My latest reading has been Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World and the follow-up written in the1950s. I took an interest after a reader mentioned ‘soma’ in a
comment, which led me to read the book (I recall back in high school
that this novel was on our reading list, but I somehow managed to
avoid it along with most other classics).
Huxley’s second book has raised many
issues (as did BNW), most especially the matter of influence
on perception and decision-making. Huxley’s analysis of influence,
which is surprisingly prescient considering it is almost 60 years
old, is not entirely without anachronisms, and by that I am not
focusing on his technological and social references, which it is to
be expected that they would be out-moded. Rather, it is about how
these technological matters have come to change how we are
influenced.
Huxley assumes that man is influenced
largely by audio messaging. He consistently returns to the idea that
modern man in influenced by what he hears, and how audio recordings
can be used to retrain or condition people to accept certain
messages.
My sense is, after spending some time
studying the effects of internet pornography and computer-based
addictions, that technological advances have altered our senses to
the point where we are now largely visual creatures. We use our
sense of vision far more than any of our other senses, perhaps
combined.
Vision is by far the most complex of
the physical senses (perhaps in a later post I will get into the
topic of ‘complex’ versus ‘physical’ senses). It embraces
numerous layers of sensory analysis and regions in the brain. So, it
is already ‘dominant’ in the respect: vision occupies a lot of
territory in the brain.
Yet, our technology has tilted the
brain even more in the direction of favoring vision over the other
senses. Computing is, above all else, a visual activity. While we
use cue sounds and have a wide array of audio headsets, we largely
rely on the computer monitor to complete our computing tasks. Man’s
natural favoritism for vision has found its perfect companion.
Reading, typing, looking at pictures,
watching videos, playing games... these are all visually-dominant
activities. Even the massive explosion of the MP3 and exceedingly
small audio devices of escalating quality hold no match for the ‘Arms
Race’ in consumer electronics to provide better and better screens.
TVs and personal computers boast more about their video quality over
and against their audio capabilities. Speakers are more of a luxury
item, whereas the video card of the PC reigns as the supreme
necessity.
And so it is that our ‘plastic’
brains are constantly being encouraged to ever-increase the areas of
the brain devoted to vision. What this also means is that other
senses, like hearing and smell, become less important and even
distractions. After all, man has a ‘limited bandwidth’ in regard
to how much sensory input he can consciously handle. Once the limit
is reached, everything over the limit is stuffed or missed.
While some may make the argument that
subliminal influences can be achieved through this ‘unattended
baggage’ of the sensory variety, what is absolutely certain is that
the things we actually pay attention to are far more influential.
What we concentrate on naturally influences us in a stronger way
because these messages, whatever they may be and however we feel
about them, are taking up more space in our limited minds.
This brings me to the matter of
addictions involving vision, primarily pornography and video games.
In both cases, the addict enters into a behavior that involves a very
dominant part of his brain. Modern media has expanded and enhanced
his visual powers, leaving him far more prepared for the onslaught of
images that the internet has made possible.
Part of this ‘conditioning’ of
modern media is how we use visual images to shut down our higher
reasoning and critical thought. We ‘veg out’ in front of the TV,
or demand that movies be so visually powerful that we forget that
they are entirely fiction (especially in the age of CGI). Years of
TV watching has helped us reflexively turn off reasoning and even
careful observation of the messages behind the sensual tsunami that
HD video brings us through our LCD and Plasma screens.
Our politicians must be visually
pleasing. Our reactions to them and our opinions of them are less
about what they say then how they say it: we judge them by how they
look. If we listen, it is hardly attentive, as we often become angry
at them for doing things they promised to do, while failing to fire
them when they break their promises. After all, we voted for them
not necessarily based on their performance records, but how their
images make us feel.
Religion in America is no stranger to
this phenomenon. The sermon is expected to be more about its musical
qualities, like cadence and intonation, rather than whatever heresy
or madness is being spewed. We like sound and fury rather than
ideas.
The modern Orthodox Church is no
exception. People demand semi-transparent iconostasi and Royal Doors
wide enough for a truck to pull through... because we want to see,
even if that means watch a priest’s vested hind-quarters for hours
on end. Canned lights, lots of them, are a prerequisite to
any new parish, while oil lamps are hung above the icons because we
like the shiny lampadas but hate how they block the view. We don’t
need their illumination... Mr. Edison took care of that for us.
