This article suggests that the burgeoning amount of emails, instant messages, tweets, and texts we receive  are becoming a harmful and prohibitive cacophony of hyper-communication. So why can’t people reduce the amount of messages they send (and receive)? Well, they could be addicted (“e-compulsion”). In such instances researchers notice decreased attention spans, increased stress, and decreased productivity (Alarming statistics! Read the article).

The most frightful thing to consider? What if what we’re doing – emailing about – day-to-day really impacts our life in the long-term? Robinson brings to light an argument by Winifred Gallagher, authored of Rapt, that “humans are the sum of what they pay attention to: What we focus on determines our experience, knowledge, amusement, fulfillment. Yet instead of cultivating this resource, she says, we’re squandering it on ‘whatever captures our awareness.’ To truly learn something, and remember it, you have to pay full attention.”

As noted by Robinson, it pays to pay attention to attention.

Note an example of a blogging “no-no” which the FTC provides:

“Assume…the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of..new dog food through this program, her positive reviews would be considered an endorsement under the [new guidelines]” (60).

Curiously, Janna Quitney Anderson and Lee Rainie, who authored the description of the survey, seemed to assume that just because experts suppose so, it will be true. To my eyes, Nicholas Carr isn’t wrong – yet. Only time will tell.

It seems that with each new year, we feel increasingly qualified to wax from on high about the ultimate aims in life and the best (or only) methods to achieve them. Thanks to Brett McKay, Head Honcho at the Art of Manliness, I ran into a common sense turn-of-the-year approach. Where most self-help sources would start by accepting you weren’t at fault for achieving your goals, Mr. McKay acknowledges that the real reason for achieving anything less than what you intended comes down to one thing and one thing alone: discipline. I found his thoughts, captured in “The Secret to Becoming a Better Man in 2010,” to be refreshing.

What’s more, I ran into a passage (and an author) which I will never forget. As a corollary to his post, Mr. McKay directed readers to William George Jordan’s Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, published in 1905. For your benefit, I include the most salient passage here:

“When a man fails in life he usually says, ” I am as God made me.” When he succeeds he proudly proclaims himself a ” self-made man.” Man is placed into this world not as a finality,— but as a possibility. Man’s greatest enemy is,—himself. Man in his weakness is the creature of circumstances; man in his strength is the creator of circumstances. Whether he be victim or victor depends largely on himself.

Man is never truly great merely for what he is, but ever for what he may become. Until man be truly filled with the knowledge of the majesty of his possibility, until there come to him the glow of realization of his privilege to live the life committed to him, as an individual life for which he is individually responsible, he is merely groping through the years…

With this broadening, stimulating view of life, he sees how he may attain his kingship through self-control. And the self-control that is seen in the most spectacular instances in history, and in the simplest phases of daily life, is precisely the same in kind and in quality, differing only in degree. This control man can attain, if he only will; it is but a matter of paying the price.

The power of self-control is one of the great qualities that differentiates man from the lower animals. He is the only animal capable of a moral struggle or a moral conquest.

Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control.” It has been escaping from the tyranny of a fact, to the understanding and mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning flash; to-day he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he has mastered and made his slave. The million phases of electrical invention are but manifestations of our control over a great force. But the greatest of all “control ” is self-control.

At each moment of man’s life he is either a King or a slave. As he surrenders to a wrong appetite, to any human weakness; as he falls prostrate in hopeless subjection to any condition, to any environment, to any failure, he is a slave. As he day by day crushes out human weakness, masters opposing elements within him, and day by day re-creates a new self from the sin and folly of his past,—then he is a King. He is a King ruling with wisdom over himself. Alexander conquered the whole world except,— Alexander. Emperor of the earth, he was the servile slave of his own passions.

We look with envy upon the possessions of others and wish they were our own. Sometimes we feel this in a vague, dreamy way with no thought of real attainment, as when we wish we had Queen Victoria’s crown, or Emperor William’s self-satisfaction. Sometimes, however, we grow bitter, storm at the wrong distribution of the good things of life, and then relapse into a hopeless fatalistic acceptance of our condition.

