The Algorithm, King Solomon, and Goldberry.
Why I've Decided To Scrub Social Media From My Life And Stop Worrying
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity…
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.”
— Ecclesiastes 1:1, 1:8-11
“In obscurity and silence and absurdity and violence the quiet reminded me that the surest sign I don't understand is to be sure that I do. I knew more before I knew more.”
— Levi the Poet in The Dark Night of the Soul
I went out to the deserts of Nevada and Utah over the early winter to wander around with my father and brother. We climbed arid sage brush mountains and strayed in Mars-red desert canyons. It was haunted and holy, and I had come for a personal reason that smuggled itself beneath the veneer of tourism.
You see, for years now, my mind has been a haze. They say we all have ADD or something, and that’s definitely true for me, I guess. But recently it’s become worse. With the wars *over there*, the cultural maelstrom here in America, the looming threat(?) of global annihilation at the hands of politically convenient Titans, and the general uptick in speed and frenetic cultural pants-pissing, I’ve become hollowed out.
You see, ever since *TheVirusThatWon’tBeNamed*, I’ve noticed a change, a shift in the weather of my personal and inner life. Perhaps you’ve noticed it as well.
The seas of our collective hearts and minds have been choppier and more agitated than I remember. The tempo of our inner dialogues have quickened, the ratio of peace-to-rage has tipped decidedly towards the latter, and the future horizons of our lives have shifted from sunny ambiguity to the clouded doom of black-pilled certainty.
Everything is evil and no one can be trusted and it is all going to end in a fiery heap of anger and blood. And now this philosophy of incognito nihilism and anti humanism (here meaning anti-people and anti-humanness), seems to have not only crept over and infected me, but has began to infect everyone around me. Everyone seems to have woken up with a brand new conspiracy theory, a new “hot take” on some social issue, and a brand new “babe, wake up! the new doomsday scenario just dropped” seems to pop up every day. It feels like we’re holding our breath and soon something will give and we’ll all pass out and wake up in a scattered mess of broken glass and silverware. The tight burning in the bottom of our suffocated lungs has begun and that fire is funneled into an anger and hopelessness that even I am falling victim to.
The apocalyptic Duracell Bunny in my mind has been beating a cadence I can’t keep up with. All is losing its color, its edge, and the things that once brought me the spark of vitality and Thumos are beginning to wane.
What did Bilbo Baggins say about bread and jam?
So anyway, I went to the desert and completely unplugged myself from the world just to see how it felt. No music, no podcasts, no audio books, no apps, no videos, no social media, nothing at all. Only the occasional text to my wife to check in. The worst that could happen was boredom - and wouldn’t that be nice for a change?
For me, the trip into the desert was a spiritual fast of silence and solitude. I’ve never tried shutting-the-hell-up and wandering out into the desert as Christ did (even in a microscopic way), so I thought I’d try it. I brought good books on Christian enchantment, scripture, a few holy icons, and a notebook and pen, and all my apathy - I hoped to find a deity I could give it all to.
I heard Christ might be the man for the job.
So, I entered the desert and felt her cold arms pull me in. Here’s what I noticed immediately:
The noise, the horrid static in my brain created by years and years of doom scrolling and rage-porn, ceased almost immediately.
My emotional tempo slowed as well. I wasn’t as reactive and volatile - I felt like I had bottled the stillness that allows specks of dust to hover golden and aloof in rays of sunlight inside the window. Remember, like when you were a child and had moments to notice such things. Peace, if only for a moment, settled on me like a blanket. I could breathe.
I did, out of job-related necessity, have to download Facebook to check on something and, unsurprisingly, but startlingly, I opened the app and immediately felt the panic and the noise rush in like a screaming legion of devils. I felt the noise rise, the cortisol tap turn on and begin to fill the sink, and my heart rate quicken. I did my business and deleted the app immediately.
The issue with the “machine” of modernity is not that is merely distracts us and manipulates us - it’s that at some core ontological level, it reduces us and erodes our humanity away, bit by bit. Whatever it is to be human, the Machine hates it and wants to eat it.
I’ll admit that by temperament I am a luddite - a spiritual curmudgeon that would delight to see humanity return to the Dark Ages when poems and storytelling were our main form of entertainment and the edge of life was as razor sharp as the likelihood of the next barbarian raid. I feel that we’ve lost something vital to our being, a core module in our spiritual motherboards that has left us hobbled and hollow.
It’s not that we mindlessly consume, it’s that we don’t desire anything better for ourselves.
It’s not that we’re depressed, it’s that we don’t know to look for the wild and wooly face of Christ.
It’s not that the rage of nations has us gridlocked in Black Pilled retardation, it’s that we have accepted that they hold our ultimate destiny’s in their hands.
It’s not the we tremble under a million impending causes of death, it’s that we believe Death is the end.
It’s not that we have the burden of laboring under the systems we do, it’s that we don’t believe Sisyphus to be happy.
My moment in the desert allowed me to peek behind the curtain and glimpse the shoulder of Christ skipping by and I came away glowing, like Moses off the mountain peak.
I am resolved to begin crawling out of the cave I’ve been living in and to pursue whatever it means to be human. I want to smell and taste the goodness of God in the summer breeze, in the song of the Loon that nests in my trees, in the colors of the rabbit that lives under my shed in the backyard.
I wouldn’t know those little creatures were out there if I continued to rage scroll and screech about the people *over there* and whatever the lizards at the top are doing.
In the most holy way I can muster: I don’t care for it anymore.
God be praised, may I love what ought to be loved and taste what ought to be tasted. May I hate with the heat of hell all of that which pulls me away from my God and myself.
Care to join me?
“‘Fair lady Goldberry!’ said Frodo at last, feeling his heart moved with a joy that he did not understand. He stood as he had at times stood enchanted by fair elven-voices; but the spell that was now laid upon him was different: less keen and lofty was the delight, but deeper and nearer to mortal heart; marvelous and yet not strange. ‘Fair lady Goldberry!’ he said again. ‘Now the joy that was hidden in the songs we heard is made plain to me.’”