The Working Catholic: Misdirected Idealism Bill Droel

John McKnight directs Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University. He objects to the standard approach toward a neighborhood by urban planners, government officials, and bank executives, building inspectors, social workers, some police officers and even some teachers. Instead of projecting joy and enthusiasm, they give exclusive attention to a neighborhood’s defects (old buildings, broken curbs, high number of transients, roaming delinquents, dim street lights and more). The well-meaning prophets of doom sometimes propose cosmetic interventions (new basketball hoops and additional street sweeping) to buoy drooping spirits of families. 

McKnight, contrary to standard understanding, thinks many seemingly good interventions are in fact disabling help. A forceful ideology, he details, assumes some people are not competent neighbors; they are instead clients with deficient parts. This ideology is apolitical. There is no need to radically address the economic or cultural environment. Service, sincerely delivered, is an unquestioned good. There is no compelling need to explain why our country has terrific medical discoveries and many improved medical instruments and yet poor health. Or why our country has lots of knowledge about food and great interest in culinary arts and yet poor nutrition. Or lots of new classroom technology and yet declining reading scores.   

Anand Giridharadas applies this analysis to those who sincerely believe that by doing well they can do good. Idealistic students, enterprising tech engineers and many innovators in finance “declare themselves partisans of change,” he writes in Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World (Knopf, 2018). Yet they selectively take on problems with projects they design, jumping over most of the people affected by the problem and quite often blocking government agencies from access to the problem. The goodwill of these educated and highly positioned do-gooders is insufficient, Giridharadas argues. In many cases it is harmful.

The tech entrepreneurs and the enterprising finance wizards, Giridharadas says, believe that “to change the world you must rely on the techniques, resources and personnel of capitalism.” The approach of these economic and cultural leaders is taught to students at big-name colleges. “The private push into world betterment,” he continues, sidelines “the older language of power, justice and rights.” Instead, the elite-style of social change uses phrases like leveraged data, social impact, and incubation of ideas, start-up venture, empowering endeavor, social enterprise club, impact investment and more. 

The internet began in the mid-1960s, first among select engineers. It soon grew in scope and now is, of course, nearly universally used constantly by way of many types of devices. A philosophy came along with the hardware and the programs. The big tech players and their fans, says Giridharadas, believe in the leveling ability of technology. Everyone is entitled to access, they say, and extensive use of cyberspace, in and of itself, increases equality. (See for example The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Picador, 2007.) 

Perhaps the tech giants are sincere. But their notion of change always includes a payoff for the tech entity and never addresses the basics of our economic system or our dominant culture. Keep in mind: Today’s tech industry is more concentrated than any other sector. A small number of people own the entire infrastructure. Their companies greatly add to wealth inequality.

Is it better then for tech leaders and for young adults who aspire to do good and do well to stifle their philanthropy and cease their forays into social problems? Might they simply put their excess wealth and lingering idealism back into their portfolio?

Catholic social doctrine has pertinent principles. According to subsidiarity, decisions should be made as close as possible to those affected by the decision. Maternalism or paternalism is a step or two removed from the scene. For example, says Catholicism, workers make the decision for or against a union without interference from management, even if management seemingly knows better. According to the principle of participation, a society increases in justice as more families have an increasing stake in the economy and the direction of culture. Catholicism favors private property and never requires exact material equality of income or wealth. It does insist, however, that all families have agency—usually by way of intermediate associations.

Context is a crucial difference between tech/finance philosophy and Catholicism. Individuals login and travel around the tech world as they please. In Catholicism, there is no such thing as a person without an environment; without family, friends, clubs, and more. A large portion of the social environment, Catholicism appreciates, is a gift. 

Winners Take All is an important critique; one made by only a small number of other commentators like John McKnight in The Careless Society (Basic Books, 1995) and more recently by Thomas Frank in Listen Liberal (Henry Holt, 2016).

Droel is the author of Public Friendship (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $5)

The Working Catholic: Media/Tech Companies, Part II by Bill Droel

The Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 is among the most significant chapters in U.S. labor relations history. Homestead, Pennsylvania is just south of Pittsburgh, on the west bank of the Monongahela River.  Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) owned the prosperous steel mill there. Some of its workers were highly skilled and belonged to a craft union, Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Carnegie was determined to break this union. He cut wages. Knowing there would be trouble, he enlisted the Pinkerton Detective Agency to assist him. At that time Pinkerton employed more agents than the U.S. Army had soldiers. The 1892 event resembled a naval siege; the union was eventually broken.

Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in The New Yorker (8/27/18), reminds us that several months before the Homestead Strike Carnegie wrote a pamphlet about disposing of one’s fortune. Titled The Gospel of Wealth (www.carnegie.org), it argues against a big inheritance for one’s children. It also argues against handing out money to the poor. Instead, Carnegie said the wealthy have an obligation to endow institutions that benefit the public—universities, libraries, cultural centers and more. 

The juxtaposition of Carnegie’s pamphlet and his management of Homestead Steel “made explicit” to critics “the inconsistency of Carnegie’s position,” Kolbert writes. “How could a person ruthlessly exploit his employees and, at the same time, claim to be a benefactor of the toiling masses?” Why, for example, didn’t Carnegie endow a pension fund for his employees?

Carnegie was not alone. When it comes to charity, most companies and foundations in our country are guided by the so-called Protestant business ethic. Deserving individuals or the public at large are assisted by targeted programs or enrichment venues. However, the programs never challenge the system and the benefactors never question “too deeply how it is they came to do so well,” Kolbert concludes.

The attitude of 19^th and 20^th century industrial titans parallels that of our 21^st century tech titans and their admirers. The big tech players today—the founders, the original investors and the elite engineers—are technology determinists. As Evgeny Morozov puts it in To Save Everything Click Here (Perseus Books, 2013), each and every application of technology is “inherently good in itself, regardless of its social or political consequences.”  In fact, if someone happens to notice a social problem, then its solution is more technology. Homelessness, to give an extreme example, is tolerable with an app that makes streets feel like home. Or as a Google executive said: If you want to solve economic problems, create more entrepreneurs. 

Central to the philosophy of the tech leaders is their belief that they are doing something for the greater good, both in their business ventures and in their philanthropic enterprises. Some of them are sincere. Their frame of reference from high school all the way to their current position never included concepts like structural evil or the priority of labor or even an obligation to the common good (which is not the same as calculation of a common denominator). 

When it comes to their big charity ventures, explains Anand Giridharadas in Winners Take All (Alfred Knopf, 2018), the high-tech players plus their financial and political admirers assume a noble posture. They cannot imagine that their good intentions might actually be making things worse. There is no need to consider any systematic change, they presume. Inequality cannot be causing more suffering because doesn’t the economy allow for universal opportunity?

 The big stage for tech philanthropy is the conference circuit. Events are held on Cape Cod, in Silicon Valley, in Colorado, often in Manhattan, maybe in Switzerland or France. Headliners often include Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and movie starlets. They are joined by guests who have a startup project in Los Angeles or Africa. These events are low on content, high on puff, says Giridharadas. Key phrases at the conference include incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring, empowering and the like.  

The leaders of big tech companies want to do good, they say. But they never challenge power arrangements in our society. All of this, I suppose, is too much of a moral burden to place on someone who simply hails an Uber ride or orders through Amazon.  But today’s tech industry is far from morally neutral. It warrants moral consideration. To be continued…

Droel edits a printed newsletter about faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

What's Brewing in the Miller Park Cauldron for the Dodgie Dodgers Who Claim to be Angels?

October 2018. Purley, London ( just this side of the Gates)


Gosh Hader is the Master Brewer of the Crew potions.  His ingredients are Yuckie water from the Kinnickinnic River, stale Whitefish from the Bay, and Milorganite fertilizer from Jones Island.

The eagle keeper Aguilar will release the Eagles ( aguilas) to attack the Dodgie Dodgers as they are overwhelmed by the brew.


Happy Halloween to all and remember the 'fifth of November' and drink responsibly.

THE ORIGIN OF THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS

Alternative baseball history based on alternating facts

The Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers will compete for a World Serious Championship this year – both with a German heritage. 

   The Milwaukee Brewers were a Charter member of the American League in 1900.  At that time Milwaukee was a German immigrant town with German newspapers and German spoken in the streets. In  1902 the franchise moved to St. Louis changing their name to the ‘Browns’ then moved on to Baltimore in 1953 as the ‘Orioles.’  The Brewers minor league team did well.  One of their players, home run hitter, Joe Unser (Unser Choe Unser) was a folk hero.   However, the Brewers as Brewers never did win a World Series, but came close in 1982.  

