Skipping over the Surface of Things

 

     Years ago I noticed the tendency among certain of the young to watch television in a new way, turning from one channel to the next without lingering long on any.  To me even a second-rate show seemed preferable to wandering always, hoping that the next option might offer that appeal so elusive that it never quite arrives.  The phenomenon was recorded in Springsteen’s "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)," though the fifty-seven channels soon became hundreds on cable and satellite, and then, through online devices, all but unlimited.  Originally such skimming over the surface of myriad possibilities was confined to the time one sat down in front of the screen seeking entertainment, but, with the introduction of smartphones – the term was first used in 1995 but such devices did not become commonplace until Apple’s iPhone in 2007 – people could scan one thing after another anywhere and at any time.  And they do, even while shopping or sitting with friends or in a toilet stall.   In a New York subway car, almost every eye gazes into a small hand-held device.  In a crowded elevator, instead of the conventional prim stance (facing the door, looking slightly down, hands clasped in front) many are now roving mentally around the virtual universe held in the palm of the hand. 

     This has surely amounted to an alteration of consciousness.  On the watch for food sources and for possible danger, animals, predators and prey alike, must be constantly attentive and observant.  In prehistoric times, people, like other animals, walked the woods always alert to their surroundings in the interest of survival.  Everyone in the community contributed to hunting and gathering and mutual defense.  Over time with the division of labor, people learned to focus on specific tasks which for a very few high-status individuals were accomplished entirely in the head: speculation, reading, philosophy, and science resulted, with the consequence that the sharp generalized vigilance that had served so well for millennia eroded.  Working from home in the pandemic has made dramatically clear what we already knew: that today a good many workers, and many of the most highly paid among them, do nothing productive in the old sense, but simply manipulate symbols on computer screens.  Instead of seeking significant information in the world immediately surrounding them, people now perform as small cogs in an immense cooperative machinery, contributing to production in a way that is meaningless in isolation.

     Whereas our ancestors walked daily absorbed in their immediate surroundings, reading the immediate data of earth and sky and smells and sounds, people may prosper today without ever knowing the phase of the moon or a single edible plant.  The specialization of work roles diminished the range of human consciousness in many ways, but it also enabled its fabulous expansion in others. When, millennia ago, aristocrats and intellectuals were freed from the necessity of vigilance that had been inescapable in the prehistoric era.  Technology, science, and art developed prodigiously to the extent that, many have ample free time to contemplate what they will.  On billions of Smartphones people choose to occupy their minds and emotions with the rich variety of possibilities of the tiny screen.  While that is all very well and understandable, entertainment being a latter of taste, it remains to inquire about users who are not listening to music or writing letters or performing other specific tasks with their devices, but merely flipping.

     The phenomenon suggests that it not the content that keeps people spellbound, but rather the medium.  I once read, in Scientific American I believe, a study tracing the appeal of the television screen which even to infants draws human attention, to the instinct to focus on any element of the environment which is moving or changing.  Unlike the obvious value of such awareness for early humans, the attractiveness of the scintillating screen is desirable only for advertisers seeking to increase sales. 

     This skipping attention is quite unlike the purposeful cognitive activity involved in problem-solving or the experience of art; it is the very opposite of the solid and steady concentration of meditation.  To me this shallow skipping consciousness is similar to addiction.  Seeking the distinctly human pleasure of playing with the mind, the individual never quite finds it, but is sufficiently motivated only to continue the endless and always unsatisfied quest.  The same derangement of behavior is evident in drug users and the sexually obsessed, not to mention those with a compulsive greed for food or money or power.  In each of these cases the soul  like a hungry ghost grabs after satisfaction but finds only deeper frustration.

    Yet might one find as well in this digital wandering something like the non-attachment in which the Buddha glimpsed the possibility of freedom?  There is no reason that one might not similarly skip across the surface of life, watching each moment with mild but sustained interest as if from a slow river steamer proceeding up the Amazon.  Would the Sixth Patriarch find any reason to favor more functional cognitive churning?   Perhaps the very deepest and most finely pointed concentration, the sort one hears is available to skilled meditators, is identical to the shallowest, and the drifting consciousness is an example of the flow of the Dao.