True Ancestor

Rav Dessler Takes Technology to Task

Thumbing through a volume of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler's Strive for Truth! (first published as Michtav Me-Eliyahu), I was struck by how prescient this modern Mussar master was, writing about technological advances from the vantage point of London in 1944. Rabbi Dessler must have been aware of the destruction overwhelming European Jewry even as he wrote: the essay on The destructive philosophy of materialism draws frequent comparisons between contemporary materialism and the "Generation of the Deluge," and warns that the desire to use technology to achieve happiness in the end guarantees only heartache:

If people become 'givers,' the world will be a wonderful place to live in, irrespective of technology. So long as they remain 'takers,' their efforts inevitably will be directed toward selfishness, violence and war. Every advance in technology will be used for destruction and ruin. For instance, the vast improvement in transport which we have witnessed in our time, the ability to reach any place on the globe within hours or days rather than weeks or months -- what a benefit to those who are bent on doing mitzvot! But on the other hand, what a danger it poses to humanity! Previously wars were localized, but now any war is likely to become a world conflict.

Rav Dessler notes that in Hebrew, every sharp instrument is a herev -- a sword. The Hebrew language, unique in the way its words point to the essence of things, recognizes the potential for evil inherent in all mankind, and all the inventions that leap from the human mind. This is why hewn stone couldn't be used in the building of the Temple: Any stone so shaped was molded with the help of an implement rooted in an evil intention.

In the essay, Dessler then gives a shocking tale from the Targum Yonatan about how at the last moments before the Flood, water burst forth from the ground, and people tried to stuff the cracks with the bodies of their children to hold back the waters.

Such, notes Dessler, was the cruelty of the generation that merited destruction -- a destruction that awaits us in different form.

...[T]he more men pursue the goal of developing the world materialistically, the more their troubles increase. Instead of realizing that they are sinking further and further into the mire of materialism, they search for ever more sophisticated technological devices, hoping that by these means they will eventually reach their coveted goal -- a life of physical ease and happiness in this world, without having to bother about the demands and challenges of the spiritual world. And when they see no hope of this for themselves, they make desperate efforts to ensure that at least their children will be able to enjoy materials happiness in this world ... and, figuratively speaking, they try to forestall with their childrens' bodies the inevitable collapse of the materialistic civilization.

Does this foreshadow the collision of faith and materialism in the world today? Or the 9/11 attacks, in which terrorists used technology to strike at a materialist nerve center?

Interestingly, when you Google Rav Dessler, you get some pre-9/11 writings by Orthodox rabbis saying that the tide of secular materialism is about to overwhelm the world. Some would say it's really a tide of religion, using technology to increase destructive capacity.

Me, I see Yeats' vision of the center not holding: the predominant religious energies of the world separate and retreat to one extreme, the secular energies to another -- allowing something terrible to up from the vacated center.

Avoiding this fate requires us to recognize that we are designed to be both secular and spiritual. We are meant to harness dark energies for light enterprises. We are challenged to turn enormous energy away from enormous destruction -- and the heartbreak is, some part of us is always tempted to do otherwise.

--T.A.

Bill, Number One and Me: Kingpins of Philanthropy

Brother-In-Law Number One, the CEO of our for-profit company, runs with a pretty high-falutin crowd.

This past weekend, he was taken by a friend, via private jet, to a members-only resort in Big Sky, Montana. The place currently has 300 members, and any one of these people probably has greater net worth than most African nations.

Number One was skiing with his 9-year-old daughter on Saturday, when a fellow skiied up and joined them on the lift. Number One introduced himself to the stranger.

"Hi," the stranger said. "I'm Bill."

Bill, Number One thought. Why does this "Bill" guy look familiar?

Oh, he said to himself. It's Bill. As in Gates.

And then Number One did a really cool thing. He could've told his daughter that she was riding the lift with the richest man on the planet, or the greatest businessman alive, or the guy who made her computer games possible.

