Breadcrumbs: A Collection of Spiritual and Philosophical Essays, Francis J. Shaw [little readers .TXT] 📗

We would expect to see an increase in the usage of words like progress during the final moments of impactful world events (it peaks at both ends of the two world wars). Although Russia lost the most in the treaty that ended the Crimean conflict, Timothy the tortoise won as much as anyone else, by getting to go home. As the sun dipped beneath the Crimean horizon, perhaps the illumination of progress had a different light source.

It’s winter, 1854, and as darkness fills the Crimean sky and the medical staff retire for the night, a tall, slender woman with brown hair covered by a white cap, makes her way around the wards for a last check. She believes in cleanliness, but not germs, and since arriving with her volunteers the death rate has increased. Her name is Florence Nightingale.

‘She is a “ministering angel” without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.’12 It was this report in The Times that gave her the name all school children remember learning—‘The Lady with the Lamp.’

In their later years, when the men who survived the winter of 1854 wrote their memoirs, they talked about the lantern carrier who wandered in the darkness. The love they felt just because she was there, not because she saved them. Their suffering eased by her presence and how they could kiss her shadow in gratitude as it fell before them. Florence revolutionized nursing; founding the world’s first secular nursing school and International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday.

It had to be the answer. Progress isn’t found under a burning sun that shines reason upon mankind, but through the soft glow of candlelight. There, in the shadows, truth revealed itself—poor leadership and a pointless war brought a realization, that we as a race would not move forward without holding compassion and healing close to our hearts. The song of the Nightingale that would banish the futility of war, forever…answer found…essay completed...

Pause…The light of the lamp wasn’t the solution—Timothy returned to the high seas and within a few short years the worst kind of war erupted, when civil war broke out in the America’s. Despite a great leader in Lincoln and correcting a great wrong by freeing the slaves, the use of progress in writing continued to decline.

Timothy retired from the navy in 1892. Welcomed by the Earl of Devon at Powderham Castle, he received the family motto, etched on his underside—“Where have I fallen? What have I done?” Questions humanity continued to ask as further conflicts ensued. During the Second World War, Timothy prepared, by moving from his favorite wisteria bed, to an air raid shelter he dug under the terrace steps.

Time passed, the hands of the doomsday clock progressing closer to the end. Further definitions added to progress provided more substance. We were no longer only ‘moving forward,’ but ‘gradually improving’ and ‘developing in a positive way.’ Despite this clarity of wishful thinking, in 1968 it changed again for the worse.

As the Vietnam War continued to rage, the North Vietnamese launched a surprised Tet offensive turning public opinion about the conflict. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and starvation gripped parts of Africa. Students launched mass demonstrations around the world and The Guardian newspaper in England called 1968, ‘The year that changed history.’

When the dust settled, the steadiness of the usage of progress over the previous twenty years took a drastic turn downwards. The end of the Vietnam War and civil rights legislation did nothing to stem the tide. It seemed once again, that whatever light we encountered at the end of the tunnel was never enough to stop the dissatisfaction with the direction we were heading. A disturbing historical pattern kept repeating. Public opinion, often driven by the young, would swell against a perceived ethical wrong or unwise course of action, until it could no longer be ignored. The powerful would fight against change, kicking and screaming, as leaders and peacemakers emerged to combat senseless conflicts and correct moral codes. We had come so far and yet moved so little. Worse, it appeared that only certain types of progress would be allowed by the powerful and no leaders who espoused peaceful outcomes would be allowed to survive. “Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?”13

Driving down the street by where I live, two raised stone flower beds protrude from both sides of the pavement, narrowing the road so little space remains for two cars to pass. A speed bump lies between the flower beds and signs indicate a change in the road rules. One says that the previous speed limit (30km/h) is no longer in force and another bigger blue sign, contains pictures of a car, house, adult pedestrian, and a child kicking a ball. Once you cross the speed bump you have entered a Traffic Calming zone (literal translation of the German word, Verkehrsberuhigung).

