A Response from Silence

I believe Joe Miller has done an excellent job showing a disease in American culture. Indeed, there isn’t much for me to add. However, I will quickly extend a related examination of our paradoxical human nature. That is, a look at our original sin and our original blessing. But first, a quick look at the culture.

Consumerism takes many shapes and forms. The need to have individual technology is rooted in the need to always be entertained. The need to be entertained is rooted in a feeling of lack. As so many mystics in many traditions have posited, we try to use things and ideas to fill a God-sized hole, but in the end the only way to fill this hole is with God. We won’t be whole until we fill that hole with God. God doesn’t make us with this need for him because he is a needy child who can’t dream of having people be independent of himself. Rather, all love comes from God and an all loving being who designs creatures for love can’t give them this love apart from himself.

Original sin is our inability to automatically feel, remember, and know this love. The job of religion, and spiritual practices is to help remind people of the presence of God in their lives which is always there! This is our original blessing—God’s desire to live in communion and harmony with his creation—is what Richard Rohr has tried to share.

Rohr has noted that Meister Eckhart (And I would add the Jesuit’s founder St. Ignatius) is the mystic for those who are busy. It is alright to have a busy life with busy technology. The point is that technology should act as a tool for one to help share love to a world which needs to be reminded of its special place in God’s present in-breaking kingdom. 

Western Culture: What We've Lost

"Hi, there! Welcome to America!

Okay, the first thing you're going to need is a smartphone. It's actually rather necessary, most would rather be late to an appointment then leave without it.

Here you can use it to access the Internet. Here is how you can download games for if you're bored. If games aren't your thing, you can also download books. News, blogs, videos, pictures, information - it's all here at the touch of your finger.

What's that you said? Does it have a phone? Yes, but that's only about one-thirtieth of its capacity. I'd learn how to text first, here's how you do that.

Please also consider our television. Most are Internet-based nowadays. Why's that, you ask? Well, because cable is boring and offers little choices, and satellite, while offering more choice, still only lets you watch shows as they come out. If you MUST have satellite, you need to get a box-thing that lets you record. That way you have some limited ability to watch what you want whenever you want as many times as you want! What? Why do we do this? Well, because our schedules are complicated, and you can't expect what you want and what you need to do to align very much. So rather than go without we created workarounds. Talk about ingenious, am I right?

Since we're talking about TV, here's our news. You can watch news channels, read news articles online, or do both. The purpose is to be as educated as possible about what's going on around the world, to try and be more socially aware. I find I agree most with Paul Bresche, a blogger with with this network, and I don't really read much else. But I have some friends who only watch this channel on TV, but that's because they're liberals don'tcha know. Huh? Why is there so much? So much what? News? Well, there's a lot happening! And more importantly, lots of people have a lot of opinions about it all!

Now, as you go about your day, there will be times where you won't be around your TV or your phone might be dead. Not to worry, we've thought of that too! There are magazines for your viewing pleasure when you're stuck in lines, countless radio stations if you have satellite radio, and practically unlimited amounts of music and podcasts for free. Even our gas pumps are starting to have TV's on them! Isn't that great? I'm like, 'why didn't we think of that sooner,' you know?

We pride ourselves on being the most informed, most connected, most aware culture out there. This must be so much better than whatever you're coming from, right? Ugh, I went overseas this one time, and I couldn't believe how boring it was. Sure we did cool stuff and it was pretty and all, but after a while I really missed my American TV and radio. And there was so much less wifi, I thought I would die. Thankfully I had my friends to text, they felt really sorry for me.

Anyway, I'm rambling. All that should get you started, but the best part is that there's so much more! New gizmos are being invented all the time, I'm a member of at least ten social networks, there are always articles with new ideas and ways of doing things, and I've laid out my dream life on Pinterest. Welcome home!"

While a tad over-the-top, does all of that not ring somewhat true? Of course it does. Taking out the sarcasm and satire, I basically only described a few facets of Western culture.

Western culture is wonderful. So much good has been born of it. If you need convincing of that, take a walk through any modern city. The skyscrapers, business models, order, technology - all that and more possesses strong roots in Western culture.

But it's not perfect. Our culture is very sick. Among other diseases, we are strongly afflicted with what Larry Dossey calls "time-sickness," an obsessive belief that "time is getting away, there isn't enough of it, and you must pedal faster and faster to keep up." Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, puts it this way: "We are moving from a world in which the big eat the small to one in which the fast eat the slow."

This mindset, while beneficial in its own way, has deprived us of some very important ideas that are necessary if we are to have a healthy, successful life (depending on your definition of a "healthy, successful life"). We've lost appreciation for things like slowing down, deep relationship, and especially silence.

I trust this isn't the first time you've heard this. I also trust that by now you're starting to consider the reality of it. The cogs are turning, the metaphorical ball that does the rolling is indeed rolling somewhere.

