the chains beneath our feet

alarm clock. yawn. barrage of to-do's for the day. songs from the bars last night continuing to repeat in your head.  laying aside your Xbox 360, PSP and your Wii. it used to be you'd give a kid a swiss army knife to go widdle things in the backyard when he was 10 yrs old.  now its a cell phone or his own blogspot or video games or a TV for his room.

(sigh) when's the last time a kid actually cut his own hand playing with his new knife rather than cut up some zombie in some horror fest videogame or a thug in GTA??  when's the last time a kid went running in the grass to feel the grass beneath his feet and the wind wipping against his face?  when's the last time a college kid did it?  i think the answers would be very similar given our highly tech'd out new generation of kids and college students.  

Socrates and Plato argued that writing was the decay of society because it dumbed the mind's ability to remember and therefore be able to recreate a scene for another orally.  The oral tradition of handing down heritage and eloquance were once well valued in the Roman society and in many societies for that matter.  But now, we see writing as eloquant in relation to those who play videogames or watch TV.  We see the latter as the decay of our society and its ability to think for itself.

so what are these chains that lay beneath our feet?  it's our addiction to technology--Xbox live, avatars, second-life, etc.  but again, it's not the technology that's at fault, it's our addiction to it--our overuse of it, like the overuse of an illegal drug.  

what's the summery of this arguement? just go out for a walk or run whenever you get the feeling of wanting to play videogames.