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Finite Focus (Living Into Focus)

Tom Vanderbilt notes that the more info one is faced with, the less respect and attention one gives. Walter Kirn claims that ‘researchers estimate that the average city dweller is exposed to 5,000 ads per day, up from 2,000 per day three decades ago.’ We are inundated. It becomes hard to know what is important, what is a priority, what is crucial. As we add distracting technologies into our lives, the flood grows. The truth, as Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton remind us, is that we all have limits to our ability to pay attention; it is a ‘finite resource. At any given moment we are incapable of focusing on more than a few bits of information at a time.’

-Arthur Boers, Living Into Focus, p. 85

Focus is finite. I like that phrase.

My mind goes to my incessant desire to multitask. My job demands it. My schedule demanded it for the past two years.

Sunday, while driving two hours to preach at a rural church, I followed my regular routine. I downloaded a C.S. Lewis book to listen to during the drive. I stopped at my regular gas stop. There’s a TV at the pump. It mostly shows commercials, but it reminds me of Back to the Future 2, which makes it interesting. I was already multitasking: driving and listening to my MP3 player. Then I found that I couldn’t hear my MP3 player over the ads on the gas pump TV. I don’t even know why I just told that story. It seems related to the subject somehow.

We are not God. There is a God, and I am not him. I therefore am not infinite, and never will be. Why can’t I accept that fact? Because, as Calvin says, the human heart is an idol-factory. So, herein lies a paradox. The sooner I accept that my ability to focus is finite, the more productive it will be, for it will be working within the context in which it is meant to work. Focus entails acknowledging that I am limited. I am not omniscient, I am not omnipotent. I do not have the power to gain all knowledge. I do not have the resources to hear every prayer from every human being at one in the same time. I am not God. Time constrains me, space constrains me, weakness constrains me.

Find your limits, confess your limits, work within your limits; then you will have freedom. The freedom of marriage comes from making a commitment to limit yourself to one spouse. Intimacy comes only after such a commitment has been made. Such is also the case with focus. You will find depth when you are willing to limit the subjects of your thoughts. You will find intimacy with ideas when you commit to focusing on those ideas.

On Worshiping the Clock

In our modern muddle, we judge things only by whether or not they are new. The new theologians, says Chesterton, do not worship the sun or moon; they worship the clock.

But what happens to new things? They become old. ‘Living in a world that worships swiftness and success no longer means living in a world of new things. Rather it means living in a world of old things; of things that very swiftly grow old.’

Dale Ahlquist, The Complete Thinker, p. 100

‘There is nothing new under the sun’ takes on a new sense in our culture. There is nothing new because everything is on the verge of becoming a fossil at any moment.

Isaac Watts paraphrases Psalm 90:5-6,

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day

Psalm 90:3-6 states,

3 You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
    they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

I cite Psalm 90 for this purpose: our constant discarding of the old in favor of the new is a parable of life, an illustration of the brevity of existence. Somehow, because we realize the pace at which we are moving, that we are vapor, we have come to exalt the new – at least for a moment. Our contraptions have taken our form. They become old quickly, but never have the chance to mature. Instead they are only replaced. And so, as vapors ourselves, we make vapors, and sweep them away as if they were hay on a field. It’s a strange, strange form of trying to put ourselves in the place of God; as if Psalm 90:3-6 were speaking about us rather than God, and our contraptions are what spring up in the morning and by evening is dry and withered.

I’m not being clear here. This line of thought is happening as I write. But let me close out this post by dealing with the main point I had in mind when I saved this quote:

We think we have become better than our ancestors who worshiped the sun and moon; but at least those things were not things that they had created. We worship the clock. They worshiped what is ancient and God-made. We worship what is new and man-made. And we somehow think they were primitive. What are we? Diminutive.

We are so small we cannot hold the old. Chesterton put it this way:

The moderns say that they are leaving the past because it is exhausted; but they lie. They are escaping from the past because it is so strong (Ahlquist, p. 98).

