Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), this is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of our attention, why is that? Because ‘let us remember this again, ‘What we give our Attention to matters,’ as Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.
Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.
This week I bring to your attention another excerpt which we have titled – Social Effects & Innovations from the book titled ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ – Technology’s capture and control of our minds and Culture by James Burke and Robert Ornstein.
This book is about the people who gave us the world in exchange for our minds. The gifts we accepted from them gave us the power to change the way we lived, but doing so also changed the way we thought. It is a stunning account of how scientific thinking and technology have gained control over the way we perceive and value the world.
Social Effects & Innovations
The social effects of axemaker’s innovation also shape those aspects of our lives that cannot be so readily observed. For example, In the late eighteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution suddenly brought hundreds of thousands of farm workers into city factories, their potentially disruptive presence provoked draconian legislation, which included capital punishment for such minor offenses as stealing a handkerchief. Today, television coverage of the glitterati provides influential role models for behavior, while television soap operas offer glimpses of a world whose values many viewers admire and adopt.
Through history, when the axemaker’s changed our world in these ways, we were in most cases willing and eager participants in the matter. Most of the time the axemaker’s gift was irresistible. More often than not it was a cure for a disease, or a faster way to do something, or a means to facilitate what we wanted to do, So we came back for more, unmindful of the other, not easily visible, changes the gift might eventually bring. But we could never unmake history, and with each gift there was no choice but to adapt to the effects of the change.
Excerpt from ‘The Axemaker’s Gift’ by James Burke and Robert Ornstein
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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