Tuesday, May 20, 2014

ADD or evolution?

What is A.D.D?  Take a moment and think about it.  And for the love of god don’t “Google” it, bah, it’s probably too late already anyway.

Attention Deficit Disorder, let’s discuss this.  When did you first hear the term?  For me it was in the mid to late 90’s when I found out about this so-called disease.

Upon further review it is classified as a lack of focus, the inability to set your mind on a task and finish it.  It seems that just about every child now a days is considered to have it, hell even some adults.

A quick bit of research on the disease allows you to see that in popular belief, the first cases of it were in the 1970’s. 

Fast forward to todays fast paced world, full of gadgets and gizmos to keep you more informed and socially connected to everyone from family to friends and even those people you hated in high school. 

Technology has single handedly destroyed human communication, at least in a personal sense.  It has made it’s users, who were once brilliant, vibrant and had a thirst for knowledge that was unquenchable, into empty shells with little to no communication skills and even worse, clueless empty headed fools who depend on search engines to spell and do math for them.

Remember evolution? How a creature adapts to its surroundings to survive.  I believe this is again happening to the human race, but this time it is actually reverting us to a lesser life form.

We have become a society that solely depends on technology.  Whether it is at work, in the classroom or even in your own free time.  We have become decadent and lazy. When was the last time you put your phone down and had an actual conversation with someone?  I don’t just mean five minutes; I’m talking a few hours, without checking your phone once.   Chances are it has been quite sometime.

With the advancements in technology, it has become far easier to retrieve information than ever before.  State Capitals, translating words from one language to another, medical advice and even the name of that actor in the movie you can’t remember the name of are all accessible at the end of your fingers in just seconds.

Is this a bad thing? No, not necessarily, but it has changed the way out mind works, the way that out mind expects information. 

 The Internet has been around for the better part of 15 years now, scary to think about it that way, I know.  With it’s invention has come a change for the way the human mind works.  Gone are the days of having to search the library for a book, leaf through its pages and actually read a passage to discover a piece of information or knowledge.  Typing and E-mail has replaced writing and letters.  Text messages are the new letters, ones that can be received and replied to in an instant.  No longer do we have to wait for it to be mailed, a response to be written and it to be mailed back. 

What I’m getting at here is that our minds have changed to expect the answers they want right now. 

Our society has lost its patience with the world.  Fast food has replaced home-cooked meals, text messages have replaced actual conversations and social skills have been boiled down to “likes”, “favorites” and “comments”.

This is why I believe A.D.D. has become obsolete.  The only person I can think of off the top of my head that I can say probably does not have this, is my gam-gam.  She cooks her meals, crochets her afghans and watches her old time movies. 

Whatever happened to imagination and the ability to daydream?  To read a book and create your own interpretations of the characters and what you think they look or sound like?  Or to be able to have fun, with out any form of technology to be involved?

Sadly, I too am guilty of over using technology. When used with a purpose, it has great potential.  When used as we are currently doing so, it creates a soul-less population that struggles to communicate when not in front of a lit up screen. 


Attention Deficit Disorder may be classified as a disease or problem, but really its just evolution.  Don’t believe me? Read “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.  Better yet.  Just “Google” it.

2 comments:

  1. I started reading this blog post at like 2pm. I just finished it now. There's probably some kind of point about ADD I'm trying to make here, but I'm too tired to put it all together.

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    Replies
    1. LOL, having ADD and being completely sleep deprived are two different things.

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