Negative Sixty!
Our devices are black holes binging on the light and energy of human attention.
Next time you're on a bus, a train, or waiting for a plane, slowly scan about and notice how many people have their heads bowed down into their laps. They have not dozed off. They are not praying. They are scrolling. You'll see tens or hundreds of heads hung at around sixty degrees below parallel. It's the same shameful gaze-angle that a man assumes when he sits on a toilet seat to masturbate. It's interior and self-isolating; that posture alone resigns one from the world.
We are all but literally absorbed in our devices. We fixate on them, staring between our legs but never into ourselves, as we peer through a rectangular portal to wherever: anywhere other than here. Our devices are black holes binging on the light and energy of human attention. Attention, agency, autonomy, dignity—these are the divine rights of man, yet we fold this hand from God again and again, as if we live to feed these vampiric beings. No, not beings: screens, these panes of black glass. By nature, human attention is like a laser—concentrated, powerful, bright; but if we give our attention over, if we hitch rides on these chariots bound for wherever, the light of our attention becomes diffuse, like a shaded lamp illuminating a dim and cluttered room. Those chariots are led by four headless horses, so it's probably safer to walk.
The point of scrolling on my phone is to dis-tract myself—literally "to pull myself away" from when and where I am in the world, even if that intention is unconscious. I am in the world. What a gift! And such greed and ignorance it is that has led me to this longing for elsewhere.
How are you supposed to be on a bus with people who are scrolling on their phones, people in states so dim and diffuse, in postures so utterly withdrawn? What are they looking at? you wonder. They don't want you to know. They don't want to be here. They don't care to share this space and time with you. You are not supposed to be with them. Leave them alone.
What are you looking at? they wonder. Why aren't you looking at your phone? How miserable this bus is! And you don't have anywhere better to be? Go there. Leave this wretched place and draw your gaze away from me. "Assume the position," they shout in unison: "Negative sixty!"
Springboard
A carefully crafted question to help you dive inwards:
Do you have enough eye contact in your life, or are you starving for it as I am?
Thank you for reading,
Oh Garrett it breaks my heart when I see children and teens and young people as well as elderly people and my peers unable to hold a conversation and make eye contact.
In my tradition eye contact is actually not something encouraged between men and women who are not married but being able to be present doesn’t mean you have to have that necessarily. I routinely “forget” my device and leave it uncharged and it’s actually exhilarating lol
Garrett, this was great! I wonder how much phones can function as a means of escape—can we find liberation in these tiny devices? While phones dramatically limit our ability to make physical community, we are simultaneously more interconnected than ever before. I know technology can certainly feel like a black hole, but how much of this can we blame on technology versus the state of the current world?