LIFE WITH A CAPITAL ‘L’, Chapter One, Section Five

ONE POSSIBLE ANSWER

Being real in the modern era requires living in but against technology. Saying that, I acknowledge the influence of French thinker, Jacques Ellul. In the small book, Perspectives on Our Age ,he shows that technology is more than a phenomenon; it is a point of view. The undergirding of this strong assertion is this? Technology, he says, suppresses the subject. Right. That is, people are subjects. Things created by technology are objects. Imagine the surprise then, when we realize that objects meant to free us from dreaded or difficult tasks have, in fact, become the merciless managers of people and their purposes. 

 

For example, I once attempted in a lecture to clarify a point about technology’s authority over us. I pointed to the lavaliere microphone I wore and said, 

            It does not matter who turns on a tape recorder. The subject of the task is inconsequential. It can be a child, a man, woman, an animal. The subject can be cruel or kind, tall or short. This is a technological moment. Not “who” but “that” it is done matters—and that it be done in accordance with the demands of technology.

 

Only then did I notice my failure to turn on the microphone when I began the lecture. The point was clear. The object suppresses the subject, and in this case, much of the subject’s lecture.

 

You (subject) may care that a dog is struck down on a crowded highway, but your concern is secondary. The hurling vehicle (object) that saves you time and stretches your boundaries, is primary. For good reasons, tons of metal moving you and many others to efficient ends cannot be subordinated to sudden feelings of sorrow or concern. The demands of the object rule the feelings of the subject. The object isthe subject I suppose we can say.

 

Unlike God or fellow human beings, technology requires nothing from the inside of us, from character. It demands only external disciples—read the darned manual, learn how to push the right sequence of buttons, turn on the tape recorder before the lecture. If we are not careful, we run the risk of becoming like technology: efficient and impersonal. 

 

My husband just called from upstairs, “Look out at the sky!”

“I see it,” I yelled back. I work in front of a window, after all. But that was not good enough for him. I am instructed to get up, go outside, and look high in the darkening sky (mumble, mumble, he is always full of good ideas while I am trying to work).

 

Ah! The reward of cooperation! A stubborn wind shoves heavy, mottled clouds through the sky. The layer is low and looks every bit like the gray and black-splotched coat of a seal. I have neverseen clouds like this before. They are beautiful. Unlike my computer screen, also splotched with markings, technological markings, this touch of setting delivered a surge of joy. A split second of linger, a soaring spirit. 

 

Technology is dumb to surges of joy. Computers and left turn arrows do not care who approaches; they do not care whether a machine’s user has integrity. Do I? Do you? We all benefit from technology, but we must take care not to indiscriminately applaud it. It saves us time, and it relieves us of physical fatigue. But then it delivers us to mental and nervous fatigue. We moderns have the grand distinction of being stressed off the charts and of possessing the malaise—anxiety: fear with reference to nothing. Don’t applaud. Be wise and recognize that the age of technology is an age of self-doubt.

 

I am convinced that our generation is not nearly as self-indulgent as appearances suggest. Rather, we actively purchase and long to possess because we are sinking in self-doubt. What gives us value now, we who have abandoned time-honed human traditions and most physical labor? How do we sense worth, we who separate from generational homesteads and habits and need switches and cables to survive? Why with all our advanced products do people feel less safe, less satisfied? 

 

Do not fret, says Advertising, today’s handmaiden of technology. Are you lonely, sick, sexually dull, weary, overworked, unnoticed, unhappy, out of step? No reason to be. Consume, possess, purchase, gather gadgets, and the void you feel will be filled. In other words, let objects occupy you. See how well thingsfill voids, rule your time and mind. Every day there is a new model, a better distraction. Purchase, and you will feel good. How vulnerable we needy people are to the tinny voice of technology.

Technology boasts that we are freed from the rules of nature. How antiquated they were! We rarely notice great storms. We can watch television while they rage. We are seldom forced to rescue things from them, or to rest during them. We work at machines right through them, inside object-laden, storm-resistant buildings. We do not yield to sleep and solitude because of darkness; we turn on the lights and stay up around the clock. We even fight our wars in what once was figuratively called the dead of night.

 

We have technologically blighted the stars with our artificial light and canceled the sky’s blue with the technology’s orange haze. We are no longer confined to a village. We travel around the world, euphorically suffering time zones and an aircraft’s stale, recirculating air, seeing everything and knowing no place in particular, We do not have to die of disease; we now live miserably long in its company, beating it through technology that is bankrupting us.

 

On the lighter side perhaps, people of prosperous nations eat oranges year round, for technology has whipped the power of seasons. Of course, we no longer savor the smell of the peel, or pat the rare zest on our wrists. We do not appreciatively inspect the beautiful segments, or eat them slowly. Why should we? What is there to discover? Good question.

 

What is there to discover? Ourselves: who we have become or what we have ceased to be in this technological world. We must live in it, but to a character-saving extent, we had better learn to live against it. By description, technology is artificial. It is wonderful, but it is artificial and can encourage us to be as well. 

 

We may linger to discover ourselves on may levels, but this one is primary. We must pause where our sense of self meets the objects of our modern world. To be real means to be freed from the lie that a satisfied life depends upon appearances, possessions, and purchase power. The difference between the manufactured appearance of a raspberry and a real raspberry makes me highly in favor of realities. A noble character is an internal reality not an external appearance. Its formation does not require things; it does not rise from them. It does require commitment. 

 

CONCLUSION

Most people have heard the story about Jesus walking on water. The day it happened, in some deserted site near the Sea of Galilee, thousands of the curious and faithful had come to see him and hear him.  They had mixed motives and broken bodies, and he had power. He healed them, fed them, taught them. He gave himself, locally.

 

Then, having sent his disciples rowing toward home, he managed somehow to “dismiss the crowd” and climbed a mountain for some private time of prayer. 

“When evening came (he was a serious pray-er), still standing on the hillside, he noticed the boat bearing his friends being battered by high waves. The disciples strained at the oars against an adverse wind, says Matthew’s gospel. So be it. Jesus let them struggle till early morning when he walked toward them on the water, and took care of the problem. That is the story in a nutshell. What is not in the nutshell is the remarkable addendum supplied by the gospel of Mark. 

“He intended to pass them by.”

 

What?

 

For hours Jesus kept an eye on those guys fighting mean winds, stalled on the sea. Apparently he trusted their survival skills; they were fishermen, after all. In fact, he planned to pay no attention to them but to pass them by. 

 

Every writer has to cut something, but how Mark does tease our curiosity by his brevity. Whywas Jesus intending to “pass them by?” Where was he going? What did he plan to do? What could be more important than the situation in front of him?

 

I have no authoritative answer, but I know this: in the midst of his intentions, contrary to set plans, Jesus lingered. He allowed himself to be distracted. Rarely will lingering seem to fit our schedules or intentions. Lingering results from paying attention to setting, to people, and to ourselves. Beneficial lingering may require explanation, but it never calls for an apology. It is a must for real people. It is a pause, whether joyous or painful, by which we are always blessed. 

CHAPTER TWO, "LISTENING" COMING UP

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