But instead, Number One turned to his daughter and said: "Claire, you should be very honored to be in this man's presence. He's done more to save and improve the lives of children in Africa than anybody in the world."

Claire smiled up at Bill Gates and said, cheerily: "Thank you!"

On their ride up the mountain, Bill and Number One talked some about business, but mostly about philanthropy. Number One allowed as how he's involved in philanthropy, too.

And what philanthropy did he tell Bill Gates about?

Why, my Little Non-Profit That Could!

It's kind of cool that Bill Gates knows about Full Circle Communities, Inc. I wonder if Bill's people will be calling...?

--T.A.

In Which the One True Wife Succumbs to the Tyranny of Voice Mail

It had to happen eventually.

Last week, the One True Wife's noble experiment in doing without home voice mail ended with her surrender to the phone company.

Upon her surrender, the Wife discovered that, upon ordering the basic voice mail package, our monthly phone bill actually will go down by two dollars a month. This struck me as a perverse and insidious message from the phone company, the message being: We've got you now. We'll make so much friggin' money off you, we'll even give you some of it back each month. After all, they now have a dedicated, proprietary, low- to no-cost advertising pipeline dumping directly into our home. They can leave us a little sale-mail anytime they want.

Of course, moms of Gabe's friends can now reach the elusive Wife either at home or on the road. Deliverers of goods, doctors' offices confirming appointments, Middle Daughter's school -- all those people and institutions that have our home number as the preferred point of contact -- can now leave the little opal-blue light on top of our cordless phones blinking madly, begging for attention.

This seems especially ironic in light of this comment, over at me True Ann-Sister's post on a very different but really fascinating topic; and this article revealing, among other things, how much time we spend consuming (or being consumed by) media; and this excerpt from an NPR story last week on "Blackberry Orphans".

I am building toward a book, or at least an extended rant, on the subject of the emptying of our souls (and particularly Jewish souls) by technology. But in the meantime I refer you to the book Amba speaks about here, and to this one, too, which contains this ominous passage:

[O]ur stone-age biology and our information-age lives grow ever more mismatched. . . As societal roles become yet more complex, specialized, and far removed from our inborn predispositions, they require increasing years of rehearsal to master, while providing fewer visceral rewards . . . Even the most successful individuals often find their work boring, difficult, unnatural, and unsatisfying, more like a sustained circus performance than a real life. Caffeine substitutes for natural adrenaline. Those original activities that do remain--eating and child raising, for instance--are often squeezed by the strange new tasks. The mismatch between instinct and necessity induces alienation in the midst of unprecedented physical plenty.

By the standards of our inherited tribal psychology, we are sick and crazy. Physically, however, we are healthier and live longer than ever, and we have vastly more options in every sphere of activity. Few city-dwellers would be prepared to adopt the circumscribed life in a stone-age forest village, despite uneasiness with their own. . . The world is rushing away from our ancestral roots ever faster, stretching the limits of both our biological and institutional adaptability.

Please leave a message. I mean, stay tuned.

--T.A.

I have a crush on Ms. Dewey

She's the perfect woman: exotic, mysterious, multi-ethnic, dramatic, comedic, impatient. Dressed in black, with copper-colored hair and a plunging neckline, she stands in front of a screen showing digital-age office buildings and freeway on-ramps. She's always in the middle of something else when I bring up her page, but she drops everything for me. She's witty, offbeat, a little wild.

And smart as hell.

Yes: I think I have a crush...on Ms. Dewey.

As her program is loading, she'll coax that loading bar along, cracking a hint of an erotic smile as it reaches its full length. Then I'll just sit there, watching her watch me. 

She'll wait forever, by turns sultry and imperious, winsome and weird. I'll look stuff up, just to hear her commentary. When I do a search on Quantum Theory: "Ah, yes, the Arts: the last refuge of the mathematically challenged." Jay -Z: "Of all the seaches in the Universe, that was definitely -- one of 'em." Teleology: "You know, I don't think people spend enough time thinking about that topic."

