College Essay

Make the City Sleep

Albert Einstein, or someone fed up with society “fears the day that technology will surpass our human interaction.” They think everyone will be a bunch of idiots. Idiots? Possibly… or maybe just too involved with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+, only a few names on the growing list of ways to continuously stream worldly happenings, readily available for use in the palm of your hand. They are now commonplace. An iPhone may see a person’s face more than their mother or father. Many check the news, email, texts, and every other connective app at any moment of downtime. Modern minds are constantly buzzing like New York City, attune to the here and now. Socially, the connection has saved the most distant friendships and created new ones, while mentally, the connection is lost. It impedes on imagination and belief, factors that stimulate deep thought and reflection. The city never rests, and the mind never will with constant connection.
It seems like a distant time ago that children played dolls and house, and had imaginary friends. Now it is as if all of that has transposed to a technological device. Playing hide and seek, and tag has also been replaced with video games. Children, the ones Gene Wilder would say “live in a world of pure imagination,” are also being entranced with technology and social media. When almost every form of imagination needs reviving to find reflection and meditation, it is necessary to look at how to create it.
Pi, a fictional character created by Yann Martel in the novel Life of Pi, endures the most radical and life changing experience when he is stranded in the Pacific ocean with a Bengal Tiger. His story is so far fetched that when he returns to land, no one believes him until he tells his story replacing the animals with humans. After Pi finishes telling both stories, he asks which was better, and the listeners respond with the crazy story involving the animals.
Like today’s society, newsfeeds and headlines fed to the public are typical and rarely questioned because of their normality and that is what everyone wants. If the latest CNN breaking news was “Boy Stranded in Pacific with Tiger,” no one would believe it because it does not make sense, though it makes an interesting story. This can be largely attributed to the lack of imagination caused by social media use. When imagination is present, it is easier to believe a debatable story and believing stories stems imagination. That is how religion works. The stories presented in many religions are even more dubious than living on a lifeboat with a tiger, but yet there are many people that practice and enjoy religion in the world today, so there must still be touch with imagination even through the havoc of technology that masks it.
Reaching out to imagination and belief can bring about meditation and reflection which can be relaxing with the constant bustle and mindless tasks of everyday life. Though imagination may seem like a far off galaxy away from the modernness of today’s world, reining it in takes moving away from technology. As previously mentioned, believing in something, whether it be religion, aliens, or even Santa Clause, can stimulate imagination due to the irregularity of those beliefs from everyday life. Believing in something in the midst of the widespread technology use can uproar even the slightest hint of imagination. Creating distance between life and technology, even for a small portion of each day creates quiet in the mind and invites imagination back to lead deep thought and reflection. Exercising, being in nature, and alone time without technology and social media can catalyze the effect imagination has on the mind and provoke a trance of meditation and reflection.
The modern world has been inflicted with a plague like case of connection to social media. It is interfering with the ability to reflect on important things and think deeply to escape everyday matters. This interference is caused by a disturbance in imaginative and belief levels that is imposed by constant technology use and immediate interaction with the world at instantaneous speeds. Imagination needs to be rebuilt so that believers in immaculate stories can reflect and meditate to stimulate the mind in a way aside from scrolling through screens. This can be done if people shut off technology for even a little bit each day and connected with their inner self instead of the internet. Once the world regains the ability to imagine, then maybe the city can rest.