My frequent critique of social media (and repeated reference to the dire predictions of Jacques Ellul) often feel justified when examining my Facebook feed, but I also try to admit the irony that I bemoan social media on social media, which just feels wrong.
As is typical, others say what I hope to say better, and I recently stumbled across a YouTube video from author John Green titled, Am I Cigarettes?
Green had the courage to ask whether the content he posts contributes to societal demise in a similar way that cigarettes served as a pathway to cancer. Am I cigarettes? he asked.
His brother took the bait and countered with a separate video and different metaphor, arguing that those that contribute content, including he and his brother, are more like food than cigarettes, with food possessing the potential to be good or bad, while cigarettes are always bad. As Green described to the New York Times, his brother argued, “We’re food, and there’s a lot of bad food, but hopefully we’re good food.”
I found their exchange interesting and now ask about my use of social media: Can I be broccoli?
Once upon a time in my twenties, in a decade far, far away, a biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln argued that Lincoln had a “passion for distinction.” That phrase had a major impact on me because I thought that maybe I did, too. The author proposed that Lincoln used his personal passion for noble purposes, and I wondered at the time if others would look back at the life in front of me with similar positive reviews.
Now, playing the back nine of life, it seems rather obvious that no one is going to name the capital of Nebraska after me. And I figured out a long time ago that this was a good thing. I recently watched the new Charlie Sheen biopic and remembered that fame would have gone poorly for me, too.
I grew up naive. I guess everyone does to some extent, but I grew up extra naive. I was raised in a small town in a family with little money that kept to ourselves. My Dad was a provider but also a shelterer and reclusive. My Mom successfully taught me to be a good boy and raised me in a religious environment with the stated goal to protect us from a scary world. All that to say it took me a long, long time to grow up, to use that tired phrase, but as an adult, moving to new places, reading a lot of books, and the introduction of the internet combined to procure a long, slow education. My life turned out okay, and I cannot complain, but it is now abundantly clear that any acceleration that would have come with fame would have been disastrous.
So while the desire to produce something significant on a major scale still pokes its head up periodically, I now tend to play whack-a-mole with it more often than not. I may be a slow learner, but I want to remain a learner.
Which brings me back to my little blog and personal social media presence. What I write and share does not attract high-profile attention, and not only am I okay with that (now), what I do does not fit the popularity profile anyway.
But I hope it is good. I hope it is not part of the destructive side of social media. To return to the metaphor, if what I do is a bit of food, can it be broccoli? Something not very popular, but healthy?
Should I get to retire someday, I plan to have already done all the traveling that I want to do. Should I get to retire someday, my plan does not involve golf or fishing. Instead, should I get to retire someday, if my mind and health permits, I want to write.
And I have come to terms with the fact that it is not to write the great American novel or a blockbuster movie screenplay. If you can believe it, I am not even that invested in writing to be remembered. No, if I get the privilege of looking back and sharing my thoughts in written form, it would primarily be for my daughters, should they be interested, and whether they are or not, I want whatever I leave behind to be healthy and good.
In the meantime, for now at least, I plan to keep contributing to the produce aisle of the world and go to sleep at night hoping that my meager contributions produce more good than bad.
Although to be transparent, I’m not 100% convinced that the cigarettes idea is entirely wrong.
I recently experienced the whiplash of traveling from the serenity of rural Wisconsin to the frenetic pace of Midtown Manhattan and found myself standing in Grand Central Terminal imagining De Niro and Grodin in Midnight Run and marveling at the fact that I was one of around 750,000 people that would pass through that day. It cost me ten bucks to travel from there to the JFK airport, which is basically a miracle.
My trip to NYC was for a conference on higher education thanks to my dear friend, Novita, whose technology group hosted the event. Conference attendees were mostly tech leaders at colleges and universities alongside vendors from the tech industry, and you might not be surprised that a major topic of conversation was “not” the trains at Grand Central. No, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) was the topic de jour.
