Getting Lost

Every ten years or so, my family scrounged up the resources, traveled the short distance to Tattersalls Books next to the Bruno's store in Conyers and bought the latest edition of the Atlanta Metro Map book. About $100, 300 pages of maps, roads twisting from page to page, zip codes, rivers, the imagination running wild as to what was actually on those streets. What landmarks made the road builders make Atlanta's streets as they did, curved and hilly, with no seeming reason as to their existence? And we could travel down the myriad of Flat Shoals Roads or Peachtrees until we no longer knew where we were, or mistaken Ronald Reagan Blvd. for Ronald Reagan Parkway (which I have done) and wound up at a dead end late at night, with only the lights of the billboards to show us home. That's why the Map book was so necessary. It was our guide, our lifejacket in the middle of paths that went absolutely everywhere. But, of course, this was before the days of readily available internet connections, before Technopoly took over even these corners of our lives.

Last week I went with the Friends of the Nancy Guinn Library (Conyers, Georgia) to the FOGL conference in Cumming. It was my first trip in a car with a GPS system. It also strengthened my resolve never to purchase one of those for my car. It infuriated me, the logical ability it had to get the van (and it's driver) from one place to another. Because I, for one, want to get lost.

When I was little, I would be in the car with my mother, and we'd be going to the store, or to some doctor appointment. I'd look out and see roads going parallel, across, and away from me. I saw the houses, the businesses, all foreign to me, new, unexplored. "Mom, where do those roads go?" I asked, constantly. Take SW 15th street, for instance, away from our neighborhood, it became a dirt road and went into a forest next to a creek. And while my parents told me it didn't go over the river, it never kept me from dreaming exactly where it went. I don't think I ever went down the road myself, and maybe that's for the best. The unknown is so much more Romantic than what is traveled.

Detmer Highway, Yukon Territory, Canada

But there is nothing that is unknown now, not with the Internet within easy reach of our fingers at every moment. Google Maps has taken satellite images of almost every corner of our globe. I've talked about walking down a highway in the Yukon Territory in Canada, with the mountains in the foreground and the grass ranging forever to my side. I've traveled the streets of London, wondering who lived in those houses, what their lives were like. And so there's still the sense of the unknown, even when sitting at the repository of everything known. The GPS system, however, totally removes all Romantic notions of traveling down strange roads. Your path becomes a straight line, purple, with a British accented guy informing you of the way, as if God was speaking directly to you. There is no other path but Garmin, or Tom Tom. There is no getting in the car and cruising down the interstate, with the feeling of never wanting to get off of it, of traveling forever into the distance, to the ends of the Earth. Now it is point A to point B, and then, "You've Arrived!" What a feeling, to worship a piece of technology because we've gotten to our destination without using our brains. Perhaps that's what people want to do now, in all aspects of life. And now, I want to digress.

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Technology has substituted for us every simple thing we do in life, except breathing, I guess. Need to balance your checkbook or make change at the cash register? Why, we have calculators and tills that do that. It's no longer necessary to do any menial task like addition and subtraction, especially not in our heads. I remember going to a Virginia McDonald's near the Virginia state line some years ago. They had just installed monitors at the check out lines, and so the workers there had gotten into the habit of not remembering anything about our orders. So it was look at the monitor, get one sandwich, look at the monitor, get the fries, look at the monitor, get the drink. Each order took 10 minutes at least. They let technology take over for their memories. And this happens all the time. The number of people who can repeat their cell phone number, or ones for their churches or businesses, are dwindling, because they easily have them stored on their cell phones. There is no longer a need to remember phone numbers. And it's not just actual electronic devices. We have devices to take care of any thing that might be the least bit taxing. I once saw, while cleaning my mom's office, a letter folder. That's right, a machine that folds a piece of paper exactly into thirds. And then there's the shirt folder (now, honestly, I can't fold shirts to save my life, so I don't try.). There's an electronic pepper shaker, so that we don't have to actually grind and shake the pepper ourselves.