What does this mean for you? I don't know. I'm 21, I just graduated, I'm just as (if not more) saturated in the unhealthy aspects of our culture as you. I'm only in the middle of realizing all this. I'm very thankful for the community that this blog is, and I imagine their responses with be elaborations, taking some of these ideas and implications further. I'm no scientist or academic, I don't have any book or theories. I just am in the middle of all this, and all I can hope is that the questions have been planted, and that you will water them inside yourself. When they bloom, don't just ignore them. When you find yourself asking "Why do I use my phone so much?", take the time to consider it. Don't just shove it down. This is important.

On Technology, Culture, and Faith: The Hollywood Fix

We exited the theater, the light painfully pushing past our squinted eyelids while the rush of reentering reality gives us pause.

We reflect on the experience, laughing at its jokes, marveling at its intricacies, taking a poker to its shortcomings so we know we are still the dominant one.

We pull away, awash in conversation; I, however, silent.

My surroundings full of activity and engagement, I feel an inexplicable solitude. I feel lack.

I self-check, examining the paths of thought and tide of emotions I've encountered recently to gather evidence to the way I feel.

Nothing. Logic stat-

I respond to a question. Life around me continues.

Logic states I start at my last exposure and work backwards, searching for a source.

Answer. Question. Conversation around me. Car ride. Leaving theater. Movie.

Movie.

I wish I was that hero, the very likeness of goodness, charging headfirst into the hordes of evil and what is sure to be my doom.

I wish I was that man, the man who ran barefoot through hell and swam through high water for the woman he loves.

I wish I were able to answer the beckoning of distant lands and strange experiences, returning one day a mystery and legend.

I wish it were me in that movie. Experiencing those things.

I briefly examine my life, fitting it into scripts, plot, lighting cues, and camera angles, and I'm struck at its unavoidable boringness.

I still feel lack, the solitude of an empty heart. Ah well, those things only happen in movies.

I merge into the conversation around me like the car we share onto the interstate home. We don't speak of it, but we all feel the same.

The conversation turns to the next promising blockbuster, and our blood pressure spikes like that of an addict when he sees his drug of choice.

Awash in conversation, I forget my lack, though I only manage to cover it's emptiness with rotting boards destined to break again.

We reflect on the experience, laughing at its jokes, marveling at its intricacies, taking a poker to its shortcomings so we know we are still the dominant one.
                                    --------------------

I'm going to be straight with you. Try as I might (and believe me, I did), I cannot write anything to convince you to drop Netflix, sell your TV, or stop watching movies so much. The primary reason being that there's nothing inherently wrong with any of those things, the second reason being I am not that kind of writer. 

I am not able to write about just anything. My passions and experiences are the flesh and bones of my scribbles, opinions may as well be water in my scribbling engine. All that said, I can only tell you of my experiences.

As I'm sure you may have guessed, the whatever-that-is in the italics above is a reflection of myself. I was the guy who left movies wishing he were the protagonist. I found myself daydreaming about the other worlds presented in television shows, envisioning how tales of my adventures would weave into its history.

I actually grew up without a television. We watched DVD's from blockbuster or the library on our computer, but we never had any kind of satellite or cable service. I always found myself being jealous of the kids who did, those able to sit in front of that screen watching the coolest stuff for hours on end.

When I got to college and discovered Neflix, it was like a horse had just stumbled into a sugar factory. I dove, and I dove hard. BBC's Sherlock lasted all of a few days, if that tells you anything. Show after show, movie after movie, I was hooked deep. 

I started wondering if this was healthy, but quickly realized everyone around me had normalized this obsession, calling it "binge-watching" (which is odd since any other action with "binge" before it is considered wildly unhealthy). I justified my actions by claiming that I loved stories. Which, to an extent, is true. But it was also an excuse.

A few months passed before I started feeling strange. Sure, I had gone through a rough breakup, classes were tougher than ever, and I suddenly had to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up (graduation) - but it was more than that. Deep down I was really, really unhappy with my life.

I was doing two things: comparing my life to what I was seeing on the screen and medicating the resulting pain by watching the screen more. I was forfeiting relationships, school work, and social activities because I didn't want to make the hard decision to deal with my pain and choose interaction over isolation. Looking back now, I see that I honestly wasn't watching TV any more than your average family, and that really scares me.

During that time I only saw my life for what it wasn't. It wasn't some grand adventure across new lands. It wasn't some bizarrely intricate dramatic-yet-cheesy plan to get some girl. It wasn't heroic even in the least. Compared to what I was seeing, I was incredibly boring.

It took some time, but this has passed for me (praise Jesus). Why did you read all that? Well, hopefully we can talk about it a little and perhaps you might gain some insight into your practices and lifestyle involving the tele.

Hollywood is a business, guys, and like any business its goal is to make money. You're the user group, you're the one it needs to keep selling product to, and it does that by hooking you so you will keep coming back. 

Hollywood's entire business platform is this simple statement: reality is boring. If that weren't true, any market for video entertainment would collapse instantly. Did you know that even the truest movies are at least 90% embellishment? Think about it - if you were watching those events play out exactly how they probably did, would you have paid money to see it? Of course not, it would mostly be incredibly boring!

