Odd Coincidence
Last night, I dug up the quote from JPII that I ran for this week's "Something for Sunday Morning" post. This morning, I ran across WaPo's review of The Town that Forgot to Breathe, "an eerie allegorical tale about the insidious effects of modern technology." The review wasn't terribly helpful, and three other reviews I consulted were even less helpful, but basically the gist of the story is this: technology gradually invades a small fishing village in Canada, the inhabitants lose all things traditional, and odd things start happening.
There might a good connection between the book and the first sentence from the JPII quote below, but it's hard to say. If anyone sees an in-depth review of the book or has read it, please let me know (email box on left).
Excerpt from WaPo article:
One summer visitor wonders: "Why wasn't he home with his preferred distractions that prevented him from staring too deep inside himself? His computer, his television, his twenty-four hour mini-marts." Miss Laracy, the colorful local crone, muses that, "Now she was reduced to buying her bread from the supermarket. It wasn't nearly as dense as the buns she used to make, it . . . was lighter as though made of one-part sawdust, but it would have to do." As for why the spirits started disappearing back in '52, she explains: " 'Twas da year da television came." Elsewhere she rails, "Ye'll kill us all widt yer high-tech gizmos," the "gizmos" in question being snowmobiles, chainsaws and cars. Meanwhile, the Murrays, a traditional family of boat builders and storytellers who "had never bothered acquiring an electric range, willfully rejecting all things modern," weather the difficulties pretty well. Get the pattern? There's much more along this line, and it gets kind of obvious after a while.
My views of technology vacillate between celebration and condemnation. Whenever I get ready to rail against things like TiVo, I remember that TiVo is just a new technology, like VCRs once were, and without a VCR, I couldn't have watched CBS' John Paul II (since I wasn't free the nights it ran). The same goes with all sorts of modern things I enjoy, from this blog to modern dentistry. Nonetheless, the crucial point should never be forgotten: Everything has an unseen cost. The exact description of those unseen costs is difficult to discern, hence that crucial point's helpfulness is limited, but when combined with a little insight from the likes of JPII, the skeletal crucial point can get some meat on its bones.
