Words by the Wise Wilde

Taken from A Picture of Dorian Gray

Don't squander the gold of your days,
listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure,
or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common,
and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals,
of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!
Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for
new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism--
that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.
With your personality there is nothing you could not do.
The world belongs to you for a season. . . . The moment I met
you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are,
of what you really might be. There was so much in you that
charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself.
I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is
such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time.
The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again.
The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now.
In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year
after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars.
But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us
at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot.
We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory
of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the
exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but
youth!"

A Thought from a Paper Ago

As I saw the length of the line, of what appeared to be a human chain of eager-to-be consumers in their desperation for the latest Blackberry product, “Aren’t we suffering from a recession?” Rang in my head, at the shocking disbelief of what I was seeing before me. This new and “better” Blackberry must be promising miracles to attract such a mob of mass consumption.

Quantity is the new quality. The way in which we have commodified communication allows us to do it all, that is—fit a week into a day. Think about it—things pile up, we speed up, and so does our reality. Even the way in which we communicate with our social network seems to be more of a drop-in landing. Instead of hanging out, we check in. A few minutes here and there are sometimes all the time we have to offer. A friend’s voice has been compensated for mere doses of text-abbreviated-socialization. But still, we can connect to anyone at anytime and faster than ever before, right? Then why is it that people feel so…disconnected?

Technology remains as the unsatisfied crave of the modern rave. We seem to be giving in to this Brave New World. But I wonder: will we become so over-stimulated with quick swigs of technological socialization that we become detached from long-lasting, savoring reality?

Are these devices really strengthening our social network or actually weakening it? And is it considered “legitimate” leisure?