Truth

I know that some people will look at this title and think that I am overstating things - and perhaps maybe I am but only to a small degree. Cellphones may not be the root of all evil, but they sure are the root of a considerable amount of it. Or at least an extreme enabler to those evils. I've actually had this conversation with dozens of people over the last few years, and I've gotten most of them to agree to most of the points I make below. But nonetheless, I have not really had any success in getting people to kick the habit and throw off their shackles.

For the record, I used to have a cell phone but it has been about 8 years now that I have been a free man. My wife and I originally bought them when we moved out to the country, and in all honesty if we were still living in the country I'd probably have one for the sole purpose of being able to call for help on a back country road if the car breaks down. That is perhaps one of the very few legitimate uses I can find for a cellphone, but even still, I suspect most people's needs would be met here with a no-plan phone since all phones can call 911 even if you are not paying for a plan with a provider. Though I guess calling 911 for a broken down car may not be a legitimate use of the service.

The biggest issue with cellphones is the environmental cost of them - based on just my own anecdotal observations of friends who have the things, it appears to me as though most people change phones on average about once a year. A quick google turns up this 2002 article from Wired Magazine which says that by 2005, Americans will be discarding 130 million cell phones a year. I do not have any statistics for today, but I think it is probably safe to assume we've hit that mark and have most likely surpassed it. This article from 2010 says that 100 million a year are discarded in Europe. That is an incredible amount of waste, even if the things are given up for recycling instead of tossed in the garbage. To me, this is just a very disgusting example of our consumer society gone wrong. Even if they are recycled.

The one thing that is absolutely assured in this world is change. Change is constant, unstoppable. The entire Universe is in constant flux. At each instant structures are being created and structures are passing out of existence. And yet, nothing is separate, nothing exists in isolation from the Totality. The fundamental problem for mankind is that very few people ever actually get to truly understand this fact. The ones who do are called “spiritual”, “saints”, or Enlightened Ones. The rest of us go through our lives stubbornly acting “as if” we were really separate individuals. We have a love of what is known what is stabile, what is predictable. We don’t mind a bit of change as long as it isn’t rapid or too drastic.

But fundamentally human beings consistently show a preference for the belief that what they have and what they know is somehow permanent; that it has some reality. This is one of the essential causes of conflict. We want to protect what we have, we want our view of the world confirmed because the very idea that what we think we believe and we “know” may not be real in some fundamental sense would open up the doors to chaos. If what we believe isn’t necessarily true, then one’s very sense of one’s existence is challenged.