Start 2023 With Some Daily Time For God Alone–A Warning About Being Distracted In This Digital Age

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Every day we each choose what will someday go through that very fire we just read about. God says here to us this morning: Be careful what you do with your life lest all or most of it ends up being just worthless black soot and ashes.

So, God says start your day, start your journey through all the events you face each day with a pause to FOCUS ON GOD.

Lost in Electronica by George F. Will August 14, 2010

Perhaps flight from boredom prompts people today to take refuge in constant stimulation by visual and audio entertainment.

Adam J. Cox is a clinical psychologist worried about the effect of today’s cornucopia of electronic stimuli on the cognition of young boys. Writing in The New Atlantis, he says human beings evolved in a world of nutritional scarcity and have responded to the sudden abundance of salt, sugar, and fat by creating an epidemic of obesity. And, he says, the mind, too, now craves junk nourishment:

“Fifty years ago, the onset of boredom might have followed a two-hour stretch of nothing to do. In contrast, boys today can feel bored after thirty seconds with nothing specific to do.”

The ubiquitous barrage of battery-powered stimuli delivered by phones, computers, and games makes “the chaos of constant connection” an addictive electronic narcotic. As continuous stimulation becomes the new normal, “gaps between moments of heightened stimulation” are disappearing; amusement “has squeezed the boredom out of life.” For the hyperstimulated, “the synaptic mindscape of daily life” becomes all peaks and no valleys.

But valleys can be good for us. Cox believes that a more common occurrence of boredom in the young would be welcome evidence of “the presence of available resources for thought, reflection, and civil behavior.” Cox notes that “being civil is rarely fun—it requires patience, forethought, and some willingness to tolerate tedium.” So for the overstimulated, “civility feels like submission.”