   As for the Dodgers, they were originally from Dodge County, Wisconsin.  They were founded by a German immigrant businessman, Herr Bubi Pferdscheiße.  Their home field was in Baraboo, in Dodge County and they were called the Baraboo ‘Bubis.’  Lutheran Pastor Rev. Constipation Wartburger did not like the name and it was changed to the Dodge County Dodgers.  The Dodgers kept their name when they moved to Brooklyn and then to Los Angeles.

   Does it matter who wins?  We can watch baseball and celebrate our immigrant heritage with bratwurst and sauerkraut – Best of all, let’s cheer for Aguilar and Machado - keep America Great.  

Bubi Pferdscheiße and his wife Brunhilda

The Working Catholic: Our Statue by Bill Droel

   The primary symbol of our country is our flag, the “stars and stripes.” Closely connected to our flag is the song Star-Spangled Banner, based on an 1814 poem by Maryland lawyer Francis Scott Key (1779-1843). It is customary to stand and doff one’s cap when our anthem is performed at the beginning of every sporting event. There is, by the way, no obligatory rubric about other songs at the ballpark. America the Beautiful, a 1910 tune by Katherine Bates and Samuel Ward, is not our national anthem, though some fans seem to think it is. Nor is there any compulsory ritual around the seventh inning song about Katie Casey, produced in 1908 by Jack Norwoth and Albert Von Tilzer. Likewise, fans can do and think what they like when the public address system blares out the 1978 song by Victor Willis and Jacques Morali, YMCA… So too in Boston with the 1969 song by Neil Diamond, Sweet Caroline.  

Our country’s second most important symbol is the Statue of Liberty. Whereas the U.S. flag is revered mostly by U.S. residents and those of us serving or working overseas, the “Statue of Liberty is the world’s most universally recognized symbol,” writes Steve Fraser in Class Matters (Yale University Press, 2018). What does it symbolize? “Above all, Lady Liberty is thought of as the patron saint of hard-pressed immigrants.” Our statue in the Upper New York Bay stands for “an uplifting promissory note.”

The statue has a conflicted history and was not always associated with immigrants, Fraser recounts, as does Tyler Anbinder in his massive City of Dreams (Houghton, Mifflin, 2016).

It was 1865 when Edouard Rene de Laboulaye (1811-1883) first proposed a gift from his fellow French citizens to the citizens of the U.S. in recognition of our country’s extension of liberty to former slaves. His project went slowly. Frederic Bartholdi (1834-1904), a sculptor, joined the effort. The original completion date having past, the goal then became delivery to the U.S. for the 100^th anniversary of our independence. As the days went by, the theme for the proposed statue came to include a beacon of liberty to those still under regressive or colonial governments. The motivation of the French committee, writes Fraser, was “to inspire and memorialize their dedication to a stable, middle-class society.” It was not so much to have “a monument to the nation that had pioneered in inventing [liberty],” to the U.S. The premise was that both France and the U.S. “cherished learning, enterprise, peaceable commerce and republican liberties.”

No matter the theme, the project remained in low gear. Finally in 1880 the French committee delivered the statue in crates to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The statue’s eventual location in New York Harbor was assumed, but because the French committee was broke the U.S. was responsible for building a pedestal. Four government entities said no to an allocation for the project. Likewise, several wealthy people here declined to donate.

A stateside committee held a fundraiser; an auction of original paintings and literary pieces. It was a bust; only $1,500 was raised. One item in the November 1883 auction was well received: The New Colossus, a poem by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887).

It looked like the statue might forever be warehoused in crates. But in March 1885 Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), a Hungarian immigrant, ridiculed the wealthy in his newspaper and called upon working families to send along their nickels. The common people responded; the pedestal was built; a dedication was held in October 1886. Of note: No mention of Lazarus, of her poem or of immigration was made at that ceremony. Thus for many years the statue was a symbol mostly for French-U.S. friendship and vaguely for liberty as an exportable ideal.

The common people enter the story once again. In 1903 friends of Lazarus had the 14-line The New Colossus inscribed on a bronze plaque and with permission installed it inside the statue, on the second-floor landing. The theme of welcome to immigrants, especially the thousands who arrive in this harbor, was making a slow comeback. In 1945 the poem was moved to the main entrance of Lady Liberty. It was then, Fraser writes, that “the Statue of Liberty became the symbol we have assumed it always was.” The statue, the famous poem, Liberty Island and nearby Ellis Island are now basically one, and together are firmly associated with our country’s grand experiment in pluralism, with the compassion of our citizens and with the gratitude nearly all of us feel for the opportunities that this great country gave our ancestors.

