{"id":11464,"date":"2014-09-18T12:12:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T16:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=11464"},"modified":"2014-09-18T12:12:59","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T16:12:59","slug":"is-the-internet-making-us-stupid-or-just-shallow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/is-the-internet-making-us-stupid-or-just-shallow\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Internet making us stupid? Or just shallow?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIn my never-ending search for some bit of knowledge one day,<\/strong> during a mix-and-match of search engine terms while looking for classical writers’ views on death and dying, I stumbled onto what might have been an off-kilter New Age site, OM Times<\/a>, or more likely, a parody of the genre. On the page titled “8 Things You Didn\u2019t Know About Death,” I read,<\/p>\n

“… light rays have qualities like wisdom, kindness, compassion and intelligence. This light makes visible what is invisible on earth, the Divine nature of all things….”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Loud guffaws broke the cool silence of the house and startled the cats sleeping on the dining room table nearby. Light rays have wisdom? Intelligence? I almost snorted tea through my nose I laughed so hard. It had<\/em> to be a parody.<\/p>\n

Codswallop almost always makes me laugh. At first. Then, as I perused the site more, I got worried at how much of it there was. A lot of effort put into a parody, it seemed. Do people actually<\/em> believe this stuff? Or are all the New Age websites really satirical, like the Onion, making fun of popular\u00a0beliefs, superstitions and fears?<\/p>\n

Surely some of them must be poking us in the metaphorical ribs with a wink and a nudge. It’s hard to believe they’re serious\u00a0when you check the other stories on this site. With articles headlined by lines like:<\/p>\n