So you want something simple?

Today, my dad and I took a small trip over to ABT to pick up a broken receiver of ours. Of course, my dad couldn't just leave after that. He just had to look at some tvs for my grandma's new apartment. We had a customer service man guide us through the aisles of televisions while my dad explained the situation. The moment my father said that it was for his mom, the man helping us replied, "So you want something simple?"

Immediately, little Mrs. Logan and Mr. Lawler appeared on my shoulders filling my head with questions influenced by Emerson. Technology today has been said to be improved, which it certainly has, and one thing that it has been trying to maintain is simplicity. What if, in reply to the TV guy's question, my dad just replied, "No, I want something really complicated"? It seems silly to think that anyone would respond that way (my dad didn't, by the way), which I think represents human nature's need for simplicity.

In today's top notch technology world, we still want things that are easy to navigate. To many teenagers, having an iPod, cell phone and lap top makes life more simple. They are typically easy to use, portable, and connects us with anything at any time. So would Emerson be proud?

Throughout the centuries, morals change, and certainly, our view on the environment and nature has skewed from our ancestors. To Emerson and Thoreau, nature was equal to simplicity. Today, we feel a stronger need to be in urban affairs with well paying jobs to get by, and many people have summer homes in nature to escape to that simple life. However, while not on vacation, the technology we have represents our need for easy, simple things that wont get us all riled up. Ipods, cell phones and lap tops display our desire for materialism, but they also show that we need simplicity or else we would do without the technology.

I am sure that Emerson and Thoreau are not proud of our conformist society that relies on technology, but even when looking at technology, there is no denying that humans are always searching for simplicity Emerson and Thoreau discuss.