I could hear the yelling from my room. My oldest two children were playing Minecraft in the living room, and I had no doubt the yelling was related to the game. Sighing deeply and thinking to myself (not for the first time) that video games are more trouble than they’re worth, I went out to play referee. Turns out one of my boys had blown up his brother’s house and his stash of diamonds. Having never played the game myself, I didn’t know what the big deal was, but my son insisted he’d worked really hard to build his house and accumulate the diamonds. Then, just like that, it was gone, and he couldn’t get it back. One thoughtless (malicious, perhaps?) action had undone everything he’d worked so hard to build.
My middle schooler’s band concert was quite possibly the worst concert I’ve ever attended. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The middle schoolers did a great job. They’ve worked hard all year, and their songs were terrific. It was neat to see the progress they’ve made, and I was proud of my sixth grader and his classmates. No, it wasn’t the kids who made the concert so terrible. It was their parents.
Only in America would someone go for a week without technology and then blog about it. Last week my kids and I challenged each other to go the entire week without our phones, tablets, computers, and TVs. (Okay, I issued the challenge. They went along with it very grudgingly.) It was a perfect time to do this, since school isn’t in session and relatively few people need to get in contact with any of us. I did allow phone calls, but that was it. So what would we, a typical modern family, do without our screens for an entire week? I envisioned dramatic changes and unintended consequences, but to be honest, the whole thing was pretty anticlimactic. I guess you could say the experiment was a failure.
My Dear Headmaster,
I am flattered and humbled to find that my proposed curriculum has attracted much attention, even so much as to pique the interest of Screwtape himself. I am proud to say that these methods have yielded excellent results in America, and I believe they would prove useful in training up our youth at Underworld University. Allow me to highlight the core classes and summarize each of them briefly for your consideration. I have thousands of success stories to back the effectiveness of these techniques, and I would be happy to appear before the committee to present the ideas personally. Paired with other standard core classes such as Complacency and Entitlement, I assure you, these make a deadly combination that many in the Enemy’s clutches cannot resist. So without further ado, here are my recommendations.
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On the one hand, I love this world of instant information. It’s amazing to pull up the Internet on your phone and find an answer to a question. It’s fun to check Facebook or Twitter wherever you are. It’s neat to Google a recipe or order a book or (ahem) read a blog post or two. Texting has formed a closer relationship between my brother and me and keeps me in touch with friends who are far away. And since I do, after all, keep a blog, I honestly can’t do without a computer and access to the Internet. So there are certainly many good things about technology. Continue reading “Living With Technology”