We envy the success of others, when we should emulate the process by which that success came. We see the splendid physical development of Sandow, yet we forget that as a babe and child he was so weak there was little hope that his life might be spared…

We shut our eyes to the thousands of instances of the world’s successes,— mental, moral, physical, financial or spiritual,—wherein the great final success came from a beginning far weaker and poorer than our own.

Any man may attain self-control if he only will. He must not expect to gain it save by long continued payment of price, in small progressive expenditures of energy. Nature is a thorough believer in the installment plan in her relations with the individual. No man is so poor that he cannot begin to pay for what he wants, and every small, individual payment that he makes, Nature stores and accumulates for him as a reserve fund in his hour of need.

The patience man expends in bearing the little trials of his daily life Nature stores for him as a wondrous reserve in a crisis of life. With Nature, the mental, the physical or the moral energy he expends daily in right doing is all stored for him and transmuted into strength. Nature never accepts a cash payment in full for anything,—this would be an injustice to the poor and to the weak.

It is only the progressive installment plan Nature recognizes. No man can make a habit in a moment or break it in a moment. It is a matter of development, of growth. But at any moment man may begin to make or begin to break any habit. This view of the growth of character should be a mighty stimulus to the man who sincerely desires and determines to live nearer to the limit of his possibilities.

Self-control may be developed in precisely the same manner as we tone up a weak muscle,—by little exercises day by day. Let us each day do, as mere exercises of discipline in moral gymnastics, a few acts that are disagreeable to us, the doing of which will help us in instant action in our hour of need. The exercises may be very simple—dropping for a time an intensely interesting book at the most thrilling page of the story; jumping out of bed at the first moment of waking; walking home when one is perfectly able to do so, but when the temptation is to take a car; talking to some disagreeable person and trying to make the conversation pleasant. These daily exercises in moral discipline will have a wondrous tonic effect on man’s whole moral nature.

The individual can attain self-control in great things only through self-control in little things. He must study himself to discover what is the weak point in his armor, what is the element within him that ever keeps him from his fullest success. This is the characteristic upon which he should begin his exercise in self-control. Is it selfishness, vanity, cowardice, morbidness, temper, laziness, worry, mind-wandering, lack of purpose?—whatever form human weakness assumes in the masquerade of life he must discover. He must then live each day as if his whole existence were telescoped down to the single day before him. With no useless regret for the past, no useless worry for the future, he should live that day as if it were his only day,— the only day left for him to assert all that is best in him, the only day left for him to conquer all that is worst in him. He should master the weak element within him at each slight manifestation from moment to moment. Each moment then must be a victory for it or for him. Will he be King, or will he be slave?—the answer rests with him.”

Rubin confidently intones that “our power and our values cannot be separated. More than any other country on earth, America has been committed to principles in foreign affairs.” But, I’m left unconvinced. I’m not setting out to demonize our government or to gainsay the American ideal; I’m just wondering if, as a nation, we’re drifting closer or farther from our values. Hell, I’d even be satisfied if I could determine we were just staying the course.

This week I saw James Cameron’s Avatar – twice. I’m a little ashamed by how infatuated I am with the film, despite it being a suspiciously perfect amalgamation of Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, and The Matrix (but that’s neither here nor there). As I left the theatre, I was working through some of the questions raised in my mind when I suddenly became concerned. The question I stumbled over was: Could the human race would actually be capable of the acts performed in that movie?

At first, this was one of the more insignificant questions inspired in me by Avatar – more a wisp of air than a real, tangible question. Just as I was about to brush away the notion as patently impossible (of course the human race would never commit such desolate, evil acts!) it occurred to me: we have done exactly that. And not just long ago in our distant past, but recently! The Holocaust, apartheid, and a dozen other genocidal campaigns that we too easily forget are poignant, but haunting reminders. I’m not suddenly afraid of an impending racial doom – but I’m forced to wonder: is James Cameron’s vision of us in 2154 possible? Are we growing more enlightened, more dedicated to our values? Or are we growing apart from our values and calling it “realism?”