Now, I am by no means advocating idolatry of any kind. I am simply making the point that the fact that the idolatry is newer doesn’t make it superior. It’s still idolatry, and in some ways it’s more silly. There’s a better way (for both):

  • Thus says the Lord:
    “Stand by the roads, and look,
        and ask for the ancient paths,
    where the good way is; and walk in it,
        and find rest for your souls.
    But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’ (Jer. 6:16).
  • Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them (Gen. 26:18).

Self-Preservation: Methuselahitism

A man was enlisting as a soldier at Portsmouth, and some form was put before him to be filled up, common, I suppose, to all such cases, in which was, among other things, an inquiry about what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the man wrote down the word “Methuselahite.” Whoever looks over such papers must, I should imagine, have seen some rum religions in his time; unless the Army is going to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he could not “place” Methuselahism among what Bossuet called the variations of Protestantism. He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and tendencies of the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The soldier replied that it was his religion “to live as long as he could.”

-G.K. Chesterton, The Methuselahite, from All Things Considered

Methuselah was the oldest man recorded in the Bible – get it?

Whether it is survival of the fittest, questionable medical practice, or a thousand other means of self-preservation, we must be careful that we do not exalt the preservation of (our own) life to deity. We must be careful that our self-preservation does not become the law-keeping of the man-made religion of Methuselatism – which gives us the great commandments of Thou shalt preserve yourself at all costs and Thou shalt fear death above all.

Technological Imperatives: Do This and Live

All technology is equivalent to a conditional command, for it is not possible to define a technology without acknowledging, at least at second hand, the advantages which technical operations might reasonably pursue…A technology must…declare itself in favour of a definite set of advantages, and tell people what to do in order to secure them.

– Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 176

All technology is, well, technical; as such it demands technique. It offers promises and delivers implicit imperatives. In our cultural and historical setting, the issue becomes this: since technology offers promises that can only be received through obedience (i.e. push the lever and out comes the food pellet, or use this and become cool and popular), the question becomes, Who is the master in this scenario? Are we using technological tools, are they using us, or is someone using us through them?

Do not think for a moment that silicon valley, or Hollywood, or Washington D.C. is blind to this. The problem is that we are often blind to it ourselves. Take care that while you give your iPhone commands that it is not actually commanding you. If it is saying ‘Do this and live,’ then be certain it cannot deliver on its promises. When Google says ‘Do this and find resources on so and so subject,’ that is entirely reasonable, and even wonderful. When it says it will help you live forever, it has gone into a whole other realm.

For some food for thought on this issue, watch PBS Frontline‘s The Persuaders and Generation Like. And while you’re at it, see if you can see the implicit call to idolatry, as a case in point, of this commercial:

Omni-Everything Through Technology

Another post for the ‘technology and modern man’ category:

…With the development of of science and technology, humanity has begun to claim for itself the omniscience and omnipotence it has formerly reserved for divine beings…The telescope extends the power of vision to the very distant; the microscope extends the power of vision to the very small. The telephone extends the range of the voice and the power of hearing; television extends the range of the eye and the ear. With the aid of modern forms of technology, humanity has achieved an undreamt mastery over nature and thus converted itself, as Freud puts it, into a ‘prosthetic God.’

-Lee Hardy, The Fabric of this World, p. 40.

I read recently that some techies are even attempting to upload their memory and consciousness to mega-computers in order to create some form of consciousness that can go on after their bodies die. Eternal life through silicon. Not surprisingly then, Google itself is working on the whole everlasting life thing. It may take them a while, they say, but hopefully death is curable.

As technology increases our reach, and our lifespans, we must be very careful that it does not increase our pride. A prosthetic god is no true god. Like all prosthetics, it is lifeless and powerless, though it may not appear that way to the naked eye when it is covered by articles of clothing. It is a good prop that allows for more activity, but at the end of the day it will be removed. Eternal life through silicon ends when silicon melts.