7 Schmaltzy Takes: Empathy and Wonder Edition

Wonder Moments, Commodifying Attention, The Titanic, Toxic Empathy, Bodies and Souls, Princess Problems, Fatou (the full album), and Read the Comments

File: WASHERWOMAN IN A LANDSCAPE .jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Well, it’s Friday, and I’ve done all the laundry in my house. How is such a feat even humanly possible? you ask. Well, what I did was, I perched my computer on the washing machine, organized the growly cheweeny in his bed at my feet, piled the heaps of unwashed loads of clothes around me to block out Portia the Puppy and also to remind me that life is full of disappointment and tribulation, and then I furiously typed as many articles as I could, reaching over to turn the dryer on as soon as it switched off. Which, in the beginning of the day, was like every four minutes, but by the end of the day was as much as twenty minutes or half an hour. Is technology, like nature, healing itself? Does it have to be continually in use to remember what its wretched job is? I don’t know, and probably never will. Let’s see, are there some takes?

one

As I said yesterday, I’m picking my way through The Book of Belonging: Bible Stories for Kind and Contemplative Kids by Mariko Clark. This is a “Wonder Moment” slotted in between a retelling of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3:

People who love God believe so many different things about Bible stories, especially this one! Who wrote down the story? Did God write the story or did people? Is it somehow both? Did this really happen, or is it a beautiful poem of wondering? Is it somehow both? Was it seven actual days, or seven long seasons? How many species were created?

So many wonderful questions! And guess who loves questions? God!

Think about how cozy and special you feel when someone asks you about your day or wants to learn more about your favorite foods or hobbies. God made us to belong with God! That means God wants to be close and cozy with us. So all questions are welcome!

Hopefully, you will spend your whole life asking important questions about God. Sometimes there will be easy answers. Sometimes you will decide on one thing and change your mind as you learn more. And sometimes you get to giggle and throw your hands up and decide, That is something only God can understand!

Here is what we do know: Bible stories were written a very, very long time ago. Long before most of the science we use today. Long before most of the history we have today. The people who wrote these stories wanted us to know God. So although we get to wonder and giggle and chat about so many questions, the most important one is this: What does this story teach us about God?

I scrolled ahead and found that the fall of Adam and Eve will occur in this text so that will be interesting. What I have a teeny bit of a problem with in this precious “Wonder Moment” is the idea that a little child would be able to be “cozy” with God. That and the giggling give me a heaping measure of pause, pressed down, shaken together.

Having worked with children for a good long while now, one of the greatest needs of the youngest child—aside from safety and security—is solemnity. They understand, intuitively, that God is holy and yet that they are invited to come into his presence. So far, this attempt at a Bible for children strikes me as more suited to the needs of the adult than the actual child. The questions, in particular, are not the kind that children generally ask. They want to know how old God is, not how many supposed authors of Isaiah there were. We shall see, we shall see.

two

I’m also very slowly going through Anton Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making: The Nature of Digital Formation. Several lines from the introduction made me stop and stare disconsolately into the middle distance. This bit:

Technology’s issue has always been to overcome the friction of time, space, matter, and natural circumstance generally: to harness and master the elements, to monitor their use, to surmount their obstinancy to our purposes. Information technology has — in its’ capacity for total speed, connection, and ubiquity — achieved one version of this objective once and for all. The system as such is neither here nor there; its work is done in no time. (I mean: no human time, no time to speak of.) As nothing seems to intervene between our thinking and our doing; it is now our paradigm for what is completely hand, for usefulness itself.

And this one:

We are ourselves the subject matter of digital technology and not only in the sense that it up to us what kinds of phenomena to measure, but because we are ourselves its most important objects of measurement.

And finally:

Rather than acting on things through time and matter (as other tools do), and rather than communication through time and matter (as other media do), digital technology acts on and communicates through the behavior, thinking, and attention of human beings as such. The digital era thus marks the point at which our concern will be mainly the control of human nature through our control of what we are aware of and how we attend to it.

Shut up, Professor Barba-Kay, you don’t know me! Oh, never mind, apparently you do.

I know that a lot of people like to bash nostalgia and the past in general, but lately, I have been feeling a great sense of loss. And most of it has to do with technology. The more it intrudes upon my attention, the more I mourn the world as it was before when I was allowed to think about whatever I wanted without being molded and constrained by my phone and Grammarly. These “helpful” AIs are so unutterably intrusive. Besides not being allowed to have my own thoughts as I type—even something so small as an email—it sets me in the realm of quantification all the time.

