Flowers from Horseback

Have you ever looked at something and noticed something completely new?  When you discover that new button on your phone, or funny face of a person in the background of a photo?  Or maybe it could be the depressing parts of life.  When you notice a dark personality trait in someone you thought you knew everything about or that you were ignoring your true thoughts all along because they were scary? 

On my way to China my professor taught the class an ancient proverb: “Viewing flowers from horseback”.  Basically in our travels and lives, when we rush through tasks we tend to just glimpse at all of the possibilities.  We don’t get to smell the perfume, count the colorful petals, or just watch the bees land like on our desktop backgrounds.  Crazy right?  I don’t wonder why some older people sit out and just watch the scenery. 

I read two articles about how humans think and the brain evolves, and hopefully I’ll be able to put it into my own perspective because simply ‘woah’.  The question of the first article was whether google is making us stupid and the second article describes electracy.  If I could give you a lay man’s definition, I surely would yet there’s not a chance in H, E, double hockey sticks.  Let’s see what I can do, and I’ll even use my favorite reference point.

As a generation, we don’t read many books.  I’m one of the few exceptions to that note yet we read more than any generation so far.  The wonders of internet and texting certainly stimulates our mind in different ways, yet its not a story.  When we reads book, we dive into the story.  We see through the character’s eyes and live up to months of their lives in days even.  That is the power of words that our previous centuries have discovered.  The brain is evolving in ways we have never seen to be appropriate in experiencing the minds of others.  In those stories, especially the more descript ones we get every perspective.  Isn’t that wild?  Considering we get only a select number of perspectives within our own lives? 

Electracy, from what I’ve gathered, is how certain words and actions come alive in the human mind.  A beautiful term isn’t it?  Completely wild.  If you want to take a gander at the article, check it out here: http://ulmer.networkedbook.org/the-learning-screen-introduction-electracy/ .  While I was able to go through it with a basic understand the first time, that has come through a great deal of rhetoric and philosophy classes.  If it wasn’t so late and my mind wasn’t pumping out information, I would have been in a much stickier situation. 

On the next post, I’m hopefully going to delve into the extensive social media aspects of electracy.  They should be something to look forward to!  Any thoughts on my definition or what your definitions is I’d love in comments below!

Discussion Questions:
1- Do you think the 90s and 2000s (ew I'm old) generation will lose its passion for reading?
2- Are there any particular moments when you witnessed a task come alive?

~Love Media Mike