Modernize
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in the Daily Drafters chat thread: Modernize. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt that was shared in the Daily Drafters chat: Write a short short story (~500 words or fewer) about something that is being modernized, either real or imagined. Or write a short essay about something you believe should be modernized ASAP.
If it were up to me, we would modernize mindsets first, one at a time, if need be, because that is the only thing that would have a lasting effect in this world. If only there was a device for this … oh, wait, maybe there is? Though it would have to be whatever the opposite of a smartphone or LLM is.
Maybe for the modernizing I am suggesting, all we need is paper and pen or a simple word processor? And the will to write the world we want into existence…
— because, for whatever reason, in the age of smartphones and mass surveillance and AI and all the other invasive technologies that consume everything that’s rightfully ours like out-of-control vacuums, we’re still clinging to mastering rote learning as a goalpost for intelligence, like we need to pack as much information into our brains as possible, as quickly as possible, to regurgitate it without context as quickly as possible, to be considered smart and capable.
But how does that make any sense anymore when we have so much at our literal and figurative fingertips? When our devices carry our information for us like pack animals without weight restrictions for what they can carry on our behalf, even when we don’t want them to?
We’re still fixated on acquiring more, more, more, more when we have so much waste at our fingertips. Wasted information. Wasted time. Wasted attention. Wasted resources. You name it!
I’m not saying we need less, per se, but maybe? At least until we have a practical place to put what we already have. We already have too much, both abstractly and physically speaking, and nowhere useful to put it or so it seems.
Or maybe what’s really at stake entails reallocating and redistributing what we have at our fingertips already, to ensure it’s useful instead of wasted? But who knows how long that will take. Especially with our current archaic, barbaric, exploitative, hoarding, consumerist… mindsets.
Regardless, what I am considering would require us to modernize our mindsets to contextualize the waste of information we have instead. To think about it and all our waste critically even. Not dismiss it outright necessarily but weigh its origins and future and everything in between.
Maybe?
— without relying solely on the devices that are still stuck in the past of amassing more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more… faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster...
— when we already have more than enough of everything we need and don’t know exactly how to use it or distribute it or where we want to put it yet, regardless of how fast we can access it.
If only the waste was understood better and contextualized better and managed and administered better, so it wasn’t waste but a resource, as it was supposed to be all along.
But, again, that requires an updated mindset. A mindset that is centered in reality and the real modern world and its physical and conscious and unconscious limits, not unfettered, archaic, emotional pulls of more, more, more, more, more, more…
— because once we update our mindsets to better understand and contextualize and distribute the ‘more’ we have at our fingertips, the better equipped we will be to modernize our education systems and how they operate, which will bleed into our professional systems and environments of work and how they operate, which will inevitably bleed into our lifestyles and relationships and community structures and how they operate. Which will lead to better innovations and human ingenuity overall.
And wouldn’t that be something? The ‘something’ that we actually need? Not the ‘something’ we are sold to believe by the all-consuming devices at our fingertips.
But how and where do we start updating minds, then hearts?
Can storytelling help us accomplish these things?
Maybe.
If we remember that where there is a will, there is a way to write the world we want into existence.
Today’s essay is more creative than traditional in its structure and content, and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about how it turned out. Alas, that is what writing drafts is all about, no? I will have to sit with it to see if I want to edit and revise it later. I still have a lot of thoughts left to unpack here!
What are your thoughts?
Leave a comment to join this dialogue, or to share an excerpt of your own writing if you completed this prompt.
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Egalitarian Book Club
Currently Reading: Westward Women by Alice Martin (Join the buddy read here.)
Recommended Reading Schedule:
Week 1 (May 1-10) — Chap. 1-7 (Part I)
Week 2 (May 11- 17) — Chap. 8-14 (Part II- III)
Week 3 (May 18- 24) — Chap. 15-21 (Part III- IV)
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Substack CHAT THREAD to discuss entire book will be shared this weekend.
June Pick:
Votes are in! We’ll be reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke in June.
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