Good reader,
Everything on the web looks like everything else on the internet. Even things in real space are starting to look the same (thanks, Instagram). If you subscribe to other newsletters via Substack, chances are they look like this one. But today, on the occasion of its being January and the New Year still being new, I’d like to discuss time.
I recently fell into some full-time work at the school where I teach, and I was surprised by how quickly my schedule tightened up. Routine took hold, my time after work filled up with household chores, and a few ticks of the clock later I was in bed. There was a sameness to my days. This isn’t strictly “bad,” and I’ve written elsewhere about the goodness of routines and rituals (see “Best of the Blog” below), but still, it gave me pause. Is time doomed to sameness, too?
This “flatness” I’m describing is characteristic of modern life, particularly our late-modern experience of life mediated by digital technology. The ticking of a clock changes our experience of time; it structures life around means (and the efficiency thereof) and not ends. The clock is an excellent example of our technology working its will on us. It’s possible to be carried along by schedules so tightly wound that we become not just part of a machine, but machine-like ourselves. Heartbeats, unlike the ticking of clocks, change their cadence and offer an image of a more human relationship with time, one not characterized by ruthless consistency.
You likely experienced this over the holidays. Christmas and New Years have a way of stretching time and displacing the calendar if we let them. Some may moan about the year-end lists, the resolutions, and the cheesy 20-20 visioneering, but the end of the year, and the beginning of a fresh one, is the perfect opportunity to mark time. This desire, despite its yearly return, rescues us from the bland sameness of clock time—the strict, unrelenting “factory time” of work. Time, at the scale of seasons and years, is more the rhythm of heartbeats, not the tick of clocks. This experience of time is the one we need to reclaim. Not the productivity of the days minutes, though the minutes have their place, but rather the steady beat of the seasons. Some will be sparse, others more full; the pace will quicken at times and stretch out at others.
When we hide the clocks (or put down the screens) for a time, the world changes.
So, make the resolutions; mark time with celebrations, digressions, and unanswered emails. But when you get back to work, as nearly all of you surely have, remember—you are human.
-Matt
Words, a retrospective
Because this is my “New Year” newsletter, I’m going to reflect on my year in writing. If you’ve already read all of these, I apologize. If any are new to you, I hope you enjoy them and welcome your feedback—just hit Reply.
The Suffering Service of Jim Hopper - Christ & Pop Culture
This may be the hit TV / dead theologian crossover you didn’t know you needed. But more seriously, thinking about how to do good in a dark, often evil, and very broken world is too much for a Netflix series to bear. So I enlisted some help from Saint Augustine.
Faith and Facebook - FaithToday
In keeping with the refocusing of Good Words towards topics relating to technology, I commend my first article in FaithToday to you as a conversation starter. I ask a lot of questions within it — I’d love to hear your answers.
Childlikeness and Play in Stranger Things - Love Thy Nerd
I spent a lot of with kids in 2019, and they reminded me that I talk a good game about wonder and imagination, but being childlike is hard work when you’re 30. May we all grow younger, as G.K. Chesterton surely would’ve wished.
Contributions
Last year I contributed to two collections from Mythos & Ink, a small Canadian press. If you care about independent publishing and enjoy theological reflections on the geeky bits of pop culture (we’re all geeks now, right?), then I’d encourage you to buy one below. The editor-in-chief is a friend and a very fine lady.
Area of Effect, Vol. 1 & Thy Geekdom Come from Mythos & Ink Publishing.
Best of the Blog
My blog had an uncommonly good year, so here is a collection of the most viewed posts.
The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction (Book Review)
Reading Middle-earth Series (The Council of Elrond in particular)
Bounded: A Return to Limits
A Good Word
The first idea is that all technological change is a trade-off. I like to call it a Faustian bargain. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. This means that for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The disadvantage may exceed in importance the advantage, or the advantage may well be worth the cost. Now, this may seem to be a rather obvious idea, but you would be surprised at how many people believe that new technologies are unmixed blessings. You need only think of the enthusiasms with which most people approach their understanding of computers. Ask anyone who knows something about computers to tal about them, and you will find that they will, unabashedly and relentlessly, extol the wonders of computers. You will also find that in most cases they will completely neglect to mention any of the liabilities of computers. This is a dangerous imbalance, since the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences. […]
[…] Perhaps the best way I can express this idea is to say that the question, “What will a new technology do?” is no more important than the question, “What will a new technology undo?” Indeed, the latter question ismore important, precisely because it is asked so infrequently. One might say, then, that a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends. In fact, if it were up to me, I would forbid anyone from talking about the new information technologies unless the person can demonstrate that he or she knows something about the social and psychic effects of the alphabet, the mechanical clock, the printing press, and telegraphy. In other words, knows something about the costs of great technologies.
Excerpted from Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change (1998), by Neil Postman.
I’m looking forward to thinking in public with all of you about faith, technology, and simply being in 2020.
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