Sean: 携帯電話

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Posted by Sean:
携帯電話
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1211236084.shtml


   Eric discusses one of my pet peeves in [1]this post, probably
   benefiting his blood pressure by not delving too deeply in:

     I hate the way Sunday has become official morality day.
     I say this not in criticism of organized religion or morality in
     general, but because I don't like trickery, and I don't like the
     way Sundays have become the official day for media to play preacher
     and promote morality -- especially the [2]newly manufactured
     morality which appeals to the non-churchgoers with unacknowledged
     spiritual needs.

   Fifteen years ago when I was in college, Camilla Paglia identified a
   certain kind of doctrinaire feminist as "desperate for a religion"; I
   assume from the way she discussed showily hip academic leftists and
   queer activists that she'd agree many of them have the same problems.
   At the time, I was just leaving the church in which I'd been reared.
   The idea that people would try to fulfill their spiritual cravings
   with trendoid politics struck me as weird. I guess it still strikes me
   as weird, but now I'm used to it.
   Nevertheless, it makes much social and political discourse extremely
   tiresome, and I really wish people would knock it off. If you need
   shriving, by all means go to confession or send a tearful prayer
   heavenward. Please don't inflict your ecstasies of guilt and dogmatism
   on me while I'm trying to make small talk with a glass of wine at a
   party.
   I realize that Eric's not really talking about polite conversation;
   he's talking more about opinion pages and other spaces for serious
   commentary, where more serious value judgments are to be expected. I
   guess it would be nice if people whose scribblings are produced there
   could at least liberate themselves from formula a bit.
   Exhibit 1 is [3]this op-ed linked by Eric, which I unwittingly clicked
   through to. In terms of finger-wagging social commentary, it has
   everything: a crack analogy, an appeal to some think-tank expert whose
   qualifications aren't at all established, and compulsive genuflection
   to a supercilious Brit decrying the decline of civilization. Since
   I've been making the transition from the cell-phone culture in to that
   here in the States, I've actually been thinking about these things
   quite a bit, and I think the writer (and his Brit) are full of it:

     Sociologists and communitarians are somewhat obsessed with the idea
     of public spaces - places where strangers necessarily bump up
     against one another and form community. When we talk on cell phones
     in public, we are, as Rosen points out, intentionally removing
     ourselves from the public space in a form of "radical
     disengagement" with the public sphere. We're participating in an
     activity that doesn't just exclude those around us, it imposes on
     them too - in effect declaring our neighbors to be less important
     than we are. Or worse: It's a little bit like telling them that
     they don't exist.
     Perhaps none of this is surprising. The sociologists Christian
     Licoppe and Jean-Philippe Heurtin have posited that modernity is
     constantly deinstitutionalizing personal bonds at every level. The
     effects of the cell phone are very much of a piece with their
     thesis. We have traded the rich tapestry of social cohesion -
     chatting with the cashier at the grocery store or with the fellow
     in the elevator - for these tiny, often useless, individual
     connections with those we already know.

   Am I the only one who remembers life before cell phones? If you don't,
   let me assure you that it was not a never-ending stream of chummy
   exchanges with new acquaintances--the grocery store clerk, the guy in
   the elevator, the woman you passed through the revolving doors on the
   way into the bank, and the janitor in the movie theater rest
   room--that left us all warmed to the core by our common humanity. Some
   of us were brought up traditionally and disliked being chatted up
   while we were quietly going about our business. (Checking messages or
   the Internet on a cell phone is a wonderful deterrant in such cases.)
   And as for those who have very private conversations very audibly in
   very public places, they were no less bearable when they were talking
   to their friends across the table in a crowded coffee house ten years
   ago. Boors will find ways to use any communications medium boorishly;
   that's what they do.
   Personally, I've noticed no dearth of brisk-but-pleasant interactions
   between customers and salespeople or those sharing elevators since
   arriving back to New York. I've seen few people practicing "radical
   disengagement" with public spaces, but a great many people who just
   want to find out which kind of milk their wives wanted them to pick up
   so they don't have to make another trip back to the grocery store.
   Most people will check their phone if it rings in the middle of an
   ongoing in-the-flesh conversation, but they're at least as likely to
   decide it can wait as to say, "Sorry--I really should take this."
   Perhaps I just run in bizarre circles, but everyone I know seems to
   have figured out how to make the group with which he's physically
   spending time his first priority.
   One final thing: I find the disdainful use of the word
   "deinstitutionalizing" unsettling. Institutions are important, but one
   of the most precious things about our kind of society is that you get
   to choose those you want to belong to. You don't have to stay in the
   church you were born into if you don't believe its doctrines, you
   don't have to become a member of your father's guild, you don't have
   to stay in your hometown and shoehorn yourself into a life that
   doesn't suit you. You get to choose whom you want to associate with.
   If you find that disorienting and yearn for the simpler and more
   traditional life in which we all know our assigned places, why not
   leave the city and embed yourself in a small town somewhere? Or find
   your spirituality and become a Buddhist or something? If you can't
   control your cell phone and make it work for the kind of life you want
   to live, the problem is that you're neurotic, not that it's addictive.
   Sheesh.

References

   1. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2008/05/post_778.html
   2. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/11/bottling_and_se.html
   3. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080518_One_Last_Thing__What_are_cell_phones_doing_to_our_society_.html