Learning patience in a fast-paced world

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Looking out their prisonโ€™s windows, father and son, Daedalus and Icarus, planned their escape. Waxing feathers to their arms they would fly their way to freedom. Daedalus instructed Icarus: โ€œWhatever you do, do not fly too low โ€ฆ for once you pass the seacoast, the salt spray from the waves of the sea will wet the feathers and make them too heavy to lift. Nor should you fly too high otherwise the heat of the sun will melt the wax, the wings will collapse and you will plummet into the sea and die.โ€

Father and son leaped into the air.ย  However impulsive youth that he was, Icarus ignored his fatherโ€™s advice and soared higher and higher, drunk on the pleasures of flight. Higher and higher he flew and just as his father had warned, the sunโ€™s rays melted the wax and he plummeted to his death into the sea.

Daedalus, the brilliant inventor erred as he emphasized his inventionโ€™s efficiencies, but ignored the naivetรฉ of his sonโ€™s use of the waxed wings. Daedalus had put his invention in the hands of someone unable to understand the limits of that power.

Our obsessive devotion to speed today can be compared to any of Daedalusโ€™ remarkable inventions. Rather than falling into the ocean, could it be that our mindless speed forward represents several steps backward in our moral or spiritual development?

It is a story as old as the discovery and development of nuclear fire by 20th-century scientists: will such fire be utilized to burn away cancerous cells or will it be used to incinerate innocent populations?

Regarding such a question, some years ago, then presidential candidate for the United States Adlai Stevenson said, โ€œWe have wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or make a desert bloom. There is no evil in the atom โ€ฆ only in our souls.โ€

Addicted to moving swiftly without much reflecting on questions of โ€œought,โ€ we become impatient with workmates or playmates. Our impatience means we are much less likely to devote time to any activity without an immediate reward, forgetting that some of our most significant relationships require a prolonged investment of effort and time โ€” being a good teacher, being a steadfast friend, being a devoted mother or father โ€” in fact, doing anything competently involves such a time investment.ย  ย 

The speedy transfer of information โ€” not knowledge โ€” is at the expense of wisdom, because the now counts for everything and the then โ€” past history, great literature, noble traditions are the first casualties. Some experts suggest that in our information society, we may have โ€œsurrendered our historical consciousness,โ€ a consciousness now replaced by a computer โ€œculture,โ€ leaving us starved of existential meaning.

Jane Jacobsโ€™ โ€œThe Death and Life of Great American Citiesโ€ makes a similar point when she argues when people collectively lose their memories and suffer a โ€œcultural amnesia,โ€ such suggests a โ€œdark age ahead.โ€ย  ย  ย 

The most important questions are moral questions and no technology, even a very sophisticated one, can provide answers to moral questions.

ย ย  The unfinished nature of our development, learning and of our society means that an ever thoughtful community can best reflect on and articulate the worrying consequences of our many choices. But most important, our quest will pose many moral challenges, chief among them how to create a civil and humane society.

ย ย  And those insights will mean not only accepting our profound strengths but also acknowledging our many vulnerabilities, as we navigate a cautious course between the two โ€” neither flying too low (where the oceanโ€™s salt spray may soak our feathers), nor soaring too high (where the blazing, unforgiving solar heat may melt the wax on our wings).

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Serving the Waterloo campus, The Cord seeks to provide students with relevant, up to date stories. Weโ€™re always interested in having more volunteer writers, photographers and graphic designers.