Pop 89: Body & Soul
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
I’m coughing like a sailor and can’t do much but read. Foolishly I read my emails. One contains this message by theologian Ilia Delio: “We live in a volatile world where catastrophic events seem to happen spontaneously and ever more frequently. All sorts of reasons are given to explain our global breakdown, but there is only one principal reason: the breakdown of thought.”
Wise thoughts but not too uplifting when you’re sick. But, what exactly is meant by “the breakdown of thought”? Does she mean we don’t know how to think? Or we don’t want to think? Or we seem incapable of thinking for ourselves, unable to tease apart truth from lies? Does she mean we have no instincts for sensing when we’re being lied to, patronized, or tricked?
Is she referring to the fact that we are being constantly told not to worry because now we have “smart” devices to think for us (as soon as we accept the so-called ‘privacy’ policy rendering up all our private information from names of friends to recent call history to photos and emails)?
Every time I see the word “smart” to describe a new gadget or system, I feel like I’m being patted on the head and basically told: Don’t worry your pretty little head about your priorities, privacy, preferences, lifestyle, perspective - we’ve got this for you. We know what’s best for you. We’ll take it from here, thanks.
Still coughing, still on the couch, I read the latest Pew Research findings on the future of the world according to “experts in technology and communications.” Seeing as technology is the new God, I take these “innovators” and “developers” with extremely myopic visions with less than a grain of salt.
“Let me guess,” I mumble, “soon all our lives will be mediated by technology, from shopping, to schooling to working to caring.” Yep, that’s about it. The actual wording goes: “People’s relationship with technology will deepen as larger segments of the population come to rely more on digital connections” for everything, including “essential social interactions.”
“Stop right there!” I growl. “I may be feverish, but I’m not delusional!” And it is nothing less than delusional to think that “digital connection” in any way resembles real, human connection. Or that there is anything about a digital platform that can even begin to touch “essential” human interaction.
The etymologist in me wants to examine a few words before they get word-jacked forever. Because, let’s face it, we’ve already squeezed the life-blood and guts, the tears and laughter, hugs and sloppy kisses out of “friend,” “chat,” and “visit.”
I recall EM Forster’s novel Howard’s End, and it’s recurring theme: “Only Connect!”. It was a call to put our energy into personal relationships, emphasizing their value above all things, including work, money, fame, etc. “The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them,” one of the novel’s characters moans. Forster would use the words “deepen” and “connect” together in a sentence to refer to human interaction, never a relationship with technology. Technology is a thing, not a person. (“Entrenched” might be a better word in that case.)
Today, according to the Pew report, to be “highly connected” means “tech-savvy”. It means staying on top of technological enhancements “in virtual and augmented reality and AI” that “allow people to live smarter, safer and more productive lives, promising to make virtual places feel much more real, in-person and authentic.”
What Delio may mean is: We might want to think for ourselves, discern what makes for a deep, connected, authentic, essential life, before we are rushed into the latest update and download. We might, as the venerable scientist and lover of ants E.O. Wilson suggests, ask ourselves the deeply philosophical questions long abandoned: “Who are we? Where are we going?” And what, I’d add, is driving this need for a technically -augmented reality when we already inhabit very real, very sensual bodies with brains capable of making a billion billion calculations a second, far faster than any supercomputer?
And as for “virtual spaces,” - why do we need to make fake spaces feel real when we still have real spaces? When we can still go for real walks in real fields and parks and woods? We can still plunge our hands into the earth and plunge our bodies into a cold lake. We can haul our boots out of the mud or up a butte, and in so doing, fill our entire being with muscular and sensual delight.
“The shift to tele-everything” the Pew research actually warns, “means there will be more people working from home and fewer forays in public…consumers will be more willing to seek out smart gadgets, apps and systems. Some individuals, cities and nation-states will become more insular and competitive as survival mode kicks in.”
Connection is a discipline, and intimacy is a practice, and they both require will. Are we willing to connect with each other, our bodies, the elements? To be real? What does it even mean to be real? We can all answer that: It means rather than getting used to spending Christmas or your birthday alone, trying to convince yourself that the family member on the screen is actually in the room with you, you travel to your brother’s town to get a bear hug from his burly, affectionate self.
It is not a human failing to feel bereft after an online gathering, it’s a human victory. Hurray for you. I salute you. I honour you for not giving over easily to the slow assimilation into a completely alienated reality, where your physical self is less optimal than a virtual self. I said this years ago, long before the pandemic, when virtual reality was the hip new thing: Don’t leave the animal body of yourself behind, it has so much to teach you, and it will not lie. Do not pit the psyche against the flesh.
Delio asks us not just to think but to be thoughtful. “Our information-driven world has reduced us to algorithms and hijacked our ability to think, to perceive what is true and good,” she says. I say: We can embody thoughtfulness, reflection and soulfulness. Before we get irremediably hacked.