Genuflecting At The Digital Altar (Or, Is Nothing Sacred?)

They say that age is but a number, and there are many days I believe that. Often, I awake feeling relatively youthful, and the daily walks I undertake are conducted with vigor and strength of purpose. Other days, I feel rather keenly the aches and pains (still relatively minor at this point, thankfully) that age imposes, and my walks take on the character of prescribed medicine, nothing more.

But that is just the physical aspect of age. The other, more important one, in my view, is the thinking and attitudes we bring to each day of our lives. In that regard, I like to think that I am more youth than aging man.

I try, for example, to stay conversant with and engaged in important issues, although admittedly at more of a remove than when I was younger. As well, rather than regret my generation's waning influence on life, I welcome it. When it became feasible, I retired, partly because the job and all of its attendant politics had become a heavy burden; the other reason was the moral obligation I felt toward the young people coming up in teaching. Full-time jobs were and still are hard to find, and to continue occupying a spot a younger person could do with more energy and creativity struck me as wrong. Unlike some of my generation, I harbour no delusions about indispensability.

However, there are other times when I feel old, because there are some things I doubt I shall ever embrace, my beliefs confronting and contradicting the perceived wisdom of our time. A prime example is my feeling about smartphones in the classroom, about which I recently wrote. To me, the putative educational benefits are far outweighed by their costs in terms of attention and focus. Being wirelessly connected to the outer world sacrifices or at the very least severely compromises our attention to the world of our immediate environment and, even more importantly, to our inner world. Digital distraction hardly facilitates reflectiveness.

Sadly, educational institutions are not the only ones that have prostituted themselves in the rush to demonstrate relevance in the digital age. That mania is now spreading to organized religion. The Campbell River Baptist Church has decided to genuflect at the altar of the digital god:

Pastor Jeff Germo ... is among the first pastors in the world to use a Swedish developed communications technology, Mentimeter, to make online, real-time spiritual connections with his flock while preaching. Mentimeter, used widely in corporate board rooms and academic lecture settings, is an interactive survey tool that posts instant answers and results to the mobile devices of those connected to the event.

On the surface, some might say this is a divinely inspired idea:

Germo started his sermon by asking parishioners to take out their smartphones and tablets, click on a Mentimeter link and punch in a code.

Moments later an email arrived asking parishioners if they had ever failed terribly.

Just two per cent replied: “No, I’m a winner.”

Germo expressed amazement that any member of the congregation said they had never experienced failure.

“If you are more than a year old, you probably would have failed at something,” said Germo as a man at the back of the auditorium of about 250 people raised his hand to acknowledge he chose the no failure answer.

A large display showing the survey results allowed the good reverend to drive home his point:

... most people are experiencing some difficult things and have a hard time getting over failure,” Germo said. “So, you are not alone.”

So what am I on about here? Is this a reactionary rant, or an opinion borne of age and experience?

Some years ago at a staff meeting, we were each given a handheld device that would achieve the same kind of survey input available to the Campbell River congregation. We were told such technology would revolutionize the classroom experience, making it far more interactive and relevant. After a few 'rounds', I think most of us felt more like game-show participants than educators undertaking some professional development. The medium indeed was the message. Needless to say, the idea gained no traction and was never implemented.

So far, the Campbell River church attempt at digital relevance seems to be an isolated incident. I sincerely hope it stays that way. In this connected age, people very much need refuge from distractions and sensory overload in order to rediscover their centres. Churches have traditionally offered such refuge, but like so many social media adherents today, will they now be tempted to increase their number of 'followers', not by anything deep or meaningful, but by embracing the latest trends? This particular one, if followed to its logical conclusion, will achieve no such thing.

How long will it be before part of Sunday services involves checking your email, your Twitter account and, last but not least, the ever-present Facebook? Once the genie is summoned, it cannot be put back in the bottle.

Powerful Words From Cornell West

Although he is addressing an audience in NYC, Cornell West's words are equally applicable on this side of the border. They seem especially important given the Harper regime's many efforts to tear down Canadian values and the obligations we have to one another as both citizens and human beings.

If you want to see his full address, you can access it here.

H/t Jack Saturday

To Read, Perchance To Think

Shakespeare purists will perhaps forgive my titular, out-of-context paraphrasing of a famous line from Hamlet, but it occurred to me yesterday and today as I read two fine essays published in The Toronto Star.

The first, by former Globe writer Michael Valpy (strange how that 'newspaper of record' has either lost or terminated so many good writers in the past decade), appeared in yesterday's edition. Entitled Canada’s new politics of discord could carry a heavy price, it reflects on the implications of the breakdown in Canadian social cohesion both promoted and exploited by the Harper government as it works tireless to incrementally impose a right-leaning ethos on the country.

Valpy asserts that this wouldn't be happening if so many educated people had not disengaged from the political process:

If Canadian voters — that is, Canadians who actually vote — were all under age 45 and university-educated, there would be no Harper government, there would still be the long-form census, the Canadian Armed Forces would never have become mythologized as warriors, the country would not have become a side-taker with Israel in the Middle East, we probably still would have failed to keep our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol but at least we wouldn’t have withdrawn from it and we would not have advanced down the road to gutting federal environmental assessments.

While I do not necessarily agree that progressive values are the exclusive domain of the educated, his points about the consequences of disengagement are well-taken.

The second essay, found in today's paper, is by Alex Goldfarb, one of our most important and progressive voices. Entitled The mean test: Have we stopped caring about Canada’s most vulnerable?, Himelfarb's piece evaluates how successful Canada is via the following thesis:

How we measure our success as a country matters. It tells us a lot about what we value most. It shapes what we ask of our politicians and how we judge the performance of our governments. It shapes politics and policy.

Going beyond the standard economic criteria, he asks the question of how well we treat the weakest amongst us. By historical standards, Himelfarb asserts, we measure up pretty well, but he notes some very worrisome contemporary developments:

- Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike has drawn attention again to the suffering of her community, part of a growing movement, Idle No More, which got its impetus from the omnibus budget that weakened environmental protections without consultation with aboriginal communities;

- A few doctors and other health providers have also been leading protests against recent changes to refugee regulations, changes that mean more, including children, are subject to automatic detention and the separation of families...

- As for unemployed Canadians — too many of whom are young, often indebted graduates — cuts over the last 15 years have meant fewer are eligible for EI benefits or training;

- thousands have also protested the government’s punitive crime agenda, which, while politically popular, marks a sharp departure for Canada at a time when crime rates are going down;

- internationally, apart from freezing aid, our Parliament recently said no to a bill promising cheap drugs to poor countries, choosing, as Stephen Lewis put it, patents over people.

These changes, along with others he discusses, leads Himelfarb to conclude that we have become a meaner country, a country where the focus on short-term fiscal prudence is contributing to an erosion of our traditional national character. He calls for a real discussion about what we mean by the good life, the purpose of the economy, the kind of Canada we want. The opportunity for such a discussion, unfortunately, seems remote under the current regime.

My brief blog post only highlights some of the points made in these two important essays. I hope you will find the time to read both of them in detail.

Attitudes Toward The Poor

"The more wealth you have, the more focused on your own self and your own needs you become, and the less attuned to the needs of other people you also become."

So says social psychologist Paul Piff in response to a Chronicle of Philanthropy report on charitable giving, discussed in a piece written by distinguished journalist Bill Moyers.

As a companion to my previous post about Carol Goar's article on worker exploitation, it makes for some thought-provoking comparative reading.