to get back to a simpler life.

Understanding our Emotions

 As a Buddhist I have evaluated many aspects of the human condition that drive us to who we are. Buddhism tells us that all pain is cause by selfish craving. If you consider that all our pain comes from the loss of items or people we crave this has a lot of validity.

When I evaluate all of our emotions I realize there are positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions exist like happiness, love and amusement. Negative emotions exist lise anger, guilt and sadness. I am not suggesting we live without emotions like those of the sci-fi community who love Spock the Vulcan. Even though there are negative emotions they do have a function in our day-to-day function. However I believe that there are 3 negative emotions that, if left unchecked, are incredible dangerous to us.

The 3 worst emotions we live with are jealousy, anger and fear. Fear is necessary for us to survive. Without fear we would walk into the fire. Never should we engage in anything dangerous without fear since it keeps us grounded and can keep us sharp. The problem is we give in too easily and people use fear to control us or sell us on poor ideas. How many times have we approved of a politicians actions because they inspired us with the FEAR of the alternative, or to buy a product based on the FEAR of how the competing products will kill us. Given the rising fear we give in to ideas that normally we would shy away from.

Anger also has its uses because it can give us strength to do something we would normally be too afraid to do. The problem is we let anger take over and lose all wisdom and go into a frenzy. No longer does wisdom or intelligence guide us. We may be stronger but now we are sloppy and reckless and even sometimes hurt those close to us in the process.

Lastly is jealousy. Truth is I see little positive benefit from jealousy and it can drive us to do many other levels of sadness or greed to acquire that which we are jealous of. Again we make so many bad or selfish decisions simply because we allowed jealousy to drive us.

In the end, whatever type of person you are or want to be we should be doing our best to just improve. Understanding the negative impacts of some of our drives can help us improve. Don't allow Fear, Anger or Jealousy make you less then who you are or could be.