Body and Soul
Song of the Day 08/19/2022
Body and Soul by Benny Goodman
The first hundred or so pages of Emmanuel Carrère’s brilliant book, The Kingdom, concern, in great detail, a period of his life when he found and then eventually lost faith, only to return, once again, toward agnosticism. In the closing pages of this section of the book, Carrère recounts an anecdote that Herve, a good friend of his, once told him:
Herve says it surprised him a lot in his childhood that his grandmother’s parrot never tried to escape when the cage was opened. Instead of flying away, it stayed there stupidly. His Grandmother explained the trick: all you have to do is put a little mirror in the bottom of the cage. The parrot is so happy looking at its reflection, so absorbed by what it sees, that it doesn’t even notice the open door of the cage and the possibility of freedom outside, attainable with a flap of its wings.
To me, this story, which is of course more of a contemporary parable, is perfectly suited not to people and their often oppressive relationships with faith, with God, but to a personal, always repressive, suffocating relationship with my phone, that rectangular torture device I carry around everywhere I go, that I regularly look at first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed, that I impulsively grab at all times of the day for no good reason at all. Like Marshall McLuhan predicted in 1967 with The Medium Is the Massage, my iPhone has become not only an absolute extension of myself, but a late-capitalist lash that I regularly use to numb my senses, increase all vain and selfish desires, and become an automaton of industries that seek nothing but our money and complete submission to their products. With consistent use of the smartphone, my self disappears, a newly constructed one emerges that isn’t me but is easier to swallow, and because it isn’t real, it’s simpler to understand. This new self is merely an illusion, a dangerous hallucination that I, and most people, can’t let go of. The illusion is so dangerous to even convince us that it’s our truest self, while it couldn’t be further from it. This is, for sure, ‘the phone self.’
According to Judaism, humans are inherently takers, as we live off the land, which, if you believe, was given to us by God. Therefore, a good life, above all, is one spent giving, committing deeds that exist outside of our own self-interest, to try our best to at least give as much as we take, which is impossible—because everything, from the air we breathe to the water we drink, is not a natural right—it is a gift that we should be thankful for. A good existence, in Judaism, is give and take. A relationship with a cellphone is, then, inherently un-Jewish, as it’s a lose-lose, a give-give. With an iPhone, we lose our personal data, our identity, and our true sense of self, all the while becoming more siloed, more removed from the possibility of any authentic notion of human community. Remember, it’s not a sin to be a taker here and there. One must take in order to take care of themselves. Without any taking, getting, or receiving, our relationship with the world, with ourselves, is awfully unbalanced; we’d be left unable to give. My faith may not be set in stone, but I am certain that aside from needless pleasures such as 15-minute delivery and videos of dogs, we do get nothing, receive nothing, and I hate to say this word, spiritual, from our phones. On the whole, they’re a detriment. Depravity in a nutshell (or metallic casing).
I know this is beginning to sound didactic, moralistic, so I’ll stop right there, especially since I’m no better than anyone else, as addicted as anyone else. I’m not trying to preach, I’m just emphasizing how I and a lot of us are the parrot. Well, no, actually, we’re worse than the parrot. We have a well-developed consciousness, that good ol’ ghost in the machine. We’re all for the most part aware that the phone has primarily become a skewed mirror that massages our egos and detracts from the greater possibilities life can afford; still, we choose the phone.
Again, I don’t want to be an annoying pedagogue, but I will say that I have enjoyed not using my phone during Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. This didn’t start because I’ve necessarily become an outright believer, nor do I follow all of Shabbat’s other rules. I go in cars, turn on and off lights, buy things, etc. It started simply because I do Shabbat dinner with family, almost every Friday night, without fail, and since I do this one, enjoyable, communal religious ritual of eating and drinking with good company and minimal blessings, I’ve become accustomed to selfishly picking and choosing different aspects of the Jewish faith that work for me. And the one rule which at the moment I feel would suit me best is a weekly, 25-hour period where I don't touch my phone, all so I can afford myself an opportunity to, like the parrot, flap my wings. In other words, when it comes to my personal relationship with Judaism, I’m an outright taker. And as a taker, I can report that when I have gone 25 hours without the use of my phone, (I haven’t done it every Saturday) it’s been a calming, peaceful experience, a way to enjoy what a lot of people call the ‘present.’ I’m still undoubtedly lost in my own thoughts for most of the day, but it’s better than being constantly influenced by an ad-driven microcomputer. Another nice thing is that Shabbat forces me to look up, rather than down.
After not using my phone for 25 hours per week, I’ve noticed how frequently I tend to spend most of my waking hours staring downward, like a slack-jawed zombie, at this stupid device. I noticed how I rarely look around in curiosity anymore—which is sad, especially for a writer. When I look up, not only do I notice the small details that define the world around me, but I’m more likely to engage in a random conversation with my girlfriend, friends, family, or the best—strangers. Those unplanned interactions really are the ones that end up being the most illuminating. It's possible to find out a lot from people after a quick, 2-minute interaction, things they would never share online. It isn’t necessarily the things they say out loud, but in their eyes, their non-performative expressions—yet another thing that doesn’t translate to a phone, and to our overtly constructed personas on them. And of course, yes, it’s these very constructed, illusory personas, in my opinion caused by phones, the algorithmic social media feedback loop, that we are so attracted to, so bloody unable to let go of. It's the thing that causes the addiction, the element we can’t escape, the mirror at the bottom of our cage.