Stand still in a shopping mall for a few minutes and observe the passers by. What you are likely to see are people somehow tethered to the invisible: people talking on cellphones, texting, thumbing BlackBerrys, tapping iPhones, or listening to iPods. They are oblivious to their environment and the people around them. They have found the perfect excuse to do as they were taught as children, to avoid strangers.
But it isn’t just strangers that they avoid. You can find small groups of people where each one is talking or texting someone else who isn’t present. If evolution could speed up, humans might soon appear with a short third arm with the sole purpose of supporting an electronic device close to their heads.
I am not a luddite. I am supportive of the development of new technologies and I am engaged in their distribution. I am an avid user of the internet and much of what the consumer digital world has to offer.
But there is a limit.
In recent weeks I have seen articles that bring to mind some real concerns about the abuse of such wonderful devices that were hardly known little more than a decade ago. One article bemoaned the loss of boredom, which is an important element in spurring creativity. With ubiquitous sources for occupation and entertainment, who needs to be creative? Another article addressed the communication gap developing between parents and children over text messaging. Families now have to contend with texting at the table during family meals. Some communities are attempting to declare weekly moratoriums on digital communications to encourage people to interact face to face, to enable families to share time together without intrusion.
The simple truth is that we have become a generation of techno-junkies. We have taken these very valuable tools and made them into a source for obsession and addiction. In the process we have made it seem that those who can be remotely accessed are more important to us than those who are in our presence. Tele-communication has become the preferred form of communication over face to face interaction, displacing family and community, and we have become enslaved to devices that we can fit in our pockets, to the point where we treat those we physically encounter with rudeness and total disregard.
The idea of a moratorium brought to mind the ideal of Shabbat. Abraham Joshua Heschel, the 20th century Jewish philosopher and activist, described Shabbat as “a palace in time,” one day out of seven when we can elevate ourselves and our environment by sanctifying that most uncontrollable element in our lives, the passage of time. It struck me, in thinking about how these technologies have taken such a dynamic role in our lives, that we have even less control over our lives now than we did ten years ago. We are never out of reach, and work can follow us when we are on vacation and even when we go into the bathroom.
Heschel’s metaphor may be in need of an upgrade.
I would remind owners of iPods that rechargeable batteries are not immortal. There are things that we can do to prolong the life of a battery, like allowing the battery to drain completely before recharging it at least once monthly. Constant recharging diminishes its capacity over time; allowing it to drain enables the battery to function better and longer. The same is true for a human being. As we allow technology to take over our lives, our senses become increasingly dulled to the world immediately around us, to those who are present in our lives, to our families, our neighbors, and our communities. We need a moment when we can recover from the ravages of time and technology, when we can recapture the essence of being human.
To upgrade Heschel’s metaphor would rob it of its poetic beauty. But just as a palace might be protected by fortifications, time, as well, seems in dire need of buttressing against those elements that continually rob us of it. We need Shabbat now as a fortification in time, as a refuge from the increasingly hurried pace of our lives, for without that refuge, we may never gain sight of a palace.
