I must admit I have enjoyed and been challenged by this week’s readings. I have enjoyed their content but have been challenged by their format and conclusions. I believe that reflection is key to understanding but worry that reflecting on someone’s reflection on the previous reflection of another leads us down a dangerous road. We start to believe we understand everything, our beliefs are real, and we can predict the future.

In our quest for meaning and significance we do many things, including: spirituality, technology, and reflection. The other day someone joked how my way of speaking revealed my participation in a masters program. This got me thinking….is academia another behaviour we use in our quest for meaning and significance. Like any religion, there is a liturgy, a bible and a dogma. Thank Gaia, for the guidance and standards of the APA.

In 1900, Lord Kelvin said, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Reflecting on Kelvin’s words (irony intended) and this week’s readings I find myself thinking, “There is nothing new to be understood. All that remains is more and more precise understanding”. By examining the world through an academic, reflective, and lexicon-based lens, we may begin to believe that this theoretical world is the real world. Words give us words which give us more words (confusion intended); they do not necessarily provide real insight and understanding.

And so I found myself wading through words this week to discern what makes sense to me. I think the metaphor of the human brain as a computer is incomplete and does not begin to explain our growing understanding of the brain’s complexity, plasticity, flexibility, and adaptability. Computers developing sentience? We don’t really understand it in humans and used to believe animals didn’t have it. How will we recognize it in computers? How do you program something you don’t understand? I think we comfort ourselves in layers of words, layers of spirituality, layers of technology, layers of reflection that sound like the understanding and insight we want but don’t have.

Thankfully, in 1904, Kelvin reminded us that, “When we look through the little universe that we know…we have no right to assume that there may not be something else that our philosophy does not dream of.” Or perhaps Shakespeare’s Hamlet said it best, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And why not? After all, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But here I go…. reflecting on a discussion question, reflecting on Kelvin, reflecting on the words of Shakespeare…only to be reminded that thinking and talking about how a rose smells and the reasons and implications of its “smellingness”, are not the same as smelling the rose!

To quote one of my Kindergarteners, “Too many words Mr. Adams. Can we think about this later? We want to go out and play!”

In their unpublished manuscript Feng and Petrina ask the questions “Can we have spirituality without technology? Can we have technology without spirituality? What do you think?
November 24, 2012 5:49 PM

I think it is easy to confuse our personal definitions of technology and spirituality with “the” definition of technolgy and sprirituality. Both are human-made concepts, expressed in human ways to meet human needs. As we seek to understand and control our lives we may look to technology or spirituality or ? We seek meaning and attempt to explain ourselves. I believe spirituality and technology can exist and coexist. They do in my life. I use technology extensively and frequently enjoy moments of great spirituality and connectedness within and without technology. I pray daily. I worry when technology and spirtuality become confused. One being an example of or explanation for the other. When we defer our responsibility to a techological or spiritual diety, we continue down the road of children who have no responsibility for the choices we make and the current state of the world. The idea that we have been given everything we need to make the world work appeals to me. We need to take responsibility for this gift. We may not be given another.