Too Much Access

"Too Much Access"

With so many time-saving devices, it doesn’t make sense that people are so rushed. People seem to have so little time to do what they want. We’ve created tremendous accessibility to one another through the telephone, the car, mass transit, telegrams, postal service.

When I moved to Albuquerque, I got a phone-answering machine because I’m gone so much. I said, I must be crazy to be doing this! Now I’ll go home and everybody I was able to get away from will still be able to get at me. Earlier generations didn’t – and other cultures still don’t – have that access to one another. Sometimes, within the same day, I am speaking in two different parts of the world that in any former age would have required weeks to travel between them. It must be taking a toll on the psyche, on what is real, on our spiritual home. It is friendship and wisdom that seem to suffer.

Material affluence, ironically, creates scarcity of non-material things. Pope John Paul II said that very well when he first spoke to the United Nations. In a culture of affluence, he said, you will predictably see a decrease of spiritual values: time, knowledge, wisdom, love and friendship. Those decrease almost in mathematical proportion as you move toward materialism.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction