Thoughts on Faith, Art, and Culture
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”, public domain
May your Christmas be blessed, and may we all cease our strife in the new year and hear each other, carrying with us the beauty of the Truth of the season.
During our first year of marriage, Karen and I began sorting out what the family dynamics would look like as we approached the holidays. Thanksgiving has always been the big event for her side of the family, and Christmas for mine. The thing about our families is that they live far enough away that we have never been…and never could be…close to both of them regardless of where we live. As we moved here and there over the course of the last ten years, we basically split the difference and focused on spending as much time as possible with whichever set of parents was closer. Until we had our first daughter, we decided that the equitable thing to do was to simply alternate. One year we traveled to my parents for Christmas and hers for Thanksgiving, the next year we switched. This served us well until it was three of us instead of two.
After our first daughter, we decided that we would designate holidays. Since Thanksgiving is more important to her side of the family, we began traveling to her side then, and always to my side for Christmas. This arrangement seemed to work for everyone involved, and it has stayed that way until we moved back to New England a few years ago.
The interesting thing about how we handled the holidays is that spending one at home really wasn’t something for which we were ever prepared. We never gave it much thought, with the exception of one year that Karen was in a new job and didn’t have the vacation available to travel. Otherwise, when the holidays arrived, we were out of town. When we had our oldest, we decided she would learn to travel early (she did great, by the way).
When we were still living in North Carolina and were pregnant with our second daughter, though, this shifted in an epiphanic way. Karen was too late in the pregnancy to travel that Christmas, so we had been planning one at home for several months. We put effort into the event, planning food and stockings for our daughter in ways that we just hadn’t before. How would we intentionally integrate our Christian tradition? How would we eschew materialism? We hadn’t had to be intentional about these things before.
That Christmas morning, our daughter awoke so excited she literally forgot how to climb out of her bed. Having breakfast together, opening gifts, playing and being together through the day…yes, we missed being with family, but we felt like a family of our own in a way that we hadn’t prior to that Christmas. This waypoint shifted the way we look at how we celebrate Christmas.
Since settling back in New England three years ago, we’ve had mixed success in traveling for the holidays. This year, we had our first conversation around what traditions we would bring into the marriage for Christmas celebrations. What will our children grow up with in the way of traditions? Ten years into our marriage, this is the first time we had entertained this discussion. It was difficult. While we share a common faith, our family backgrounds and solidified preferences in how we practice that faith are actually quite different, and this is at its most obvious when thinking about the holiday season.
We currently have a somewhat working arrangement for Advent and Christmas, which we’ll re-assess again next year. I think that it will take some time get this right. I am not a fan of tradition or routine, but I find that I crave them at Christmas. I was even defensive of some things that my family did during my childhood that just wouldn’t translate for ours. Moving past that, it’s important to have these traditions, especially faith traditions for the holiday. What it teaches, the depth that it cultivates within the context of our rampant consumerism…it is so important for our children to grow up with a foundation.
When it comes to Christmas, I don’t exactly know what that foundation will look like. At least not yet.
When we arrive at a decision, though, it will be our tradition.
I just wish we hadn’t waited so long.
“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” was recommended on a podcast to which I regularly listen, but without much detail. I suppose it was the title that grabbed me, and persuaded me to brave Zuboff’s lengthy treatment on the topic. That said, my itch was primed for scratching on this subject, as I’ve read more and more information regarding how our privacy is carelessly disregarded by tech firms as they build ecosystems for us….and with us.
A turning point for me and how I approach technology was the first time that I heard the phrase, “If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.” Unpacking that concept will make anyone, I think, increasingly wary of the services that they use each day. Zuboff expands the concept further. We are not the product, she insists. Rather, we are the raw material that big tech companies are using to create profit in a new form of capitalism, and, as such, we are not only not being compensated, but are essentially being used until we are no more.
The book begins with a historical treatment of our current technological landscape, with the invention of the iPhone, and the coming to be of the state of being constantly “plugged in.” She then walks the reader through the process of Google and Facebook evolving into the business models that they use today, made possible by the fact that our technology is always with us, that it knows us. Her research is thorough and organized, her facts compelling. The reader understands the particular confluence of events…some deliberate, some happenstance…that brought us into the age that we currently inhabit.
Next, the author turns to economic theory. I admit to having difficulty following this part of her argument, as this is certainly an academic text in tone, and I think that it could have been “translated” better for the likely large percentage of readers who, like myself, have no background in economics. Her point, however, is to trace the evolution of capitalism and how it functions, and how this traditional economic model has been turned on its head as we move beyond an information economy and into a surveillance economy. The source of profit is now what others know about us, and the goods and services trade that has traditionally accompanied economic models…even the implied consent inherit in these models…no longer apply.
Facebook and Google are the author’s favorite subjects of analysis throughout the book. Each, the author contends, views themselves as above concerns for their users’ privacy because their creators see themselves as building a world and existence that is better, and essentially forcing their users to move into this new state of being. This is a “we know what’s best for you” dystopian scenario that we experience, often unknowingly, and with a growing degree of powerlessness.
Throughout the book, Zuboff returns to a basic point:
“Who knows, who decides, and who decides who decides?”
Shoshana Zuboff
These are the foundational questions surrounding each of our technology choices every day, fundamental questions about the innermost parts of ourselves, who we choose to permit to know this, and what they can do with that knowledge. The author’s point is that technology leaders know more than we would every knowingly permit, and they wield that knowledge in their own best interests, un-checked and free from accountability.
This is a heavy read, not for the faint of heart, but worthwhile for absolutely everyone, because it is dealing with fundamental questions about our age. The facts presented here will change the way in which you interact with technology, with social media, with other online services every day. I highly recommend this book to anyone, as it is well worth the time you’ll invest in working toward its conclusion.