I bumped into this interesting writer online last night.
So much of what he wrote has already taken place inside my head, where I think a lot about the reality shaping up around us.
One time I sat on a bus from Denver to Aspen and watched the young woman across the aisle take, I’m guessing, 200 photos of herself. Probably more.
One time I was on a plane out of Houston, mid-day, surrounded in all the seats nearby by what looked like a team. Like a sports team from a college. I had cheaped-out and settled for an aisle seat. I hate the aisle seat because I love looking out the window on airplanes. The magic of the tiny world below, the mountains if you’re flying over the Rockies! Once I flew out of Fairbanks, Alaska at night and got to see the Northern Lights all around the plane! I still get a thrill when a plane leaves the ground and becomes airborn.
Anyway, all these sports kids pulled the window shades down and sat in darkness, looking at their phones. It made me feel sad.
Once I boarded a plane and the woman sitting in the first row was breastfeeding her baby while holding a phone over the baby so the baby could scroll while eating.
But I tell you, folks, it’s not an age thing. Recently I visited a friend who is 84 years old and he kept his phone in his hand the entire time and whenever it made a sound, a notification, he responded to it. Even while we were sitting at the table having lunch.
It’s so funny that no one sees it for what it is: addiction. Gioia calls it: look at what happens to a person when they’re separated from their phone for any length of time. The panic that sets in.
I did an experiment on myself several years ago. I stopped using an iPhone for six months. I think it was more annoying to other people than it was problematic for me.
I found it to be incredibly freeing. Driving became fun again. Do you have any idea how much stuff happening all around you you miss by constantly looking at a screen?
Or grabbing a phone to take a picture of the thing happening.
Are people at concerts actually at the concert if they’re videoing the whole thing?
Because, after all, when was the last time (ever?) that you actually needed your phone in an emergency? When was the last time you got an urgent message?
I know, right? Ninety-five percent of what we do on our phones is crap. Easily. Games, meaningless text banter (which so often goes off the rails, lacking the nuances of actual human interaction). We check all kinds of things: the weather, stocks, all the socials. It’s like eating McDonald’s all day every day, just absolute junk food for the brain.
And the soul.
But you never know where “progress” is heading, so who am I to question? Does it matter if we lose parts of ourselves? The kids don’t seem to care. Humanity is always reaching toward something new and different, some of it good, some of it not good. I’ve found that preaching against it is a waste of breath, it’s going to be what it will be.
Speaking of, I am a pastor and I LOVE using AI to help me write a sermon. I find it to be fun, interactive in an interesting, conversational way, and a terrific time saver.
Here’s something I’ve noticed about the arts of which Gioia speaks: they have never been accessible to the masses. I live in Vermont and the other day I started thinking about going to NYC to see an opera at the Met. I’ve done this a couple of times and I love the experience to death. It is a massively awesome thing to see those people perform opera live in that theater. It is also incredibly expensive.
Tickets to a show in the way back of Lincoln Center cost $250 each.
Train tickets to NY from Albany: $120 round trip. One night in a hotel near Lincoln Center: about $800. Add food and parking in Albany and what you have, for two people, is an opera experience that costs close to $2000.
But even if you found other ways to get to and from NYC, the price of tickets alone mean that only the wealthy get to experience the Metropolitan Opera.
The last time I was in NYC we went to the Museum of Modern Art the day after we saw an opera. Cost of admission for two: $60.
Accessing art isn’t cheap.
I also noticed that the audiences in both places were … wait for it … mostly white.
At MoMA almost everyone “guarding” the art had dark skin.
What good is art, I ask you, if it’s only available to the few privileged who can afford to see it?
I’m not suggesting for one minute that TikTok is a better way, I’m just quietly suggesting that there was never really a time when the arts or entertainment were an egalitarian enterprise. I love Beyoncé’s new album, I would LOVE to see her perform live, but I know for sure that’s not gonna happen. Heck, we went to see Bonnie Raitt last year. Bonnie is 74 years old. She’s been performing live for a thousand years now. Tickets in the nosebleed section were $150 each.
The world is a funny, funny place. Maybe the youth was simply fed up with the cost and hassle of admission to everything and so was born all the platforms they enjoy using. Who are we to judge?
OK, maybe our brains are being re-wired, but hasn’t that been going on since swamp sludge morphed into people?
The thing is, it’s not really either/or. Just because the world is changing rapidly and in startling ways doesn’t mean we can’t individually tend to the matters of our own soul, our own development. It just gets more challenging, maybe, which, hey, cool!
And does it really actually come as some great surprise that rich people will find ways to get richer? People in power have used ways to anesthetize the masses since … forever. It’s just that today it’s doled out in terrific packaging with a short battery life.
I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but old people have to stop worrying about a future we’re not going to be in. Who is to blame, after all? Aren’t we the parents who put the Game Boys and Play Stations and cell phones in our kids’ precious little hands in the first place?
When I was a teacher in 1993 and Apple was working hard to get computers into classrooms everyone thought is was awesome and cool. Everyone loved this!
If I recall correctly no one was asking the most basic questions like do kids really need rabbits to dance every time they get a math equation correct?
There was no critical thinking around this, people were giddy about this crazy new invention.
We welcomed the future with open arms and willing fingers. We believed then that kids wouldn’t get into a good college if they weren’t using computers when they were in third grade. It was us. We did this. As parents we just wanted a few moments of quiet to ourselves, as teachers we believed that we had no choice but to embrace the future.
Each of us has our own reality and it always comes served up with a side of the latest invention, this is life on Planet Earth. It’s up to us to decide where to go with it, what to do with it. Each one of us, most of us anyway, have the most magical gift of all: free will. What you do with yours is your business. If scrolling on your phone brings you joy, by all means, scroll away. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it. Or you can just wait until the AMA declares scrolling a disease and Big Pharma invents ten different pills to make you quit. Your choice, always.
But maybe, every once in a while, as our moms always said: Go outside and play with your friends!
Beanie and Gretta and their Maine friends. 🌈💗
So true, so true, so...obvious, and yet I loved reading this. I'm going outside now to play.