New York City is inexhaustible. But all visitors and residents need to find the Liberty Island/Ellis Island ferry in Battery Park at the bottom of Manhattan. Here’s one way to reflect on what your tour means: Look to the bow and see our country’s story of “huddled masses” and then look to the stern and see the great skyscrapers of finance. Fraser’s book can add to that reflection because he examines the tension between bow and stern, the give-and-take of our American Dream. The subtitle of Anbinder’s book is The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York. It too examines the reality of give-and-take.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629) a free newsletter about faith and work.

Technology and the Sabbath

 

We’ve learned that to be perpetually connected is to be perpetually distracted: Rabbi David B. Cohen, Congregation Sinai, Yom Kippur  2010

   Two lifelong buddies have traveled together, apart from their wives, every year for more than half a century of increasingly exotic outings. For their latest adventure, they decide on an ice-fishing trip to the Upper Peninsula. Late one very cold winter night, the two men tromp out onto the ice, loaded with gear. Just as they start to cut a hole for fishing, a voice booms out in the dark, “Don’t cut the ice!” Startled, one guy says to the other, “We’ve had too much to drink.” As they bend over to resume, the voice commands a second time, “Don’t cut the ice!” Once again they decide their imaginations are playing tricks on them. So they take up the saw, but for the third time the voice thunders, “Don’t cut the ice!” At that, one of the men peers up into the darkness and asks, “Is that you, God?” “No,” comes the reply, “It’s the rink manager.” Personally, I prefer to spend my time in Northern climes during the summer. My location of choice is Mount Desert Island, Maine, home of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. It’s a pristine setting, rocks meeting the sea, inland lakes surrounded by tall fir trees and mountains sculpted during the last ice age.  What Mount Desert Island doesn’t have is decent cell phone coverage or broadband Internet access. Well, that’s not entirely true; there’s WIFI at the public library, but it’s not close by. For us, going to Maine is a time to spend time differently, to read books, ride bicycles, play cards, go hiking, in short, to explore and experience.  I don’t want to over romanticize – we do, in fact, recreate some of the chaos of our lives here – our kids are overprogrammed and require lots of driving around; we’re constantly make plans with family and friends; but still, we try to live life without the electronic screen. In a sense it’s a lot of what we don’t get here. Here we have no time to ourselves, no time to think, to contemplate, to regroup. There we do.  The promise of technology was that it would save us time by automating routine tasks, like paying bills. It would keep us better connected with friends and loved ones. And it has done those things – just ask any grandparent who Skypes with grandchildren across the country. Without recent advances in technology our lives would be impoverished in many ways.  Yet, as technology kept its promise to keep us connected to each other, to our workplaces, to libraries, data banks, e-commerce, there were some unanticipated costs. The problem of technology is summed up in a television ad with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Jerry says, “Bill, you’ve connected over a billion people. What’s next?” The screen goes black and two words stand out in brilliant white: “Perpetually Connected.” Being perpetually connected must have sounded like a good idea, at least in some ad agency, but we have come to learn being perpetually connected comes with some very real human costs. 

 • An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal decries the loss of productivity as workers are distracted on average every three minutes by texts and email. With no small irony, this article appears on the web site flanked by an advertisement for the Journal’s newest electronic feature: STAY CONNECTED 24/7VIA EMAIL NEWSLETTERS AND ALERTS... FREE REGISTRATION SIGN UP TODAY • How many text messages do you think teenagers send a month? Those of you who made the mistake of not getting unlimited texting plans can probably answer. Teenagers now send an average of 2272 texts a month, twice the amount they sent last year. •  It’s hard for parents to convince their children to stay away from the screen when we ourselves can't go 20 minutes without checking our smart phones. • Author Stephen King said it was when he realized he was spending "almost half of each day's consciousness" facing screens that he decided to cut back. He said: "I don't think any man or woman on his or her death bed ever wished he or she had spent more time sending instant messages.” • And what about the content of those instant messages? Television writer and producer Bill Persky wrote an Op-Ed piece entitled “We’re Killing Communication” in which he complained that the new technology had brought him friends he didn't need and updates about their lives be didn't want, such as, "eating leftover lasagna" and "getting a colonoscopy.”