We're not being sold movies and TV shows. We're being sold experiences. Or, more accurately, experiences we won't have because we think we can't. Are traveling to Iceland and seeing a few shots of it in a movie even slightly comparable? Then why do we sit around on couches wondering what far-off lands look like when we catch glimpses of them on screens?

Is pursuing and fighting for someones affection the same as watching a mushy-yet-clever movie? Is the satisfaction of getting involved in something bigger than yourself equivalent to seeing someone else do it on TV?

I realize you're reading this and thinking, "That's nice and probably true, but I'm fine. I'm not addicted or anything, watching stuff isn't bad." Like I said earlier, I can't write anything to convince you otherwise. I see movies and TV like I see alcohol - only damaging when you use it to be. What I'm starting to think, though, is that our culture has accepted as normal what is actually damaging.

I see a lot of families spending hours watching television, yet starving for minutes of interaction and daily investment in each other's lives. I see (and have been a part of) couples who slowly start to spend most of their time together watching movies and television rather than experiencing new things, making memories, or even getting to know each other better. I see a deep relationship famine in our culture, and a very cost-effective and doable solution is to drop the TV and movies.

I will leave you with this. Go out and experience stuff. Don't let TV or movies be a drug-like adventure fix for you the way it was for me. Yes, "adventure is out there," but you can't have experiences you don't choose to have. Choose relationships. Choose interaction. Choose the unknown, the unsafe. It doesn't have to be huge. Start with small, unexpected decisions. It'll grow from there.

Can you live without TV or movies? I really think so. Actually, I think you'll experience an unexpected amount of life and fulfillment without them.

"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they're doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out... There are so many adventures that you miss because you are waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go" - XKCD

A Series On Technology, Culture, and Faith - Introduction

Hi. My name’s Joe. I’m an addict, and it’s been 10 minutes since my last fix.

“True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature. Today’s media do enable us to communicate and to share our knowledge and affections. Yet at times they also shield us from direct contact with the pain, the fears and the joys of others and the complexity of their personal experiences.” – Pope Francis in his Encyclical, Laudato si’

“Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. We cannot just see it as an accident, or as something unnecessary. But unless we learn how to live there, go there, abide in this different phenomenon, the rest of things – words, events, relationships, identities – all become rather superficial, without depth or context. They lose meaning. All we search for is a life of more events, more situations which have to increasingly contain even higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color, to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence.” – Richard Rohr in Silent Compassion

“Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms” – Motto of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair

If you’ve read the passages above, I assume you’ve gathered what we’re talking about by now. I know you’ve been through all this before. Culture sucks, technology is evil, et cetera, et cetera. You’ve seen the Facebook posts questioning the role of social media in our lives. You’ve seen the YouTube videos telling you to put down your phone and talk to people. You’ve seen the articles and blog posts talking about our culture and its need for constant stimulation. We’ve all been there done that. Maybe you did wind up putting your phone in your pocket. Perhaps you took that social media fast your friends were all doing. You may have even left your business or place of residence to talk an unexpected walk, pleasantly invigorated by the world around you. “Man, this is good,” you think.

Your phone rings. You get a text. You have an appointment. You walk back to work. Your fast ends. Whatever the reason, you’re back in. To be fair, you’ve probably changed something. For a while, I bet you don’t spend nearly as much time on Facebook or Twitter. Netflix might not see your face for a week or two, and you may even go as far as only using your phone as the ancient contraption it’s named after. This is all well and good, but has anything really changed? Has your heart changed at all? What about your thinking on technology (and I mean what you really think, not the kind that you tell your friends about and forget in a week)? Did you really get a glimpse of what a life without technological stimulation was like? If we’re being honest, probably not. In this day and age, it’d be nearly impossible. But as good old Walt Disney said, “it’s kinda fun to do the impossible.”

So let me tell you what this isn't going to look like. I’m not going to try and guilt trip you. I won’t call you names, make judgments about you, or anything else of that matter. I’m not going to talk to you like I have answers, because I don’t. I’m not going to throw science at you to try and impress or overwhelm you, although small amounts of science might be involved from time to time. I’m also not going to bury you in quotes (my apologies for above), philosophies, or theological ideas nobody really cares about. I want this to be helpful. I hope there can be change. I am going to ask questions that need to be asked, trying to get you to think about what you’re doing. I want to find and address the source, not the symptoms. I want this to be accessible, readable, enjoyable, and maybe even a little edible.

Because I’m nobody special. I don’t have any special right or paper saying I get to say this stuff to you. I’m just as immersed in this culture as you are, and perhaps even more. I check social media forty to fifty times a day, more when I post or share something. I run to my phone when there’s a lull in conversation or the passing of time. I run to my phone even faster when I’m uncomfortable or stressed. My friends have had to hold near-interventions to get me to get off my phone and engage with them. I stare at my phone for an hour in bed before I sleep and I have no idea why. Technology is my crutch I use to avoid dealing with small problems. Technological stimulation is my drug, too.

Hi. My name is Joe. I’m an addict, and it’s been 0 minutes since my last fix.