My primary relationship with AI had been jokes about how typing Capital A, Capital I (for Artificial Intelligence) in many typical fonts looks exactly like Capital A, lowercase l (for my name, Al), leading to all sorts of fun headlines for me personally, like “How Al Is Changing the Music Business,” and “Stop Talking About Al.” When it comes to new technology, I am intentionally a late adopter. I recognize that the world changes and that I must adapt to remain engaged, but I am critical of our collective tendency to jump at the new and shiny without thinking, so I choose to arrive fashionably late to the party.
But the conference conversations were timely for me as I reluctantly board the AI train. I heard multiple people quote a leader of the tech giant, NVIDIA, who reportedly said, “No, AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows AI is going to take your job.” That will catch your attention (although it is still funny if you read that inserting my name instead). And I was struck by a side conversation where a couple of high tech leaders said that the very developers of AI are shocked by the speed of its development. That is actually frightening.
My perspective is that as with most things AI is neutral on its face with both good and bad potential. And yet I also identify with the camp that meets this particular technology with great apprehension. I should explain my perspective on the latter.
I feel like a broken record referring to Jacques Ellul and his prophetic 1954 book, The Technological Society, as much as I do, but Ellul’s warning about “ever-increasing means” toward “carelessly-examined ends” seems on steroids when it comes to AI. Not only are the means much more powerful and increasing much more rapidly than ever before, but also the conversation on ends is nonexistent, at least to my knowledge. It is my understanding that the developers aren’t even sure where the technology is headed, much less is our society engaging thoughtful conversations on where society is going to arrive given its current trajectory.
If it helps, I don’t just repeatedly refer to Ellul; I also refer to Jim Collins’s classic book, Good to Great, over and over and over. Good to Great examined companies that made the leap referred to in its title and shared lessons on how that occurred. I recently made a connection between the book and the AI Revolution. In Good to Great, Collins coined the term “Hedgehog Concept” and described it as identifying the one thing in the world that your business can do the very best and then described the “Flywheel Effect” as staying laser-focused on that one thing until the momentum builds to that breakthrough moment for greatness. Important stuff, but I had almost forgotten that Collins had a section on technology, too, and I had almost forgotten because he made the crucial observation that technology should never be the point; instead, technology should at most be a tool that accelerates your laser-focused work on the one thing that is the most important for your business.
This is ridiculously important right now, I believe. While I am fully convinced that society as a whole will not engage a conversation on desired outcomes, maybe you and I in our respective spheres of influence can fight the powerful head winds against us to determine with specificity sufficient for clarity on what we want our lives to look like someday (i.e., the ends) and then with desperation cling to that destination. If AI/tech can be useful to accelerate our journey to our worthy goals, then by all “means” (ha!), use it. But if not, do not get sucked into its powerful and seductive vortex.
I have long heard the saying that the ends do not justify the means, and that’s true in communicating that immoral or unethical behavior is still wrong even if it produces something good. But what I am trying to communicate today is that tenaciously establishing the ends first will help illuminate the means and allow you to banish all unhelpful distractions to the shadows. Put another way, establishing noble ends first illuminates the means that are worthy tools for achieving the noble cause.
Okay, that doesn’t have the ring of a future cliche to it, but I believe it reduces the likelihood that a cyborg devours our souls for lunch someday.
This essay was first published in The Smart Set on 2.26.24.
I specifically hoped not to be an old person that longed for the good old days, but, well, here’s the deal: I remember when binge was considered a bad word. Now, it is a weekend plan. And I’m not talking about those darn kids today; I’m talking about my weekend plan.
Decades ago, the only time I heard the word was when someone was characterized as a “binge drinker” or possibly a “binge eater” and such descriptions were assigned with pity, or sometimes even, disdain. It was never a compliment, and it surely was never a self-description. Now, I and a zillion others proudly anticipate, for example, “binging” a television series as a source of entertainment, and strikingly, even as a source of self-care.
Stay with me now.
Here’s what has me perplexed: The word itself means doing something excessively, and to do anything excessively means doing it more than is reasonable or acceptable. If that’s still true and the English language hasn’t shifted just yet, then to binge means to do something too much.