It is one thing not to be able to measure up to God. It is quite another not to be able to measure up to the expectations of a “smart” phone that thinks I’ve gone over the edge on headphone use, as if it can determine what is good for me. Look, you dumb phone, I’m working when I have my headphones in. I’m doing things I need to do—listening to other people as closely as I can so that I can understand them, plugged into Zoom Morning Prayer, listening to the messages of people I know in real life who I care about. I’m trying to actually be connected to a living world, and yet the device wants me never to lose my sense of myself. It instantly always brings me back to the ground of technological being.

three

I loved this tweet so very much:

Maturity is realizing that in the film Titanic, Rose decides to throw away a $250 million pendant in memory of an unemployed man she slept with exactly once—a man who never even owned the necklace. She completely disregards the fact that the explorer who brought her to the wreck had built his entire career around finding that necklace. Yet, she held onto it for decades, on the off chance she’d end up at the wreck site again, just to chuck it into the ocean for no good reason… and croaks in his bed. Then goes and waltzes passed her husband in the afterlife to meet up with her 3 day fling! Meanwhile, she conveniently leaves out the part where she let Jack—the “three-day love of her life”—freeze to death because she couldn’t scoot over a bit on the giant door. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, her husband of many years might’ve liked to know she’d been hanging onto a $250 million necklace all that time? How about her granddaughter, who was caring for her? An early retirement fund, anyone? The real villain of Titanic? Ready for it? Not Cal, not even the iceberg—it was Rose. Still love that movie, though.

I didn’t love it. I hated that movie. It irritated me so very much. I just didn’t know why until I read this very tweet. Seriously, so much love and hate intermingle in my being for the internet.

four

Here is a little moment to add to the conversation about toxic or untethered empathy. A very kind and well-meaning young lady explains what it really is to be a woman.

Here is what she said if you didn’t want to follow the link:

I truly think that transwomen are the best of us, the best of us. And, not only do I not think that they take anything away from my experience as a cis-woman, I think that they are actually one of the purest forms of womanhood, and highlight some of the most beautiful parts of womanhood. Because what do you mean that in our patriarch-ial society you are going to throw away all of the privilege that you have as someone that was born a man and chose girlhood even when it means you have a life expectancy of forty, and you instantly become the most at risk woman in your society? Like, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. How does any woman see someone fighting that hard to be one of us and your gut reaction is to call them a man? No, babe, they’re more woman than you will ever be.

If you have a minute, though, you might want to click over so you can hear her trying to say the word “patriarchal.” This poor young lady is all in on the ideas she is attempting to express. She has taken the trouble to work it through, to sort out the logical system undergirding this extremely insane idea that men are actually better women than women themselves.

And she has taken the trouble because she does genuinely care about other people. She sees someone who isn’t doing well and can step into his shoes and walk several miles. The tragedy—the root of toxicity, if you will—is that it is all a lie. Men can’t become women. And vice versa. No matter how they mutilate themselves, no matter the sacrifices they make, they will never be able to gain the prize.

Love separated from truth is not kind. It feels kind. It feels wonderful. It might even feel pure or whole or full of wonder. But the lie destroys even those good feelings in the end.

five

Really loved one of Paul’s Substack posts this week. Here’s the money bit:

It’s funny how this kind of humiliation, this experience of being brought low, changes what things you hear, even among words that you’ve heard said hundreds of times before. When the priest said, “preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life” it was as if I hadn’t really heard the word “body” in that sentence for a long time. But I heard it loud and clear on the 3rd Sunday in Lent!

I often go about my daily tasks as if I could do things in my own strength. I wondered if my sudden weakness (in front of all my dearest friends!) was a warning about this. Maybe God wasn’t pleased with my attempt at trying to project strength when I took and posted that early morning gym selfie?

I have always pretty much disliked this passage:

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. - 2 Corinthians 12:10

I also don’t love that verse. I hate being weak—especially in church, where it seems to happen most often. I want to go from strength to strength, not from humiliating dependence to crushing defeat. Is Lent over yet? I’m ready for Easter.

six

Being a glutton for punishment, I went to Grok and asked for the lyrics to one of the songs in Snow White, the one called “Princess Problems.” Here’s how it goes:

Times are lookin' bleak, so, Princess, take a peek
See, every day, it's sink or swim
Famine's on the rise, with vultures circling the skies
And prospects, well, they're rather grim
Let me break you the news, the odds can't be beaten
And a man's gotta choose, will he eat or get eaten?
Does that dampen your day? Do the facts make you frown?
Wakin' up to the real world is bringin' you down?

Well, that sounds an awful lot like princess problеms
Finally learnin' that life's not fair
Seems to me you got somе princess problems

Ain't it crummy when folks won't share?
I could try bein' kind or whatever you said
It's just that I'm partial to not bein' dead
So I'm stickin' to my plan of grabbin' all I can
'Stead of livin' in a fantasy
See, your princess problems don't apply to me

Then Ms. Zegler jumps in with

Charming speech, but are you done?
"None for all and all for none"
Such a gift of hope you give

It wasn’t a joke that they turned the word “fair” into the socialist distribution of goods and services instead of its older meaning: “beautiful.” I’d love to see them get a hold of “Fairest Lord Jesus.” Can you imagine the wreckage?

seven

Here’s what I’ve been listening to all week:

With a side of this very schmaltzy bit of nostalgia. Gosh, I wish I could go home just one more time before I die and go home forever:

Read the comments below the line! Have a lovely day!