Physicality

After the Social Media discussion, I realized it'll kill me unless I figure out the way to articulate the belief I have in the importance of tangibility. This may be rough-- stick with me:

when people don't touch physical things (books, articles, pencils, pens), then it's easy to think that the things they're delving into don't matter. The information they contain is as easy to forget as the internet windows are easy to close.

ease of disengaging (being to scroll faster, cruise, cruise) becomes habit off screen as well-- not engaging with people.

people are experiencing more ambiguity (disaffiliation) in their identities because there's something definite and identifiable about physical things that is absent when everything's present only on a screen.

I will add more as it comes to me...

More:
A Pair of Shoes- Van Gogh


Philosopher Heideggar says about them:
"From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field. The equipment is pervaded by imcomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of trembling before the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of death. The equipment belongs to earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant women. from out of this protected belonging the equipment itself rises to its resting within-itself." (The origin of the work of art, 33)

The point is, all these meaningful observations are made meaningful only because a frame was put around the image of a pair of shoes. A Frame is a call for focus to a thing. I think in the same way physical things are a frame for ideas. They require focus.

An excerpt from the book about entitled, Gift from the Sea: "physical solitude doesn’t separate people, spiritual isolation does…The wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which ones wanders lost and a stranger…When one is the stranger to oneself, the none is estranged from others too. Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others. The inner spring can best be refound through solitude” (Lindbergh, 37-38)

physical things are anchors to reality. The map I'm using to understand the FrontRunner confirms that I'm HERE in this moment. what's in my hand it the present concern and the present goal. Harder to be distracted. physical things also limit my options which actually give me faith and confidence that I can find the answers I need on the physical thing cause those are all the resources I have. Either I use it to give me an answer or I'm done for. The finiteness actually capacitates me. I'm not stressed about whether I'm finding the best information (its the only one I have), or the most accurate website (cause there might be 60 more!). finiteness. focus. presence. 

The danger, of course, is the worship of material goods. But like any good thing, the material can be used for bad or good, depending on our use of it. It we appreciate materiality for what it offers us, but refuse the tempting pull of materialism, we'll be fine