Touch Someone - Turn the Phone Off 2-18-10

Anderson, South Carolina

During my childhood years I was entranced with the high-tech gadgets in the Dick Tracy comic strip. It was inconceivable to me that one could ever wear a device that would allow two-way communication. Even the invention of the transistor had yet to have any impact on the vacuum tube era I grew up in. If one had shown me an I-phone it would have been an absolutely stunning experience. Even here in our fiber-optic wired landscape with an atmosphere permeated by a billion Wi-Fi signals, so-called smart phones are pretty impressive. As I write this, I wonder how many Wi-Fi networks are beaming data packets through my cranium. Technology has evolved, allowing us to do things undreamed of five years ago and not even in the minds of the best sci-fi writers of my childhood.

As someone pointed out, “Technology has advanced so quickly that society has yet to attribute any manners or etiquette to the use of cell phones, pc, and I-pods.” As these devices become ever more powerful and offer greater functional capacity, they also offer greater opportunity to be profoundly disruptive. A number of countries have outlawed the use of these devices in vehicles. A number of spectacular commuter train accidents have been attributed to the use of cell phones by drivers.

The capability of these phones to be used as a modern portable version of the old telegraph has been problematic at best. It has been well-proven that texting while operating machinery or vehicles is twice as dangerous as doing so with twice the legal limit of blood alcohol.

One can find thousands of anecdotal stories of the amazingly rude behavior that is detonated by a cell phone ringer. Kent German writes about cell phone use for a living. He says “Though I write about cell phones every day, even I think it makes perfect sense that cell phones are continually cited in studies that say good manners have gone out of the window. You don't need a sociology degree to see just how handsets have changed how we relate to each other; and I'm not talking about their positive effects (though indeed there are some). Rather, I'm talking about how you can put a cell phone in an otherwise courteous person's hand and then watch how that person loses all awareness of the people around him.”

What is stunning to me is the degree to which this rudeness has pervaded many of our relational dynamics. Not infrequently I have answered my front door to find someone on a cell phone. It has happened numerous times that people will actually come into my house and continue a cell phone call for as long as fifteen minutes. It has become so problematic as for me to actually request some people to not bring their phones into the house. From hearing their conversations, there was no emergency medical advice being given, no mission-critical legal counsel being offered, no frantic calls from brokers asking clients to cover open positions in options trading, nothing whatever that would merit the grossest of rudeness. What is now most impressive about this behavior is the ubiquitous nature of it and its presence in otherwise well-mannered people. German’s columns on cell phone use chronicle these abrupt departures from civilized behavior. Perhaps saddest about the whole degradation of behavior that stems from mobile phones, is the sudden disruption of mindfulness from present activities and people.

It is one thing to exhibit rude behavior in front of strangers, in restaurants, movies, or gymnasiums. It is quite another to do it in front of dear friends in their own houses or after inviting them into yours.

One of my favorite things to do is to load up a box of a dozen vases of cut flowers and several boxes of chocolates and make one of my “spectral runs.” One of my callings in life seems to be to visit shut-ins and individuals going through various intense life crises and cheer them up with a bit of color and a bit of ‘forbidden fruit.’ I make visits, not selling anything, only wanting to give them a bit of good cheer.

Yesterday I made one of my journeys, for the first time taking a dear friend along with me as my assistant. Stopping at a number of places, some of her choosing and some of mine, we had an amazing set of experiences. It is almost passé to say that in every house the large flat screen TV was left on for the entirety of our visit. At every single one of the homes we visited, our visits were disrupted by multiple phone calls. My friend even commented out loud about the number of phone calls. In every case I terminated our visit early, rather than compete with phone calls, none of which were urgent. In every case we awkwardly left with someone engaged in a phone call. The cell phones took priority every time, even though I had flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.

Countless books have been written over the centuries about hearing the still small voice of God, gaining insight and direction for how to live our lives. In societies with no electronics, no mechanization whatever, hearing the voice of God was a major challenge. I wonder how it is possible to hear the still small voice of God in a Wi-Fi world when we cannot even hear the voice of one standing in front of us, even though with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.

The isolation and loneliness in American culture has been the subject of thousand of academic studies and the grist for a number of best seller books. In our fiber-connected Wi-Fi world we seem to have come to some sort of major disconnect of civility. Is that phone call really so important? I might just not ever come back, even though standing in front of you with flowers and a box of chocolates in hand, and a new friend to introduce.

Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.