James Rubin doesn’t seem afraid that we’re on the brink of catastrophe, but you have to admit that when the question of whether or not we’re dedicated to our values even needs to be asked, something is seriously wrong. That, I think, should be our first hint to self-evaluate and get back on the right track.

This morning I read an article which quoted the victim’s family’s lawyer as having said,

“With tonight’s verdict, justice has been done for the tragedy which struck the Kercher family. They are satisfied. These are severe sentences for young people, so it is a tragedy for all concerned” (italics mine).

If we were to cut the fat from this man’s statement, translate it into an algebraic statement, and then put in true values for the variables, it would come out (when simplified) looking something like this: justice = tragedy + tragedy. Read his statement again. This lawyer suggests that an event which constituted a tragedy, required another tragedy of commensurate degree to be committed in order for justice to occur. Does this sound like justice to you? To me, it sounds like simple revenge – but the kind of revenge you can stomach without shame, because it happened in a court of “law.” (Any one recall “an eye for an eye makes the whole world…”?)

Now, I don’t know much about the case and haven’t taken an interest in it until now – so my words should really be taken cum grano solis. After all, I’m basing my entire perception of wrong-doing on one man’s statement. But, what bothers me more than the fact a court may have allowed revenge to take place in its proceedings, rather than true justice, is that, to my knowledge, no one in the media has been concerned with this same idea. I was inundated yesterday – online, on television, on the radio, in paper – with media buzzards swarming around this story. The aspects they were concerned about were, to me, mundane and irrelevant: “How does the family feel?” (We can all imagine how they feel – now let’s stop prying into their personal lives.) “How does the victim’s family feel?” (We can all imagine how they feel, now let’s stop prying into their personal lives and let them grieve on their own). “Was it sex? Was it drugs? Was it violent?” (Of course the media would pick up on such elements).

Why wasn’t the media evaluating the case? The proceedings? The fairness of the sentences?

In his 1996 essay, “Why American’s Hate the Media,” James Fallows suggested that the media has lost its way. That its focusing on the wrong aspects of the stories it covers. He focuses more on politics, but I think the same idea applies here. He says,

“the pressure to keep things lively means that squabbling replaces dialogue. The discussion shows that are supposed to enhance public understanding may actually reduce it…”

That statement seems to be the crux of what’s wrong with the media. It speaks to a confusion over their vision (not perception, but vision of their purpose). After all, what’s the point of the media? Is it to increase ratings? If so, they can focus on the sensational, but their choice of topic and manner in which they cover it will not enlighten us. So, then, is their purpose to increase our understanding of issues and events? I certainly hope so. But I can’t say I’ve seen evidence of that in the American media today.

• “Love” (630 times)
• “Thanks” (243 times)
• “Sorry” (211 times)
• “God” (175 times)
• “Lord” (130 times)

Of special interest to me was the large gap between the most commonly mentioned word (“love”) and the second most commonly used word (“thanks”) – a 61% difference.

This single page had more of an impact on me than the last thousand (of any publication) I have turned. There seems to me to be something sacred about what people say right before they die – criminal or not. And, Texas seems to agree. They’ve faithfully recorded every last statement and made them publicly available online, from 40 year-old Charlie Brooks jr who was executed in 1982 for kidnapping and killing a car salesman, to 34 year old Robert Thompson, executed just two weeks ago for robbing a convenience store and killing the store clerk.

These statements seem to prove Henry Drummond correct, when he reminded us that

“You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”

Then again, I cannot, somewhat cynically, resist from recalling one of Toni Morrison’s poignant  lines:

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

Indeed, it may be that language is the measure of our lives. Something to think about, eh?

If you’re interested in reading these last statements, you can do so at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.