Personal Development, Religion, and Ethics
 
 

Why Worry?
What's the problem here?  After all, improved efficiency, free flows, greater speed are Good_Things, right?

The issue is that a subtle shift has occurred.  Rather than simply being hypothetical imperatives, the 7 habits of highly computerized people become categorical in nature.

That is, as they are internalized, they take on the character of ends in themselves.  They force us to ask the question, "Am I living according to my highest goal?"

Moreover, they involve a fundamental reorientation of one's whole mode of being toward the networked economy.

        As Himanen notes, the 7 habits take on the character of a secular religion or at the very least, a self-contained ethical system:

Thus, all the comparisons with monasticism...in the face of external complexity, one comes to seek an internal simplicity.  A single-mindedness of purpose that occludes other possible ways of being in the world.

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