According to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project, 85% of American adults have a cellphone. For that substantial majority, the cellphone has become an essential appendage that ensures constant availability to friends and to family, email, timely information, and more. The majority of adults without a cellphone do not have one because of cost. However, a surprising number of people do not have a cellphone because they prefer to live without the cellphone’s alleged benefits. (Claire Cain Miller, “Their Numbers Are Dropping - the Cellphone Refuseniks,” New York Times, October 23, 2009)
I confess that I happily live without a cellphone. For two decades, I constantly carried first a pager and then a cellphone. Sometimes I referred to that device as my “leash.” Yet I found the pager and especially the cellphone genuinely freeing. I could be available when needed without being confined to an office waiting for a need to emerge. When I retired from the Navy, my wife and I generally spent out time in close proximity – no need for a cellphone. My extended family was at a distance. Even if they contacted me in an instant of need, I would not be present for the hours it took to buy a plane ticket, fly, and arrive at their location – no need for a cellphone, as they should call someone locally in case of emergency. Now that I’m returning to parish ministry, I suspect that I will soon find a cellphone indispensable, both giving me more freedom of movement and helping me to respond to people in a more timely fashion.
Two articles in the same issue of the New York Times that reported the cellphone story prompted additional reflections about cellphones. First, an article about addicts helping addicts recover featured the story of a fifty-four year old man who first entered rehab at nineteen. Not until a year ago did that man realize that if he died nobody, absolutely nobody, would care. That realization was the catalyst for his beginning the long journey toward health. (Erik Eckholm, “Battling Addiction With Those Who Know It Best,” New York Times, October 23, 2009)
How many people rely on a cellphone for a much-needed sense of connection to other people? To what extent has the cellphone become the adult equivalent of a child’s beloved teddy bear? Accessibility and frequency of communication do not equate with true intimacy. In my pastoral counseling work, I have more than once discovered a frightened loner hiding behind an extroverted façade.
Second, an article about a opposition cleric in Iran boldly voicing protests against the Iranian government when it described this godly man as having a cleric’s “calm demeanor.” (Michael Slackman, ”Lone Cleric, Mehdi Karroubi, Emerges to Defy Iran’s Leaders,” New York Times, October 23, 2009) Few clerics develop a “calm demeanor” apart from a longstanding habit of frequent prayer. Prayer, by definition, requires adjusting one’s focus from worldly concerns to God. Interruptions, including cellphone ringing or buzzing, intrude and disrupt that focus.
How many people find silence, time alone in which to explore self and to commune with God, difficult? To what extent does a cellphone become a welcome relief to the much harder work of the interior life, substituting a busyness of the moment for the ultimately important business of God?
I am not advocating a Luddite approach to cellphones. Instead, I am suggesting that cellphones, like any tool, can have beneficial and harmful uses. The good life is a rich, dynamically balanced life in which the person intentionally creates time for God, for self, and for others. When cellphones helpfully connect us to the people important in our lives, enriching and deepening relationships, then cellphones have an important role. When cellphones create an illusion of health and relationships that are in fact only busyness and superficiality that prevent developing genuine intimacy, then turn the cellphone off.
4 comments:
I'll start by saying I despise cell phones and the users who invade my space while in public or private places. If you recorded every cell phone call, would there be 5% or more worth talking about. In most cases, there is nothing the person can do in an emergency by having a cell phone nearby. The jokes about talking to other people when you don't know they are on a cell phone or blue tooth happens quite often. Common courtesy goes out the window. I don't need their conversation. But then, if I were in a restaurant and a group were having a conversation, I would not mind. So where is the discrepancy? I discriminate about cell phones.
I judge users of cell phones as incapable of being alone without their teddy bear for comfort.
I think the solution is to tax each minute of voice or text at a high rate. At that time, only important calls would be made and we could find something else to aggravate others.
My tracfone is used for special occasions and is rarely on. I don't have to give out the number as the phone is off when I'm not using it. A solution that works for all situations.
Other than when a cellphone rings, I wonder how much more intrusive cellphones are than adjacent conversations between people who are physically present. In the case of a person with whom I'm conversing attempting to deal with text/phone messages concurrently, that tells me the person does not value my conversation very highly and I adjust my actions accordingly.
My personal rules are to not answer an incoming call when I'm talking to someone else. I will call the person when I'm through talking on the current call.
I don't answer calls during meals or when I'm on my deck. There has to be personal time and how many calls are really important unless you expect one.
I too would change my attitude during a meal or conversation if the person felt they needed to talk to someone else. Rudeness seems to prevail.
I agree.
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