Thursday, August 28, 2014

absurdi-TEA

And I set my mind to know wisdom and.....; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain. (Ecclesiastes 1:17-18, NASB)
Has pursuit of knowledge become somewhat of an all consuming past-time? Is the immediacy "to know" an addiction? Did such a pursuit change Google from a proper noun search engine company's name to a verb?
Google, as a verb, is known by every one from toddlers to seniors. Will "Just google it." be recorded in a baby book as a child's first sentence?


In Kipling's Jungle Book, "The motto of all the mongoose family is “Run and find out,” and Rikki-Tikki was a true mongoose." Curious to find out. 
Much like that mogoose mantra, we too seem like a member of said family. We all "run to find out!" We just call it googling.
Vexation and pain can be by-products of too much knowledge. Maybe, it's because amassing knowledge, just for the sake of more knowledge, isn't the answer to one's problems. The more we know isn't a cure-all---it's what we do with what we know that counts. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Definitely there are many "new-fangled" tech-oriented potential absurdities in life---from googling and tweets to selfies and instagrams. In an age of BYOD (bring your own device) it's all about immediacy and it seems highly addictive. But let's forgo those cuppas absurdi-TEAs and serve something more relational.
A cuppa humili-TEA, anyone.