 It's not just the idea that we are getting lazy, which we are, but that we are substituting technology, even in the simplest form, to do every task that we have done in the past. And for what cost? How much resources does it take to create these things? What plastic, what oil? I'm not environmental by any means, but we have been used to purchasing any device that might make our lives easier, and sacrificing those materials to do it. How long will those things sit in our landfills when, inevitably, we throw them away for something better? Why bother typing a text when we can speak into our phones and keep from typing all together. Soon the art of typing a letter will go the way of handwriting. It will become useless. The main purpose of all this? Capitalism. Producing things that cost money in order to feed our need to save time, money, labor, all the things we usually wind up wasting anyway because of these objects. Debating whether this is a good thing or not, Capitalism, I mean, is a whole other blog.  But again, I digress...
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Back to getting lost.  I never take the same way home that I took going wherever it is that I am going.  Which makes coming home so much more fun.  My mom and I often go to Southern Gospel concerts here in the Atlanta area.  And it often is that leaving the church or the Gwinnett Arena, the roads we came in on are blocked off.  We have to make a right instead of a left.  If I had a GPS system, it would automatically adjust and take me on a path straight home.  But what most people should know is that, if you look at Atlanta like a spoked wheel, it is impossible to remain totally lost for long.  You're bound to run into an Interstate or GA 400 or something, so driving home becomes an adventure.  Turn the car in the direction of the spokes, and go.  We were at a singing in Gainesville, and, heading west, we drove over Lake Lanier, over a beautiful blue steel bridge, and drove through little towns and hole in the wall restaurants, and we hit 400 and came south.  I wasn't lost.  I was just not in a hurry to get home.  When my family went to New Orleans to see Oklahoma lose to LSU in the Sugar Bowl several years ago, going home I went the wrong way and we ended up crossing Lake Pontchartrain, on a bridge that took you away from land, so far out that you could see nothing but the lake.  It was also a bridge that was destroyed a few years later by Hurricane Katrina.  Getting lost allowed us to see the beauty of nature, the exaltation of mankind's creations, the harmony of both God and Man intertwined in this great country.  So maybe getting from point A to point B isn't enough.  Maybe hearing "You've arrived at your destination," is the worst part of the trip.  As a busting-minded animated girl once said, "The Joy is in the Journey." There is so much to see between the cradle to the grave.  Let's not take the shortest route. 

Jesus Selling Wine: Symbol Drain.

So I just finished the last book I purchased from Borders as they were slipping into oblivion. Ironically, it was Neil Postman's Technopoly, the last book that he wrote before dying in 2003. Postman shows how technology, and the ways in which we communicate with it, are quickly extinguishing the printed word, and all of the cultural revolutions that came with that invention. It was fitting that I bought this at the last moment, to rescue it from the store's closing, and to see, as usual, so many things that have come true from 2003 to the present. Would that prophets could live to see their statements fulfilled. Roddenberry would be astounded with the communicator style cell-phones that can easily talk to you with a pleasant female voice. Rand would see the steady encroachment of Statism upon the free market. I wish that Postman could have lived to the present day,

to see the ideas he put forth in his books come to pass. I've tried, in past blogs, to bring his ideas forward to the present day, and see how the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, etc... effect how we communicate, and more importantly, what we communicate. If you wish, my blog series on Neil Postman's work is at this link here. It is seven posts long. Postman often quotes the saying, "The Medium is the Message." Thus, the information relayed by the written word is much different than those of photographs.

Let's take advertisements for wine, for instance (for reasons that will be clear later).  The ad to the left is totally text based.  It tells us that W.A. Jackson has in stock a full-bodied Port, which is recommended for Invalids.  It also has fine "Mellow Whiskies," and received a Gold Medal at the Calcutta Exhibition in 1884 for the "superior excellency of their Ales."  That they have a Liqueur named "Mountain Dew," is interesting.  But the communication is without pictures.  We use reason to ascertain that this merchant is quite an expert on potent potables, and whenever we are in Darlington, UK, we can go to 36 High Row and get Potent Potables (actually, we can't, as the building is still there, but it is now Yorkshire Bank).

Now, let's fast forward to the 20th century, and this ad, which is located on a bottle of wine itself.  It reads "Bottled Romance." There is no reason to suspect that when we buy this "American Grape Wine," that we will be somehow transported to this place which looks nothing like Sandusky, Ohio.  A picture, which has taken the place of a thousand words, relies on emotional response, instant gratification, and instant understanding of the message the advertiser is trying to portray.  This wine is perfect for those candlelight dinners, or reclining in the living room before retiring for a little foreplay.  Looking at the two ads, which one is more effective?

Neil Postman looks at advertising in the modern capitalist society as a mechanism to promote a technological lifestyle.  It rejects reason, preferring instead the instant response given to a 30 second spot on television, or a photo of a scantily clad bikini girl next to a Harley-Davidson motorbike.  Technology worships science, or more precisely, the manipulation of science to presume that whatever numbers are finalized by something that claims to be scientific is exactly the truth.  Technopoly, as Postman calls it, worships numbers, exact figures, whether they are true or not.  It relies on Empirical data, which means that God is no longer relevant to the belief system, as He cannot be proven mathematically. The logic of the theories stated by Apologetic Christians mean nothing, as we cannot sense God with our eyes, cannot calculate Him with our calculators.  The reason I say this is because Christianity cannot be simply sideswiped by another religion, rejected as unneeded.  It is clear from the actions of Communist countries that outlawing religion simply does nothing.  Instead, ideas that do not support a religion of numbers, of technology, must be withered away as unimportant, as trivial.  And there is no better way than to use the services of advertisements to widdle away the meanings of some of our most precious images.  Neil Postman calls this "Symbol Drain."

