Another anti-technology rant

Our minds are the greatest gift we have and people seem to be using them less and less. I mention this because one of the girls at work has asked if she can carve a few pumpkins to put on the counter. She’s an arts student and wants to do it as a little project and a chance to show off her skills. If people like them and want to reward her, they can drop some money in a Hallowe’en bucket and we’ll donate it to a local charity. I think it’s a great idea, but when I asked her what sort of designs she had in mind, she didn’t bring out a sketch pad, she got her phone out to show me some stuff on Pinterest. Everything she wanted to do would be a copy of something done by someone else and posted online. I asked her if she fancied doing something original for us. I asked her ‘if I gave you free rein to do whatever the Hell you wanted, what would you come up with?’ and she couldn’t answer me. She literally has no ideas of her own.
And call me a boring old fart, a technophobe, a Luddite, a grumpy git or any other phrase of your choosing, but I think this is symbolic of a wider modern world problem. We’re wasting our most valuable assets by lazily turning to the internet for inspiration. 
We’ve become obsessed with seeing what other people are doing instead of concentrating on finding our own path. We’re too busy watching other peoples lives instead of learning to live our own. It’s getting worse, and it’s getting more widespread, and it’s affecting more and more people without them realising it. 
So, please, don’t go onto Pinterest to find ideas for how to decorate a pumpkin. That’s what God gave us imaginations for. 

RC 24-10-17