Tag: FOMO

Techno-Intrusion

Religion, Society & Culture, Technology

The intrusion of technology in our lives is rapidly becoming domination. The abrogation of humanity to artificial intelligence (emphasis on “artificial”) is real and advancing rapidly.

It is alarming how much our society has become enslaved by the little screen in our hands. And I do mean enslaved. It’s no longer FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out). It’s that for some, even many, every moment of every day is monitored, organized (or disorganized), influenced or controlled by technology. It’s as if we’ve outsourced our critical thinking abilities, self-control, conduct governors, interpersonal communications, hell, our consciousness. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some have outsourced their SOULS.

I don’t need an “app” to monitor how much I sleep at night. I don’t need to be fed “relevant” advertising when I visit a website. I don’t want “free” stuff. The price of “free” is relinquishing personal data to an amorphous algorithm that creates a digital profile of me. That profile is used (and manipulated) in all sorts of ways, the vast majority of which are driven by the pecuniary interests of the technology company that conjured up, sorted and sold my profile to anyone who would pay for it.

Technology has permeated, or infected, virtually every form of human communication. People facing one another, looking into each other’s eyes, interpreting body language, noting inflection, giving and taking non-verbal cues, interacting with one another in the moment…are behaviors increasingly, frighteningly, diminishing. And since communication, whether incoming or outgoing, is what I would call a basic component of humanity, we are as a result becoming less and less human.

What matters is increasingly lost. Virtue is not even a word or concept in the social vocabulary – it’s an anachronism, out-of-place with life at the speed of text or email traffic. Home and hearth are Hallmark Channel themes. The importance of Family, of doing what’s right, of eschewing wrong, of telling the truth, of adhering to your word, of working hard for an honest day’s wage, of being kind, of self-discipline, of moderation, of humility, of courage, of what used to be common morality…all are for the most part either banned from the new social ether or are relegated to being quaint ideas from the past.

God doesn’t use an iPhone. Many who are tethered to them don’t believe in God anyway. Faith, a moral compass, yardsticks of right and wrong…all have succumbed to technology. Religion is thus also a casualty of technological so-called “progress”.

I admit that I too have been caught by the groundswell. Rather than stick my head out the door to decide what jacket or coat I’ll wear today, I quickly tap my Accuweather app to learn what the temperature is and whether it’ll become warmer or colder. Rather than pick up the phone and call my daughter to ask about some detail of the upcoming grandchild’s birthday party, I send her a text.

Some courageous (and seemingly more happy and content) members of my generation have deliberately eschewed technology. One of my oldest friends still uses a flip phone, and he leaves it on his dresser with a dead battery most of the time. The guy who installed the sprinkler system on our lawn 35 years ago and still services it today doesn’t use email. He carries a cell phone but never answers it. I leave him voicemails but he doesn’t listen to them…he just calls me back when it’s convenient for him to do so.

At first I was annoyed that I couldn’t reach people who had largely disconnected from The Grid, but now I’m starting to appreciate the benefits of lowered blood pressure and appreciation of what IS important that accompanies doing so.

Little by little I hope the pendulum swing towards increasing technological domination of our lives and away from humanity will swing back. It’s happened before in world history. I can hope it will happen again and we’ll all be the better for it.

P.S. I just realized how hypocritical I am for using an iPad to write this post and throwing THESE thoughts out into the social ether as well. Sigh…

What We Do as a Family Matters

Family, Society & Culture

Been to a restaurant lately, where a family sits, a three year old with an iPad in front of her watching some children’s program, the 12 year old, with a tortured look, focused on an iPhone screen furiously tapping away, mom and dad’s phones face-up on the table creating an effect something like holding flashlights underneath our chins?

Regrettably, this scene is ubiquitous. And we wonder why the family is breaking down.

Of all the infections eating away at our society and culture today, the fundamental changes to families is the most virile. Of course Leave it to Beaver, the Donna Read Show, Ozzie and Harriet and all the other television fare that we grew up on couldn’t exist today. It truly was a different time. But in virtually all those shows, it was a given that families were, well, families!

Contrast those shows with what we see on television today. Does anyone honestly believe that what’s happening to traditional families is good for society?

The Left thinks that scene played out in the restaurant represents “progress.”

“Mom can monitor the babysitter, Dad is instantly reachable if something happens that needs his immediate attention either at work or at the club, Sally is occupied, quiet and not running around the restaurant disturbing others,” they will argue. No conversation of any substance. No recounting of what’s going on in each other’s lives. No understanding whatsoever of what’s eating at Johnny, or what Sally’s being fed on that children’s program. Mom and Dad just want to get through dinner so they can get back home to Dancing with the Stars and football.

Is it just me or does anyone else see how sick this is? Here’s a family, ostensibly sharing time together, except they’re not!

What happened to a parent’s responsibility to impart their values to their children? What ARE their values, and what IS being passed down? We know the answers, but should it be this way?