As she waits, she'll flick rubberbands at me, knock on the "screen" and say, "Anyone there?" Write in a journal; she gets irritable if I pull up another page and ignore her. "Hello," she'll say, pointing the text bar underneath her, "write something here!!"

And yet she doesn't know I exist.

Ah, the perfect mate for the digital age.

--T.A.

How Not to Be Present While On the Road:

Drive a car that's not about driving.

After all, who wouldn't want a car that sucks you into the Matrix?

Meet the New Waste...

Never let it be said the U.S. doesn't export.

Boy, do we export. And how.

Welcome to the age of "e-waste," the computer components and materials that sit in haphazard landfills in poor countries. In the next 18 months, we'll toss out enough computers and peripherals to create a 22-story pile of waste that would cover all of L.A.

(Hmmm....)

Luckily for L.A., most of this e-waste will be sent to China, India, Pakistan and other unlucky nations, where it will release its toxins on the men, women and children who live near the stuff, or work for pennies trying to salvage it for reuse or resale.

I'm thinking about this because I made a lot of trash today. This morning, I got rid of an old computer. Really old, in computer-years; almost 9 in people-years. A guy who's helping me make all these complicated techno-decisions was reluctant to take any of it: his house if full of monitors, cables, mice (mouses?!), vivisected hard-drives; still, he knows some nonprofits and micro-businesses that will take the old hard drive, and maybe a homeless shelter where the computer could use the speakers. The bulky monitor, however, with a back end like a caboose, will go in the trash, along with the manuals and the disks that came with it.

Then, tonight, I took my kids to a food court for dinner. We had a lot of fun. We told Gabe he smelled like pea soup. We made fun of shoppers in the mall, and of each other. We talked about our respective days. We sampled the riches of the American smorgasbord. And, what with the wrappings and napkins and plates and bags and plastic-ware, we probably created about two and a half pounds of trash.

So we contributed mightily to our gross national product.

Trash is karma made manifest. It tells the story of your efforts, of the care and efficiency, the mindfulness around which your life is built. As a nation, our areas of expertise aren't care and efficiency, they're novelty and volume. We've gone from exporting steel and autos and washing machines and soft drinks -- the byproducts of muscle and zeal and desire and a tireless obssession with growth -- to exporting refuse and exhaust (and Ashlee Simpson).

We are nothing if not enterprising, so we reinvent ourselves: a-ha! We know stuff. So now our main commodity is information. Technology disgorges, organizes and moves information at lightning speed, but when the pieces of that vehicle fail, or become obselete, they become e-waste.

Meanwhile, barges bursting with old hard drives, tape backup drives, joysticks, monitors and floppies are huffing over to China, where some kid will slice up his fingers and get mysteriously ill while getting paid 4 cents a day to dismantle the stuff.

So what can be done?

• Hold onto that VCR. And those videotapes. The kids will find the technology quaint, and will treasure the contents as well.
• Find the local nonprofits that take and use old computers. Give them your old computers, cables, DVD players, floppy disks.
• Don't upgrade obssessively unless you can find a home for your old stuff.
• And please, remind me not to go to the food court again anytime soon.

--T.A.

Told ya.

More on why too much communication is too much of a good thing.

--T.A.

Feel like throwing somebody around?

This woman has volunteered to let you chuck her hither and yon in a very funny and disturbing way.

UPDATE:

I posted this an hour ago, and it's still giving me the creeps... perhaps I should get rid of it?

--T.A.

Our Collective Curse: NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder)

On one of my mid-afternoon blog-travels (I guess that would make this a blogalogue?), I came across Jim Baca's blog and this fascinating reference to a book positing direct links between lack of access to the outdoors and Attention Deficit Disorder in kids.

He bashes Neo-cons, tells personal anecdotes and posts pictures. What really caught my attention, though, is the picture of the fanciful, WPA-built park in which he and his sister played, and where his love of the land was forged. And the book on NDD.