Old churches had chairs facing in all
directions, usually following the contours of walls and pillars, a
majority with no advantageous view. Why? It is because people used
to come to church to hear the word rather than watch a show.
Now, we have parishes with stadium seating based less on acoustics
than on an unobstructed view. In fact, when we aren’t staring at
the non-show on the altar, we stick our noses in service books that
were once provided when services were in a non-vernacular language.
Now, we have simpleton translations being chanted to a whole
congregation reading along because, they readily admit, they can’t
manage to listen.
All the while, we complain about lonely
we feel. Nobody listens to us. We have forgotten what listening is.
Think about someone you know who has
lost his hearing. What do the newly-deaf complain about? The loss
of companionship: communication is hard when you can’t hear. How
much more is it lonely when you can’t hear what others are saying
because you’ve lost the ability to listen. Of course, if you can
hear someone’s response to what you are saying, what’s the sense
of communication to begin with?
Social media is all visual, which is
why we flock to it as a replacement for the companionship we once got
from talking to one another. We ‘chat’ by typing, and text to
have the effect of a conversation. Once you go down the road a
little way, and soon an actual verbal interaction with another person
becomes a burden.
This loneliness causes us to suffer so
greatly that we drink and use, thereby ensuring that we go further
down the lonely path of the self. We are cut off by our addictive
substances and behaviors. Visual reality is powerful, but it is not
nearly as intimate as such sensations as touch, taste, and sound.
For a long time, we have sought to push
back these other sensory experiences, or at least control them. We
want odorless homes and static temperatures.
Think about music and how we listen to
heavily edited, technically perfect music in our MP3s. Our music is
flawless, and so we can listen to the same song sung the exact same
way a million times, without so much as a single missed note (unless
the album producer puts it in). Live albums are definitely
second-preference to studio-recordings enhanced by Auto-Tune.
So, we can listen to music without the distraction of having to
process the mistakes and variances that live performances have. We
don’t even complain about lip-synching and end us screaming through
a band’s performance rather than being quiet enough to appreciate
the talent of our favorite artists. Meanwhile, concert promoters are
looking for ways to enhance the visual aspects of the performance.
This brings me back to the topic of the
Church: our services are intensive audio experiences. Be it
Byzantine or Bordnansky, a lone chanter or a four part choir, we are
singing and reciting texts that, by modern standards are not only
grammatically complex, but thematically deep. Unless, of course, you
are in one of those jurisdictions that favors translations written
less for beauty and more for a condescending opinion of the listener.
Simple translations ensure that the inattentive listener can
continue to indulge his distraction, and when he emerges from his
twilight slumber, he will be sufficiently motivated to drift back off
to sleep by the Fifth-Grade essay being passed off as a liturgical
text.
We have given up. The war is over, and
isolation has won. The sound and the fury are still there, but they
are meaningless.
You can make the argument that Orthodox
worship is often conducted in liturgical languages that the average
listener can’t understand. This is true, but they also were done
in dark churches with drawn curtains and closed gates. The services
were (and are) mysterious.
The visual world is not about mystery.
We find the things we see far less mysterious than the things we
can’t. The services are, nowadays, just as unfathomable to the
modern listener regardless of the language because the modern
listener isn’t listening no matter what the language is. Chances
are he reacts more to the general melody, and is overwhelmed by all
the rest.
Perhaps there is an opportunity for the
modern listener to subliminally pick up on Orthodox theology from a
service in the colloquial versus an unfathomable liturgical language.
However, I really doubt it. At least I have not seen an appreciable
difference in the quality of Christians from either practice.
The visually-oriented service is not
simply devoid of mystery, it is also isolating. We have fallen into
the trap of thinking that services are about our person attainment of
our needs rather than offering up anything to God. We come to watch
a show that may ‘inspire’ us, but in the end we are passive
viewers. Listening means wrestling with the words, and either
rejecting them or falling into agreement with them. This is
different from ‘observing’ a liturgy.
So, if we are more visually influenced
than auditorially influenced, then the Church has an added task in
the process of catechizing and reaching those lost in addiction: we
must teach people to listen.