Cut scene. A family is gathered around a dinner table on a Sunday evening. No phones or tablets present, some peaceful music plays in the background. The cacophony and mayhem that prevailed two minutes earlier as each family member fulfilled their pre-dinner chores has given way to a more subdued tone as each takes his or her place at the table.

In some households, grace is said. In others, there’s a pause to raise a glass and give thanks that everyone could be together. In still others there’s simply quiet as napkins are taken off the table and placed on laps, everyone waiting for a signal from mom and dad to begin digging in.

As the meal progresses everyone is asked to report on what has transpired in their lives since they were last gathered like this. Even the monosyllabic teenagers are goaded into uttering a few grunts about what’s going on with their friends and at school. You get the picture.

Which scene is better for society? If you think the former, you’re probably a social justice warrior hell bent on “fundamentally transforming America.” If you think the latter, you’re probably nostalgic for a kinder and gentler time, one where the family was the most important unit of a civilized society, where families had pride in their name, and in their school, and in their community, and in their state, and in their country.

Of course these kinds of families still exist. The problem is that they’re decreasingly prevalent. The norm keeps moving towards the dysfunctional, to the “progressive”, down the slippery slope to necrosis.

How about we spend time with our families around picnic tables, playing soccer or stick ball in the park, fishing together at the local pond. How about moms and dads teaching their children manners, and helping them with their school projects, and paying attention to what they’re being taught and correcting misinformation. And teaching them the difference between right and wrong. And establishing and enforcing rules of behavior, and conduct, and respect.

And how about just having fun together. It’s ok to have a movie night with popcorn and soda, watching Frozen for the umpteenth time, but let’s also find examples of traditional goodness, and greatness to expose ourselves to.

We are what we do. Bury our faces in technology, abrogate our responsibility for raising our families to others and that’s who we are. Gather and recount acts of bravery, or sacrifice, or service, or touching others’ lives in a positive way, supporting one another at little league games, or at school plays, or attending a July 4th celebration together, and that’s who we are.

How we spend time together as families matters.

The Mall Rat Syndrome

Family, Society & Culture

We’ve all seen them, a group of fluorescent-haired, usually disheveled, radio-antenna-adorned teenagers standing around the entrance to a shopping mall, sometimes huddled and quietly mumbling to each other, sometimes overtly eyeing and loudly denigrating the more normal looking patrons going in and out of the wide doors.

But that was then. This is now.

There’s a more contemporary version of this gathering of “mall-rats”, these to-be-pitied, “other-directed” underachievers desperate for attention and each others’ approval because they can’t get it from individual accomplishments. It exists online, in social media.

Misery does indeed love company. Here, behind a wall of anonymity, the same teenagers band together to cast aspersions on, or worse, mount character assassination campaigns against others whom they secretly envy, or abhor, usually due to the praise heaped upon them for their successes or simply because, they’re what we’d call “normal”.

And here, in social media, the mall rats are joined by supposed adults, who carry on in the same way.

Except they’re not adults. Regrettably, our society is filled with people who chronologically should be adults, but who exhibit all the dysfunctional behavior, or worse, of the mall rats. Raised in an “everyone gets a trophy for showing up” society, where “just do it” (with impunity) is the norm, far too many adults today behave like children. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s evidence that there are some children today who, frankly, behave increasingly like adults, but that phenomenon is still rare and not always healthy. That’s a topic for a different discussion.

Social media was supposed to increase social adhesion, broaden relationships, improve community. Instead, it’s brought isolation, depression, social paraplegia and a veritable explosion of mall rats fearful of missing out (FOMO), all seeking attention and sharing their misery. It’s given a megaphone to those who in other times might have been more sheepish but who can now lash out and shout their frustrations with impunity. And it has amplified the lemming effect as demagogues, both adolescent and adult, lead their followers over the edge of the cliff.

One of my sons, who frequently exhibits far more wisdom at his age than I certainly ever did, recently stated what’s going on quite succinctly: “We have rewired the human condition to subsist on personal validation through social media channels.”

And that has given the mall rats undue power and influence.

To be fair, not all of our generation’s behavior is as bad as that of mall rats. But in small ways the diminution of standards and morals continues to eat away at our societal fabric. For example, I sat at a restaurant just last night and couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between two parents and their college-age son. The topic was adult enough…the son was describing the content of the exams he had recently completed. But the number of “likes” that punctuated each sentence, or more like half-sentences, was nauseating. The parents were, appallingly, every bit as inarticulate as the son, despite between fashionably dressed and ostensibly well-educated and well-to-do.

How are we ever going to remain a light shining on a hill if our people can’t string two grammatically correct sentences together? Yes, yes, I know. This problem exists at the highest levels of our culture and society and in our most visible politics.

But it’s Leftist progressivism, infecting as it has our discourse and society like some noxious gas or metastasized cancer that has given license to adult mall-rat behavior. It’s way past time for adults to start behaving like adults and stop acting like mall rats, or tolerating mall rats for that matter. It’s way past time for parents to start acting like parents, instead of trying to be their children’s best friends. We certainly know better. We just need to grow up.

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