 Perpetually connected. Does this describe you?  Do you need to have the cell phone at arms reach? Do you automatically check email every five minutes?  Do you respond to email, even when you are on vacation, even when the recipient has already gotten a message saying you are on vacation and cant return the call? When you’re on vacation, is hotel WIFI access a deal breaker? You, my friend, are perpetually connected. Forget about wasting time – after all faddish pursuits have always been with us – but consider the glut of information you receive that you don’t need or want. Think about it: Fifteen years ago, did anyone use the phrase, “TMI”, too much information?  Don’t get me wrong. I am no luddite; I love technology, I am what they call an early adopter, acquiring the latest gadgets and refusing to read to manual. Yet, in the embrace of technology, I recognize a very real dilemma. What we have gained in broad-band’s breadth, we have lost in human depth. Our connected lives ensnare us so completely that we rarely have time to think, to contemplate, to reflect. We are losing depth in thought and feeling and relationships. And there’s the irony: we may be perpetually connected to the crowd, but the closer we get to the crowd, the further we recede from those closest to us, the more we lose touch with our own souls. 

    In short, being perpetually connected means our public life with the crowd overshadows our interior, private lives. We may have hundreds of facebook friends, but not many know us well.  We are not the first generation to deal with this crisis. Over the past few thousand years, periods of rapid technological change have upset the balance between people’s public social lives and their private, interior lives. What’s more, in every generation, seminal figures arose to provide strategies for reasserting the balance between public and private lives.  In his book, “Hamlet’s Blackberry”, William Powers describes the way influential thinkers negotiated periods of rapid technological change. I want to share some of their stories with you today, that we might glean from both western historical models, as well as Jewish models, a way to balance our public and our private lives.  Powers begins with the assumption that by virtue of our being perpetually connected, we are always in the midst of a crowd. From a Jewish perspective, being in the crowd has its advantages; after all, it is through relationships that we affect change in the world, and even come to know God.  But when does the crowd become too big? For Plato, twenty five hundred years ago, the growth of Athens as an urban center was a boon to philosophers who enjoyed the rhetorical give and take. Yet, he found that the crowd was oppressive, robbing him of time to think and reflect. He increasingly sought to be outside of the city, eventually establishing his academy in the country. Imposing distance allowed Plato to make the most of life in an increasingly, crowded, busy society. It allowed him to fulfill his teacher Socrates’ goal: Give me beauty in my inner soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one.” Plato’s dilemma remains with us today in our perpetual connectedness; no matter where we go, if there’s a cell phone in our pocket, the crowd is always with us. A Jewish teacher suggests a way to escape. Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav was a practioner of hitbodedut, of wandering outside in the country, thinking, meditating, reflecting, deliberating. Like the Biblical Isaac, who conversed with God in his late afternoon walks in the fields, Nachman found a different kind of connectedness, not with his fellow man, but with the heart of the Universe.  Five hundred years after Plato, the poet and Roman statesman Seneca encountered a different imbalance between the public and private spheres. Leaving the city, as Plato had, didn’t solve Seneca’s problem. As Seneca himself put it: “The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet, will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.” The solution for Seneca was to narrow his focus from the crowd to the individual. He accomplished this most often through writing letters. Seneca found the writing of a letter as a place to have a private, reflective, moment.  Through this he found “inner distance” a way to remove himself from his surroundings, to have an audience of one.

