Hail Siri, full of grace

My outrageous thesis is we may have abandoned the idea of mindlessly worshipping gods, but not mindless worship itself.

— James Haus (@SoylentHHH) June 8, 2015

I'm trying to learn when to turn my tweets into a blog post.  This is one of those times, less for profundity and more for verbosity.

I remarked earlier today that the modern posture of tablet/phone/watch use is submission.  Which I meant in the most leftist, hippie fashion, where people are being subtly being trained to adopt a submissive pose, which leads to a more submissive society.  I believe there is actual research floating around out there documenting the biofeedback inherent in looking up versus looking down, at least as it relates to depression and happiness.  Is it actually true that phones are making us more submissive by instilling a reflexive submissive posture?  Hell if I know, but I'm running with the idea.

Interestingly, someone else thought I was referring to the posture as prayer-like.  I wish!  Prayer feels like a much more mindful, and thoughtful thing than bowing one's head in ritualistic response to the little glass gods we all carry around with us now.  To be sure, prayer can be a mindless thing, as a childhood in a conservative church taught me, but it can also be a thoughtful thing, which is something I learned from the same place.  Prayer is what you make of it.  Indeed, meditative prayer is  a genuine form of mindfulness meditation and has a strong tradition within the christian community.  My respect for anyone who meditates or prays mindfully on what he or she believes to be good is leaps and bounds greater than the bowed head that comes of a reflexive response to one's mobile tech.  "Oh, Siri wants me to stand now.  Yes Siri, I hear and obey."

After coming out of the closet I went pretty far into the atheist/materialist side of the spectrum, and while I am still angry about a great many things involving christianity and my time in the closet, I have slowly swung back around to an appreciation of the nuance involved in what we collectively worship and why.  I can't fault christians for wanting to worship God, nor do I think it cool to mock them for the desire, because "God" be he/she real or fictional embodies a nexus of concepts Grace/forgiveness/kindess/etc. that are an extremely important and necessary part of human civilization.  And while those concepts can be found and worshipped outside of the christian experience, I can't fault people for wanting to worship those concepts, even if they come bundled with some unfortunate extras such as homophobia/persecution complex/etc.  Especially since I don't believe those good and bad ideas are inextricably intertwined.

It's especially aggravating to watch people who clearly worship ideas such as technological progress and capitalism without much apparent thought turn around, and with great arrogance, mock other people for their unmindful worshipping.  Like, if you go to WWDC and you sit with a quite sense of expectation and excitement for the wonders about to be revealed, you are, in fact, having a church experience and you don't have room to mock the religious for their habits.  And if you bob your head mindlessly in deference to your tiny glass masters every time they ping at you, you certainly don't have room to mock the concept of mindless worship in other people.  You are them and they are you and we are all together.

My radical thesis is that if we repeatedly practice the age-old postures of submission and subservience, we will by measure over time, find ourselves more submissive.  To our phones, or the people who make them, to the algorithms they run, or to whatever I don't know.  Just more submissive.  My suggestion is that we maybe do that less.  Don't assume the people who make apps are smarter than you and know what you need better than you do.  Don't offload reasonable adult responsibility onto your phone like it's a manufactured parent or master.  Turn off as many unnecessary demands for your attention as possible.

My dad used to tell me this story of him and his dad.  My dad loved to watch old movies late on Saturday nights.  And inevitably, he said, his father would knock on the door to his room, about half-way through the movie and just ask the question, "Does the TV control you, or do you control the TV?"  And he would stand there until my dad turned the TV off and went to bed.  I used to think this was the height of unreasonableness.  Now, I think my grandpa was maybe a wise man.

Do you control your tech?  Or does your tech control you?  Raise your head if you understand.