To me, it is more akin to "Symbol Inflation."  Use emotionally stimulating images to such a degree that we forget the meanings behind them, that they become simply another avenue to sell trinkets on the street.  Let's take the ad above.  The image is of a balcony, overlooking some majestic landscape, obviously European.  At this point, one could imagine Juliet standing on the balcony, wondering about the whereabouts of her lover, Romeo.  Simply one of the most important romances ever told (by Shakespeare, no less), and they have conjured up the meaning to sell cheap American wine.  Another example, take cell phone rings (this, as is obvious, is not an advertisement, but is similar in meaning.)  Beethoven and Mozart would be turning over in their graves if they knew that some of the greatest works of music are currently being used as ring tones for today's cell phones.  It symbolizes something important, even if it is nothing but a cell phone call.  Oh, that some of the cell phones I hear, with their rude speakers answering them, would play the 1812 overture and they would explode upon the striking of the Cannons.

I say this to introduce the television commercial as a proponent of "symbol inflation." Imagine if you will, (and this example appears in Postman's Technopoly, so this is his, not mine) a camera coming down upon a beach someplace in the Caribbean Sea.  A "man" is there, in Ancient Israeli clothes, and He is holding a bottle of wine.  As the camera gets close enough, it is obvious that this man is Jesus Christ.  He holds up the bottle, and says, "When I turned water into wine, I was thinking of this delicious California Chardonnay" Now, obviously, this wouldn't happen, as advertisers are very aware of the Religious impact of using Jesus to sell wine.  It would be...unfortunate.   But the message is clear.  It would only take seconds to introduce the idea that Chardonnay would be the wine that Jesus prefers. And if this is something that is done enough, Jesus ceases to be the Son of God, our Lord who saved us from our sins so that we might have everlasting life, but rather a dude who is trying to sell wine.  This has already happened to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, who is routinely used to sell furniture on President's Day.  And Santa Claus has almost no meaning now, as there are so many all over the place, and the reasoning behind his flight to every child in the world is faulty.  Further concepts must be employed to keep children behaving, and thus, receiving gifts that are simply bribes to keep the kids behaving all year long. 

Another example, one that I find personally very annoying.  One of the greatest symbols of the United States is our National Flag.  The Stars and Stripes hang above virtually every business, and of course given the myriad of rules on the care of those flags, which should be followed with great respect, sometimes the flags are mistreated by weather and neglect.  I've seen flags torn, stuck in the branches of trees, almost to the point of me wanting to boycott those businesses just because they don't take care of the flag.  But the problem that I see that relates to "Symbol Inflation," is the occasions of putting the flag at half-staff.  It is an act that is emotionally powerful, to see the flag in morning of some great leader lost, or in remembrance of September 11th.  Even on a local level, when a police officer dies or a local representative, it works really well, to let the world know that there was someone great lost.  But it must be used sparingly, so that the half-staff flag doesn't become something we look at and then look away without thinking anything of it.  We should not trivialize our nation's symbols.

The idea of symbol inflation doesn't have to be something physical either.  Let's take the word "Fuck," for instance.  Remember when you first heard it, when your parents first said it was a word you should never use?  How powerful that word was, because you could never say it (even if you did or didn't know what it meant.  I didn't, when I first heard it, which was, by the way, when I was at least 10.)  And then you heard it in a movie, perhaps one you shouldn't be watching, or saw the act itself as a woman or guy said the word over and over in ecstasy (Pornography is also a symbol that is way overused, if seen on the Internet.  The act of sex becomes a physical act, like watching a ball game, and not something special that is tied with love, marriage, and the morality of the past.  Those that controlled Huxley's Brave New World would be proud.).  But now, you say the word if you drop your pen and can't quite get it off the floor, or if the light turns red right when you pull up to the intersection.  It becomes easy to say, bereft of meaning or passion.  Which is why, if anyone ever heard me say, "Fuck," would, after regaining consciousness from passing out in shock, would automatically know that something was terribly wrong.

Technology has replaced the symbol of knowledge in a very few years.  In 1953, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, a warning to the preservation of books.  In it, fire fighters would go about burning books, and thus, the ideas inside them.  And if was easy to believe, in those days, that with Communism still alive and well, and with Big Brother a real possibility, that the censorship of books was a real possibility.  But now, Postman's Technopoly has done to books far worse than what Ray Bradbury could possible imagine.  Books, as a symbol, are now being replaced by the computer as the archetype of knowledge.  The Encyclopedia Britannica has been replaced by Wikipedia. And the reliability of the information, the truth within the symbol, has been greatly reduced.  Reduced, but not recognized by a large portion of the population.  For the print online, the entries on Wikipedia (which can be made by anyone) are taken as absolute truth, without training in school to realize what is truth and what isn't.  It's in a computer, so it must be true. This is the deification of technology as the Medium and the Message.  When the Bible has ceased to be printed, and it appears on everyone's cell phones as a free app, it will signal the end of Christianity as we know it, and the start of worshiping the Computer, or rather, the information it possesses.  And Christ will be on the television, selling the iPad as the latest miracle device.