   In his own way, Seneca was creating the conditions for what Martin Buber, two thousand years later, would call an “I-Thou” relationship. Rather than relating to those around us as instruments to fulfill our own needs, Buber suggested that beyond such utilitarian relationships are truer, more authentic, relationships that obtain when two souls connect, through the medium of God. Like Buber, Seneca aimed to reclaim a quality of presence in the world. And he wanted to do it through relationships with others.  Fifteen hundred years later, Gutenberg ushered in a period of transformative technological change, the creation of the printing press. We most often think of his invention as the beginning of an information revolution, the widespread dissemination of information that had heretofore been held by a chosen few. Yet, the printing press was an essential technology of inwardness. Before its invention, reading was a public activity. People didn’t read to themselves. Instead, public readings were the norm. Now, however, people could have a personal relationship with a text Reading became an immersive experience. As Poet Willliam Stafford put it: “Closing the book, I find I have left my head inside.” Our era of perpetual connectedness has made reading a complicated business. It began with the hyperlinking of text, when certain words in electronic documents appear in the color blue, indicating that if you click on that work, you’ll be instantly transported elsewhere to learn more in depth about that topic. As a research tool, hyperlinks are a Godsend, making quick work of what used to take hours of research. But it also makes reading a less linear experience. Endless diversions appear in the text. What’s more, the recent batch of e-readers, like the Kindle or the Ipad increasingly are bundled with software that enables users to surf the web during the course of reading, toggling between sports, weather, news, email, and oh yes, the book they were reading. Why is this a problem? There’s a difference between access to information and the experience of it. Technology that encourages multitasking while reading encourages access to the detriment of experience.  For Jews, reading Torah is the way we commune with God, learn from our people’s experience, and access their wisdom. the concept of hyperlinking text derives directly from the rabbis’ habit of comparing words and phrases from one holy book to the next. Yet, experiencing the life of literature requires uninterrupted attention to narrative. Sports scores and weather maps can only detract from that experience.  Society, has on occasion, resisted technological advances. Author William Powers describes his own recent infatuation with moleskin writing pads, a decidedly low tech way to take notes. In his book, Hamlet’s Blackberry, he describes how Shakespeare gave his character a set of tables, which were erasable writing pads on which Hamlet took notes – in one case to remember to avenge his father’s murder most foul. An advance over the wax tablets that had been in vogue for centuries, Hamlet’s table was a small notebook of specially coated paper that could be erased and reused. The technology was so popular even Thomas Jefferson owned one. It was portable, and allowed the used to preserve just the information she needed, and nothing more.  Hamlet’s table undercuts a widely held assumption: that when new technology comes along it immediately supersedes what came before. In fact, some times the opposite occurs. Older technology enjoys a resurgence. When Gutenberg’s press made books commonplace, the common man was inspired to write, but lacking a printing press of his own, turned to older technology – handwriting. Enthusiasm for writing led to the creation of pencils and fountain pens. Witness the more current locovore and slow food movement, both of which eschew modern food production for more traditional methods.  And sometimes, it turns out the older methods are better than the latest technology. A few winters ago, Conde Nast Traveler magazine sent out three reporters to Moscow, one equipped with a blackberry, one with an iphone, and one with a hard copy guidebook. They were given a series of tourist challenges to complete in the frigid metropolis, such as finding a great cheap restaurant, and locating a pharmacy open at midnight. The low-tech contestant won. After the article ran, one reader wrote in: “I have traveled successfully around the world armed with nothing more than a dog eared guidebook and a friendly smile… As any seasoned traveler will tell you, the kindness of strangers can be relied upon anywhere. Just don’t be too absorbed in your blackberry to notice.” The promise and problems of technology: • Plato’s retreat from the city of Athens enabled him to balance his public and private lives, so that the outward and inward might be at one.”

 • Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav’s practiced hitbodedut, wandering in the field, reflecting, meditating, deliberating, renewing his inner dialogue;

 • Seneca realized that writing was a way to establish an authentic relationship with another;

• Martin Buber’s identified the ideal I-Thou relationship.  His aim, like Senecas’s, to reclaim a quality of presence in the world.

• Gutenberg brought the interior experience of reading to the masses; 

• Shakespeare illustrated how the old tools are sometimes the best; 

 And what about today? How can we overcome technology’s persistent tendency to throw our public and private lives into imbalance?   The answer is found in the oldest Jewish practice, Shabbat. Shabbat is the Jewish antidote to civilization. It is the insistence that to be fully human, we have to regularly break our routine and concentrate on the essentials. 

 • To rediscover Solitude – establish distance between ourselves and the bustling world.

 • To restore Mindfulness – pay attention to the world around us.

• To restore interior life – pay attention to the world within us.

• And to restore relationships – Reclaim a quality of presence in the world. 

 So try an experiment this week. Pick one day, perhaps even the Jewish Sabbath, and unplug your modem for 24 hours. If you need to, put a message on your email saying you’re unavailable for a day. See what happens. Tdell people you’re taking a facebook fast.  I promise Shabbat will surprise you. Mark Bittman, food columnist for the NYTimes, wrote about a secular Sabbath he took after he checked his email while on an airplane and realized he was a techno addict. He swore off one day a week and was amazed at the transformation. He wrote: " this achievement is unlike any other in my life."  At first, not having access to google to look up needed information will be annoying. Not being able to check email will be an inconvenience. But little by little, you should notice a change in atmosphere. You’ll be living in the present, able to just be in one place, doing one thing, and enjoying it.  Remember, even God needed to take a day for Shabbat. The Torah tells us that after six days of creation, shavat vayinafash, God took a break. VaYinafash means, and God took a breath. Pretty food advice for us, as well. Ans Vayinafash means something more. The word nefesh means soul. That God, shavat vayinafash means that in taking a breath, in breaking routine, God’s soul was strengthened and enriched.  In this new year, 5771, may we be inscribed for a year of spiritual renewal, perhaps by: 

