Although I spend relatively little "screen time" compared to most people, not having a smart phone, I still do watch some television every day. Interestingly enough, most of it has a mildly competitive "energy", as I think I have mentioned -- "Jeopardy", "The Voice", "Antiques Road Trip". At the commercial breaks, I cannot help but see what is being advertised, even when I mute the sound. And that is what is on my mind today.
Obviously, the products being advertised are increasingly hi-tech, informed by AI, and, heck, "clever". I mean, human ingenuity is an amazing thing. I would never, ever, deny that. Yet most of the objects being advertised are way, way beyond my means (phones, homes, cars, gadgets of all kinds). And if they are beyond my means, how. much further are they beyond the means of a large percentage of the world population? And putting cost completely aside, what good are any of these items to people living with war, starvation, loss of homes, jobs and power due to climate change, political turmoil, you name it?
For better or for worse, the split screen is always with me. I may see impossibly "smart" cars and houses in the ad, and happy people using them, but I also "see" war's devastation. I "see" impossible social imbalances, sickness, poverty and pain. Perhaps living in that liminal place is the challenge of being a mystic.
More fancifully, perhaps, I "hear" something when I watch those ads on mute. I hear childlike voices saying, "Wow! Aren't I clever! Isn't this amazing? Aren't I wonderful!" I "hear" and "feel" pride and even hubris. I keep thinking back to one of my favorite books of all time, Elizabeth Dodson Gray's Patriarchy as a Conceptual Trap (1982). In it, she suggests that over time, men created a "culture to reassure" themselves that their achievements are as important as women's timeless roles in the creation of homes and family. Forty years later, this little book seems to be more thought-provoking than ever...and I suppose it is a measure of my own narcissism that I'm proud that she was a "fellow" Smith College graduate. I wish I had met her.
In the end, the litmus test for both sides of the screen is, is it love? Not just "loving the process of creating", which I share. (Or even what must be, for some people, the "love" of conflict.) The test is, does the creation or action reflect love of all of humanity, of all plant and animal life on earth, of earth itself? Is it created out of a heartfelt desire to extend the human experiment well into the future?
