This summer in a New Orleans coffee shop, I noticed a room full 0f customers sitting all alone except to be connected in one way or another to the grand mother of this new creation – the internet.
Instead of Sally, Bruce or Bob, they sat across from iPad, Apple and Blackberry. It was as quiet as a church and nearly as reverent. All eyes fixed upon back lit screens, faces washed in their warm glow.
I guessed at their interests: social networking, reading the morning’s paper from a city far away, surfing an endless wave of mind-numbing distraction. Then, it hit me.
This devotion was more than passing the time, more than ritual or habit and certainly more than a passing fad. This was sacred space in the soul’s quest for something greater than individual existence. This was a congregant searching for a congregation, a believer looking to access a higher power.
The treasured domain of seeking a more fulfilling purpose to gain wisdom and needed direction, once reserved for the gods, or yes even God, now belongs to the binary world of bits, bytes and blips. Instead of a daily quiet time, we seek a daily diversion time, returning again and again and again to rest and bath in the constant flowing stream of data.
Meditation becomes hibernation, with itchy fingers to swipe and click, to get online and stay online along the straight and narrow paths that lead to a million different other straight and narrow paths.
These machines are our friends, our lovers, our waking companion, our soul-mates, our confidants, our refuge, our addiction and our God.
We would rather feel the heat of their quiet hum, than become attentive to the real flesh and blood human just a few feet away — for how can a mere human compare? They don’t have the juice, the list of contacts, the breath and depth of knowledge and awareness as this, my precious deity, provides.
But there is just one thing, one terrible but very real thing with this replacement God at service to my every search demand and most selfish and idiosyncratic desires and interests.
In this reverence, I experience no awe, no mystery, no deep and inexpressible joy. In this world, my eyes tire long before my heart might fill to breaking from love or struggle. Here, there is, as Rudolf Otto described, no real numinous, no mysterium tremendum, and no mysterium fascinans.
15 inches can’t compare to 360 degrees, 3-D high-definition isn’t a Mediterranean sunset and all these nuggets of knowledge get a little cluttered on the shelves of my mind.
Maybe I should take a walk, hold a hand, or smell a flower. Maybe I should power off and plug-in, or better, unplug and power-up. Least I forget, if I can find a substitute God, then I really never knew God at all.
Posted by Jessica on August 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm
A different perspective: jesusneedsnewpr.net/please-watch-this-the-internet-is-my-religion/
Posted by markdjohnson on August 18, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Jessica – This doesn’t seem to me to be the a different perspective, but exactly the same perspective I critique. The question is whether my definition of God is nothing more than the collective herd of humanity. I believe the internet is a powerful, compelling and often times wonderful tool for connectivity. But, I fail to offer it the ultimate reverence I surrender as my confession of faith and my object of worship.
Posted by jessica on August 18, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Right, this IS the perspective you critique. My point, though, is that this is someone who turned to the internet and DID find, spiritually at least, exactly what they couldn’t find elsewhere. I’m not saying I do or do not agree with either the guy in the video or your perspective. I just thought it was an interesting addition to your musings. Can’t wait to have you back!
Posted by markdjohnson on August 19, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Yes, yes and yes. I have missed (and will miss) our lively conversations, but, as you know, there is always………………………………………..the internet!