• Unplugging just one day a week; 

• Rediscovering Solitude • Restoring Mindfulness 

• Reinvigorating our interior life 

• And restoring our relationships That our presence might be a source of enduring blessing to the world.

Amen

The Working Catholic: Media and Meaning, Part I by Bill Droel

      There is a serious downside to use of computers and mobile devices, according to recent medical and social science reports. Several essays and books likewise point to the danger. Nonetheless concerned parents or stressed-out workers still reach superficial or incorrect conclusions about the internet and tech devices. For example, some well-meaning people say internet problems are due strictly to content. Don’t view porn and other trash, they continue, and you will be OK.

To better understand the influence of technology, learn something about the founders of some important companies—their philosophy, the culture of their businesses and more.

It feels odd to distinguish between the old internet and the new internet. The old internet was a tool for the military and for research facilities. As it grew, the internet had a populist aura. The feeling was that the internet is a friendly companion, a community, an extended family of pioneers. That language is still around but it does not apply to the new internet. By about 1995 the internet had become fully commercial. Yes, the content of the internet ranges over every taste, perspective and interest. But it is largely controlled by a small number of companies. The big players in today’s internet business oppose ideas of democracy and communal decentralization, writes Jonathan Taplin in Move Fast and Break Things (Little Brown, 2017). “The dominant philosophy of Silicon Valley [is] based far more heavily on radical libertarian ideology.”

Modernity (which dates from 1500, let’s say) remarkably elevates the dignity of each individual. This is a singular achievement. No longer can someone’s career or lifestyle be determined by the caste of one’s parents.  No longer can someone be denied opportunity because of one’s ethnic group or gender. Of course, modernity does not always deliver on its promise. But compared to pre-1500 days, modern individuals enjoy immense freedom. 

Libertarians take the otherwise good notion of a liberated individual to its extreme. They believe that, writes Taplin, attaining one’s individual happiness is the only moral purpose of life. That doesn’t mean that a libertarian walks down the block and knocks over older people in the way. A libertarian might sponsor a youth outing or visit the elderly. Simply that the criteria for any behavior is its potential to reward the individual actor—be it financially, psychologically or even spiritually, when defined in an individualistic way.

The big players of the new internet are moral arbiters each onto him alone (and it is a white male culture). They oppose any universal governance of the internet. They succeed—by their definition of success—because they are free to break the bonds, to go beyond, to be above, to push anything aside in the name of liberty. Taplin says their credo is: “Who will stop me.” The men who created the new internet “believed that they had both the brilliance and the moral fortitude to operate outside the normal strictures of law and taxes” and other restraints. They “truly believe that technology can deliver happiness” by its very nature. Thus critical to the success of the big tech companies “is the ability to maintain the illusion that they are working for the greater good even while pursuing policies that serve only their own needs.” Some tech giants give away money and sponsor anti-poverty programs. It is possible that in doing so some of the tech giants are totally sincere. In fact, for some the illusion is their reality.

 We take the internet for granted; likewise cyberspace, the dish and cable box, mobile devices, apps and programs of all kinds. This technology is our default position. We don’t concern ourselves with the philosophy of the internet’s big owners. We assume the best whenever our mobile device helps us hail a ride or when our computer allows us to post a blog. We take it as obviously correct when Mark Zuckerberg says, “To improve the lives of millions of people [connect them] to the internet.” We hardly consider the downside of Zuckerberg and others promoting a world of isolated individuals who fend for themselves with a lifeline called the internet. We are content enough with the assumption that the way to better health care is through more and faster connections to web-doctors, cyber-insurance plans and computer-linked pharmacies with a drive-up window staffed by a robot. Better education? On-line courses. Better work experience? Robot colleagues. Better sports fandom? Watch the game on one’s own device…at the stadium, no less.

Is tech really an improvement? Or at a minimum a neutral force? A subsequent column will consider tech presumptions in light of Catholic philosophy.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a print newsletter on faith and work.