THE OTHER SIDE OF PROGRESS

For almost a month now, I have had no cell phone.  Since I'm not doing births anymore, there was no reason to continue spending that money.

I'm thinking back on the conversations I used to have on the cell phone.  I would use it to tell my mother where I was on the freeway and how many minutes it would be until I arrived at choir rehearsal.  Mom would call me from her office while I was in the parking lot not 100 feet away.  Hubby and I would call each other at 3:00 in the afternoon to decide which one of us would pick up DL and CL from school that day.  Amazing that my life hasn't devolved into chaos now that I'm phoneless.  Now we plan our days in advance.  Not one day have we failed to get the children home and get dinner on the table.  And my loved ones now accept the fact that at times I am actually not reachable.

Technology is funny.  We expect it to make our lives easier, but often we just end up increasing our demands on ourselves instead.  The automobile should have given us more free time; that 30-minute walk to work would turn into a 5-minute drive.  But instead we all decided that now we can take jobs that are 20 miles away from our homes.  Cities are built with the expectation that everyone will have wheels.  What was once a luxury is now inescapable.  And a lot of people instinctively get in their cars to go anywhere, even if it's only half a mile away.

Ooh, suddenly my thoughts have turned to childbirth.  Same idea.  The increase in the safety of cesarean sections is a blessing and has saved lives.  But now about 21% of babies in the U. S. are born surgically.  Has the female body or the process of labor actually changed and left a fifth of American women unable to give birth normally?  Or have we grown so dependent on technology that we have forgotten our natural human abilities?

I remember the first time I ever baked bread.  I was in my late teens.  When I pulled the loaf of bread out of the oven, I was awestruck.  I had always imagined that it took some kind of special domestic magicianship to produce homemade bread or soup.  But there it was, made by little old me.  It wasn't as good as store-bought bread.  It was better.  Better tasting, more nutritious, and cheaper.  Unbelievable.

Let's remember that technological advances are supposed to supplement our abilities, not supplant them.

Comments

[Michelle]

I think about the car thing a lot. We have definitely built our entire, spread-out, Texas culture around it. It is odd that I have to make a conscious choice to walk my son the half mile to school, instead of driving. It should be the other way around. There are so many cars that drag on my street that sometimes walking doesn't even feel safe. People are crazy here. Sometimes I long for my old small town, closeminded as it could be, just because it felt more natural.