The rules of our traffic calming zone state that cars may not exceed 7 km/h, pedestrians may use the entire street, and children are permitted to play in the road. There is one problem with our traffic calming zone. The cars seldom stay beneath 7 km/h because they don’t need to. The pedestrians stick to the pavement and there are no children kicking a ball around in the street. Not today, nor I doubt tomorrow…not once have I seen a child playing there, in all the time I have lived here.

Despite opportunities and initiatives to slow down and reflect after years like 1968 and what followed, a different world emerged. In some ways it is a natural occurring progressive phenomenon, where each generation views the previous one with some disdain, mild amusement, or a look that says, ‘what planet are you from?’ So much has changed since the days of my childhood, I shouldn’t be surprised that it seems so strange to the young of today, but I am.

My childhood was in a year BC (before computers) and it seems hard for a child of today to imagine a time like this ever existed. How impossible life must have been without a smart phone and a constant fast Internet connection. I could tell them we didn’t even have electronic calculators and still used an abacus to do sums. I could show them a picture of what one looked like. Even though it may look like something a baby would play with, it was in fact a counting machine used for over 4,500 years. I could tell them how we played outside almost every day, no matter the weather. How many times I would not listen to my mother calling me to come in because I liked it so much. I could tell them how we loved to take rambles in the countryside using a compass and a map to navigate.

I could…but perhaps only Timothy, back enjoying retirement in his wisteria bed would understand these old ways. The world had changed. It wasn’t overnight, but even today it feels like it happened very fast…fast because what the world did, was speed up. The technological revolution and industrial revolution both centered on delivering increased productivity. Mailing letters became obsolete as has talking to each other face to face to a large degree. Now, we have more options. We can email, text, and chat with anyone around the world in seconds, inventing new languages as we go and the virtual world has become the new playground of our children. It’s progressive, but is it progress? Or is it as Aldous Huxley said, that, “technology progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards?”

Having more choices to communicate doesn’t automatically make us better communicators, but one of the hallmarks of this technical age has been to sell us new things—not just products, but abilities. To cope with new expectations we would need some tools, upgrades, and a delivery system to connect everything together. We could forget about playing outside with friends or communing with neighbors; the whole world was at our fingertips—it needed us. Smart phones epitomized this new age. With a wealth of information on the Internet and apps for almost everything, we were running out of excuses why life wasn’t better—why we were not happier.

Our brains also needed an upgrade to cope and without warning we had to become multitaskers. If multitasking didn’t appear front and center on our resumes, our chances of landing a job in the new world could be in doubt. This surely was an example of progress. To acknowledge a skill we all had, but didn’t know we did, until it was suddenly needed. Maybe I was sick the day they taught multitasking at school or was it just a ghost in the machine? Either way, it wasn’t a problem—we all bought it. After all, it feels good to know to we can do many things so well; all at the same time. There was only one small problem—we can’t.

Science also took huge leaps in the technological revolution. Scientists have conducted many experiments and MRI scans to determine what happens in the brain when we multi-task. It was bad news—our brains are built to process one thing at a time. When we multi-task it affects the brain’s learning systems, and as a result, we do not learn as well when we are distracted. We also try to fool our brains with parallel processing. This is where we tell the brain to think about one item separate from another, but we tell the brain to focus on each one with the same importance. The brain does its best to cope, but seldom delivers because each time we switch tasks the brain has to start over, so everything takes longer. Result—we become less productive.

The news gets worse.

All memory is not created equal. E.g. for remembering how to ride a bicycle we use procedural memory, but for learning facts and concepts we use declarative memory. When multitasking, declarative memory is disrupted. It’s not much help knowing you can still peddle your bike when your focus needs to be analyzing facts and figures for an important presentation. To muddy the waters a little more, the brain accesses the hippocampus, a critical area for recalling information. When we multi-task the brain closes it down and uses the striatum, which is geared to learning new skills and not recalling information.

Many will read this and still insist they are great multitaskers and no doubt more memory pills will continue to appear on the market to ease our remembering issues. If we didn’t understand the full truth about something as small as multitasking, which might be hindering our progress, perhaps more