That was yesterday's post. Interestingly, in today's post, Baca, a former mayor of Albuquerque, bemoans the lack of connectivity in the U.S., and links to Thomas Friedman's column on that subject in the New York Times. He says the political party that promises, and delivers, the spread of technological infrastructure will be the next dominant party.

NDD: now that's an epidemic that could do this country in.

--T.A.

Cell phone-challenged

I adore the One True Wife. She is a small woman but a tower of strength. She has a fine sense of humor as part of a wide-ranging mind.

And it's a good thing, because her ineptitude with 21st-century gadgetry borders on the absurd and shows that even she has limits. It may not be her fault at all: she seems to exude some kind of force field of negative ions that renders machines berserk.

She recognizes this, I think. Aside from checking e-mail, she limits her exposure to gadgets, and theirs to her.

The one gadget she simply cannot do without is, of course, her cell phone, which she uses to move me and her children around like remote-control robots, and to contend with family members who simultaneously cannot stand each other and cannot stand to be without each other. The following have happened, or nearly happened, within the past six months:

• We are at a concert, a play, or even a funeral. There is a faint, musical buzz. First, the One True Wife looks around, startled, wondering who would be so rude and oblivious as to not turn off their cell phone. Then, she realizes it's her. She dives into her purse, almost disappearing into it completely. In the same way that socks seem to slip from dryers into an alternate universe, her cell phone, once in her purse, is tugged toward another dimension. By the time she finds it, her curiosity gets the better of her: she has to look and see who has had the temerity to call.
• We are at a noisy event: a ballgame, say, or a kids' party. Her purse begins to glow and tremble. In an effort to be unobtrusive -- in the manner of the old lady at the matinee who unwraps her sweets very slowly -- the One True Wife tries to rummage quietly toward the alternate cell phone universe. She inevitably becomes rumpled, frazzled, a hysterical mime, and yet misses the call. She glowers at the phone's display, only to discover she has missed 13 other calls.
• We're at a restaurant with friends. Her purse is stowed, unobtrusively, out of reach. All at once, everyone at the table becomes vaguely aware that the environment has changed -- something diaphanous has been pierced. It is our eardrums. The phone, drowning in a sea of keys, cards, photos and compacts, is calling for a lifeline. The One True Wife hurtles across the table to reach the unobtrusively stashed purse, plunges her hand into the purse as if the hand were on fire and the purse were a bucket of icewater. She flips the phone open at the last minute -- and then glares at the display until she can figure out who the call is from. This last bit of choreography can take several seconds. The rest of us at the table, caught up in the breathless drama, the crescendoing tension -- will she get to the phone on time? Stay tuned! -- are thrown off by this anticlimax, as the caller must as well; it's like coming up for air but not being allowed to breathe.
• I am driving. The One True Wife is in the passenger seat, from whence issues a staccato fugue of beeps and boops, punctuated by bursts of invective: she is trying to reprogram the ring. In the process, she's changed the phone's default language to Urdu.
• We are at home, all five of us, engaged in our parallel activities. There is a nebulous ringing. The One True Wife, at her desk, yells for someone to answer the phone. We all yell back in unison that we can't -- it's not the house phone, it's her cell phone. She leaps up from her desk, bashes her knee on the sharp corner, yelps like Homer Simpson being castrated, and lurches through the house trying to locate the phone. The call goes into voice mail just as she flips open the phone.

For purposes of satire, some of these have been exaggerated. None of them is entirely untrue, let's put it that way.

I should also say that she is so efficient at multi-tasking that it may not be fair to make gentle fun of her this way. I'll let you be the judge of that. I also am full of amazement at the complexity of purses. Sometimes little more than envelopes, they seem to contain entire sections of Home Depot. (I'm hesitant to apply whatever the female correlative of the word "phallic" is, but it would "fit" here.)

This whirling, fumbling, display makes me know that I love her all the more: in addition to all she is and does, she is an astonishing and totally helpless physical comedian, a wonderful "straight man," and living evidence of the supernatural. She can crash a hard drive with a glance.

What's not to love?

--T.A.