Screen Life: An Ancient Wall & A Call To Arms

The lights shine brightly. I can hardly see in fact. The window is in front of me, pouring light. But I can't see. My mind is infatuated, obsessed. A kind of dementia overcomes me. I can't help but look. I try to look away, but it recaptures my attention. I know there is a real world out there. But I don't care. It's like a dream world. It just brings me in, and I can't let go. It's the glare of all glares. It's the glare of the television screen. It's the glare of the smart phone screen. It's the glare of the Ipad. It's the glare of the laptop.

Something like 50% of the day of the average young adult today is spent in front of one of these devices. I can relate. Though I read a lot, I spend a great deal more time on the laptop at home. While working at the shelter I would simply transfer from the screen at home to the screen at work. No big deal. And in between, the smart phone screen.

It seems like too many screens. Sometimes I feel like I'm hardly living, just watching movies or shows. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a cyber world. What did people do before the internet? They watched TV. What did people do before TV? I suppose they read books and newspapers.

Human interaction can be tedious. Maybe it's an anachronism. But I don't think it is. But it certainly seems like an agenda is smuggled through the middle of all this noise. It does seem that way. Maybe Herman and Chomsky (1988) were right when they wrote, "the mass media of the USA are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion."

Can we slow down? Can we put it down if we want to? Can we slow down and think? Can we stop clicking? Is there any room for the gospel? And what do all the screens do to the minds of young people?

Anathematized to life. Apathy, the prevailing motif. "I don't care today, I don't care tomorrow, and next week is looking doubtful." To be fair it isn't easy. Most people have to work 40+ hours a week doing mind numbing tasks endlessly, facing mounting bills, increasing food prices, and decreasing wages and benefits. It's a nightmare. Let's just be real. The 9 to 5 grind is quite often very awful. I'm fortunate to have a job I enjoy. People work for years spinning their wheels because the amount of income can never match the monthly bills and random break downs and surprise costs of life. People today are working more hours to afford less.

We end up with too little time after all those job hours. Everything on the screen conspires to take what little extra money we have. There isn't any time. There isn't any money. Credit card debts are climbing, and given enough pictures of decadent chocolate or juicy burgers, I'm bound to be hungry too much. An assault on the senses by way the eyes and ears, into the mind, designed by teams of experts to trigger notions that bring in cash flow. Consumer society, as they say. Or as the big credit card companies think of us: "eaters." Useless eaters, as a whistleblower revealed not so long ago.

In western civilization it's all about money. It's all about the money. Even when they say it's not about the money, that's when it's really about the money. I tend to approach any gimic very skeptically. Eventually the other shoe is going to drop. Eventually the catch will be revealed. Eventually they want me to cough up the money.

I think young people are just disgusted. They are downright sick of it. Or they are caught up in it, trying to squeeze some kind of satisfaction. And there is none to be had.

Walking up the steps of the apartment building where I dwell, I could smell the unmistakable scent of marijuana. I had to shake my head. And I had to smile. I know how it feels to look for a good time in a substance. It's such a cunning and deceptive little trap for the mind. In the end, whether a terrible evil or a passive substance, it was true for me; there was nothing there.

I picture the tattooed, pierced college playboy with the popped collar laying on a couch after an all nighter, next to a girl he doesn't like, feeling an intense sense of disappoint with everything he has tried to pull from life.

Consider the situation: We have a man who is blessed with more material commodities and luxuries than 99% in the history of mankind. The result? His belly is full, but his soul is empty. And perhaps that's why so many young people in our society take their own lives.