Jose Y Gasset, One of the Most

Jose y Gasset, one of the most famous Spanish and existentialist philosophers, wrote realms of books about the importance of stepping from 'out' and turning 'within'. The greatest warriors, he noted, were those who took time to separate themselves from their armies, go into seclusion, and reflect on the history of their tactics and on ideas of how to proceed. It was exactly this 'turning away' form the noise of the world that allowed them to gain a moment of silence, see the world, and their actions in it is, form a clearer, more detached perspective, and enable them to proceed in a more rational manner.

Hurricane Sandy gave me something of this last week. Perhaps, because I took advantage of it. Many others, I later heard, were discomfited by the break in their electronic routine. They -- we -- were used to texting, chatting, browsing on the computer, talking on the cellular phone, using the i-pod, the i-pad, YouTube, watching DVDs, and so forth… And suddenly, it was as though we were back in the Neanderthal ages. For many of us, it was discomfiting. Imagine existence with no television! Irksome and weird.

The best of it all was that it gave me a moment to reflect. I had often endeavored to practice mindfulness. Yet, the onrushing and seduction of electronic data had entrapped me in a web of distraction where I was choked in it and unable to liberate myself.

There are plenty of stories of people who exchange their books for computer and TV, rationalizing that they can gain their information form these mediums. The stories always disturb me -- and they happened far more radically when computer first appeared than now -- since the exchange seems to me cheap. Somewhat like Esau bartering his birthright for the soup. Books have been our birthright. They are our birthright. We gain something from them that we cannot gain from that shifting, distracting, unreliable morass of electronic data. Yes, the data found in book form may exist, too, on Web in a more compact form. But it was not just the fact that the professor was exchanging a seemingly more hallowed, sacrosanct, idealistic form of life for something that seemed pragmatic and money-tinged. He was withdrawing from the vaunted secluded, contemplative life those philosophers such as Aristotle called the height of happiness. And he was losing himself into conformity; into becoming one of the herd.

This, I think, may be one of the key differences between computer / technology and books. One that I received an inkling of during Hurricane Sandy. The internet brings us into collusion with Others. The web, e-mail, chatgroups, social media, and so forth -- the definition of the Internet is one where we are interacting with the 'world wide web'. Books, on the other hand, serve as an encounter with another mind, but it is a patient, more solitary, more reflective encounter where we can turn to and turn away at our will, read, close the book, pencil it, and write words in the margin. We can voluntarily close our computer too, but it may be the physical involvement with the book -- underlining words, writing on the pages, feeling the pages, not being distracted by flickering images and the pressure of time that is inherent in the Internet that enables us to better absorb the book.