All this to say: I’m (re-)watching The Office. Hilarious. So, so funny. Deep, loud laughter emerges from my body in a way that frightens the neighbors. It is so good. But I can’t seem to stop! An episode ends, and I know that I said it was the last one for the night, but another begins, and the opening is so funny, so I think that I’ll just watch a couple of minutes, and then it’s the entire episode, and then it ends, and I know that I said it was the last one for the night, but another begins… You get the picture.
I should clarify that “discipline” is my greatest strength, and what I find concerning is that more and more I recognize in myself the lack of my greatest strength, and in more ways than watching The Office. This is why I am writing today, to sort through my troubled mind, as well as processing what I suspect is a broader sociological phenomenon.
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In 1992, Bruce Springsteen released the album, Human Touch, and the third track was a little song titled, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).” It was not one of his biggest hits, but it was one of the most-played songs on rock stations that year, and I remember it well. The Boss sang:
I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills With a trunkload of hundred thousand-dollar bills Man came by to hook up my cable TV We settled in for the night my baby and me We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn There was fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on
Is that not hilarious? Only fifty-seven channels? Those of us who use “fifties” to describe our age now remember what might prompt such a song. We remember a time with thirteen channels, although in reality, there were only maybe four. The Boss’s incredulity was understandable to most of the world in 1992: how excessive was fifty-seven channels!?! Now, we have fifty-seven apps on our televisions, each one filled with never-ending options.
The shift has been nothing short of remarkable. It goes beyond the number of shows we can call up at any given time—even the shows we watch often have options within. For example, it isn’t enough to watch the news: You watch the crawl at the bottom of the screen to get more news than the news you are currently watching. It isn’t enough to watch a game: You watch the crawl at the bottom of the screen to get more scores than the game you are currently watching, including statistics, win probabilities, betting lines, fantasy updates, and more.
[Adopt crotchety-old man voice:] In my day, you had to get up off the couch just to change the channel! And in my day, there were these things called “commercials” that interrupted the show without a skip option if you can believe it. And craziest of all: After your favorite show ended, you had to wait an entire week to watch the next episode.
I guess I’m wondering if there might have been some good in those old days? Doesn’t sound right, but maybe something about less options and more waiting?
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My dad was a child in the 1920s, a full century ago now, and he told a certain story that may or may not have been true. Honestly, it sounds more like an adventure of Tom Sawyer, but regardless, he told me that his first job was working in a general store and that on the very first day his new boss told him that he could eat all the candy that he wanted from the candy counter. So, day one, he ate himself sick of candy and soon discovered that he was never tempted to eat from the candy counter again. That was the story, and it was obvious that my dad admired the Solomon-like wisdom of that old storeowner.
Now, I’m afraid that such wisdom is outdated, too. I, for one, am sensing the tendency to eat myself sick of candy, then eat myself sick of candy again, and again, and again, and again. I’m talking way beyond television, of course. Overconsumption of snacks, or scrolling social media, or many other forms of entertainment, among other possibilities. The sky appears to be the unfortunate limit.
When I think back to my law school days, the work product I am most proud of is a paper I wrote for Professor Ellen Pryor in a seminar course on “Law and Morality.” I titled my paper, “Enough Already: How Lawyers Can Respond to the Problem of Greed.” Within, I wrestled with the question: How should a lawyer respond to greed? And as I considered the various definitions of the ancient concept, one of the original seven deadly sins, I found a contemporary theologian’s one-word definition the most compelling. Stanley Hauerwas answered an interviewer’s question, “So, what is greed?” with a single word: “More.”
That seems to work for the binge mentality that I am wrestling with today. More. Always more. Never enough.
To really get ugly, gluttony is yet another of the seven deadly sins, which I once saw defined as habitual greed. “More” but as a habit. That starts to sound disturbingly familiar. I wonder if gluttony is just another way of saying binge mentality?
