In another thread, one about extremes of weather, I noticed

[haele]

36. I am trying to raise other people's kids to better aware and

To be better problem solvers. To be more kind, more concerned, to make due with less. To be less distracted and more patient.
It's difficult, in a way I didn't experience when my parents raised me.
I didn't have so much of the world in front of me, but I had time and the ability to find the world through other people's written experience, written in such a way I would picture that experience in my mind, and could almost feel the emotions, the environment, imagine the tastes, smells and sounds. The world was never presented to me as a totally passive receptacle, even if I was watching TV or a movie; I had to use my brain.

My daughter, my granddaughters don't have time the way I did. They have the world at their fingertips, but it's without experience behind it. It's pushed at them, through constant notifications from media competing for their attention. Getting to get them to go out without the world in their pocket is difficult, especially when just going out in nature to get some time is now considered "dangerous", and even my daughter, whom I tried to raise to be fearlessly curious, has the overwhelmed urge to be able to get a hold of her daughters at all times. In case of emergency, of course.
There is little time for contemplating in their world. There also seems to be an active move to rein in imagination by media advertisers, and to keep a tracker on one at all times by those that make money on consumers.
There's a certain freedom to just leaving one's devices and getting "lost", whether it's in the city or out in nature. I am saddened to think that many of younger generations don't attend to the value of time until it's out of their control.They don't realize how much time we had, even if we didn't have all the technology to make our work easier and "improve our productivity". I have the same sadness for the quality of nature, of "going out and getting lost" I had growing up, where I could experience the different seasons of the world without intrusion when we would go out just to walk and picnic away from hustle and distractions on weekends after chores. Even if it was just to a park or greenbelt.

There's a difference between going out to seek quiet, nature, or time and having it doled out to you. This isn't a "kids these days" observation, this is a society at large observation. There seems to be an active push to leash large numbers of the population in general, from rural to urban, so we can be more reliable and reactive to those who want to influence our actions for their profit. They have always wanted to previously, they just have more immediate tools to do so.

Haele