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I like to picture Jacques Ellul at his writing desk in the early 1950s, somehow able to peek into our present century. The French sociologist published a book in 1954 that was later translated into English as “The Technological Society.” If you can imagine, in the year before Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born, Ellul published a book that predicted that technology would be presented as a servant of humanity but would eventually overrun the world and become its master. In the foreword to the English translation, famed American sociologist, Robert K. Merton described Ellul’s argument by saying, “Ours is . . . a civilization committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.”
I’m old enough now to understand and remember the desire for improved means. I spent a lot of time watching television as a child while wishing for improved means. Now, I’m wondering if anyone spent real, slow, quality time examining the ends that those improved means would produce? The ends that we are now experiencing?
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Stephen Covey shared an illustration in one the books in his Seven Habits empire. Covey proposed something he called the “law of the farm” in contrast to something like cramming for an exam in school. For the latter, you might be successful, but cramming simply will not work on the farm. You can’t cram for harvest. You have to plant in a certain season, water, and cultivate, and only when you have patiently and consistently performed all of the above and the time is right will you reap the harvest. On the farm, all things must come in due time.
Maybe one of the things that works best by the law of the farm is a human being. Maybe, we discover our best when we don’t cram too many things in at once. Maybe, we discover our best when we aren’t rushed, when we learn to wait, and when we go without for a while—until the time is right. Maybe, in all of our progress, we have focused too much on the means so that we have forgotten what we should aim for in the first place: a deliberate rhythm that produces a fruitful life. Maybe “enough” is a more important word to learn than “more.”
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The Judeo-Christian tradition values the concept of shabbat, or Sabbath, a day set aside for rest and contemplation. The weekly practice creates a rhythm of life: work; work; work; work; work; work; rest; work; work; work; work; work; work; rest; and so on, and so on. It sets in place a habit that reminds you that you actually can stop, regularly, rhythmically. It reminds you that you can do without for a little while. The concept even extends to agriculture, where land lies fallow in regular rotation so that the very earth is renewed and replenished—the law of the farm.
Today, I am considering whether we should devote increased attention to anything that causes us to stop, to rest, to say that’s enough. Anything that trains us to do without and to refuse the temptation to always say yes to more. If not, the continued acceleration in the availability of more and more and more of the things we desire might not end well.
I’m probably being a bit too dramatic. As always, I remain hopeful for the future, but as the great Michael Scott once said, “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”
French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, published “The Technological Society” in 1954, a book that predicted that although technology will be presented as a servant of humanity, it will overrun the world and become its master. My iPhone constantly reminds me that he was on to something (in the 1950s!). In the foreword to Ellul’s book, famed American sociologist, Robert K. Merton, wrote: “Ours is . . . a civilization committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.”
I read that phrase years ago and cannot get it out of my mind. We are obsessed with bigger and faster and more—but for what purpose?
NBC News presidential historian, Michael Beschloss, spoke in March at the national meeting of the American Council on Education about the increased pressure on the president to respond quickly to national issues due to the social media phenomenon. As a stark example, he referred to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and said that if President Kennedy had been forced to respond in the same timeframe that current presidents are expected to respond, he would have chosen to unleash heavy military action. It is estimated that forty million lives would have been lost. Forty million. Thankfully, there was time to reflect, and a different decision.
Charleston has dominated the news of late and rightfully so. It is an unspeakable tragedy—although there has been a lot of speaking anyway. I get it. Today, you have to speak quickly on important issues or you will miss the chance when the next story arrives.
I, too, have very strong feelings about the recognition of persistent racism in America and access to guns and gun control and the Confederate battle flag and am “committed to the quest for continually improved means” such as these (and more), but I would like some time and space for a deep and difficult examination of the true “ends” so that we might have shockingly productive conversations on how to get there.
My premise today is simple. For things to look up—and things can always look up—we need deep, measured, thoughtful conversations until we agree on where we are going, but it has grown more difficult to have such conversations because of our obsession with immediate actions.
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* Click HERE if you are interested in an essay published in Pepperdine’s Dispute Resolution Law Journal a couple of years ago where I reflected on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It concludes with an attempt to identify Dr. King’s “end” given his language.
Starting to Look Up 