Communication or Communion

(Found here)

“. . . here we are, parachuted into a specific time and place in history, a specific state of affliction in its own right. Moreover, a specific cultural matrix that saturates our consciousness and redefines reality at every turn. One of the negative consequences of the internet, for example, is that our perceptions of both time and eternity are deformed, when they are not swept aside. We are flooded with extremely powerful stimuli of a kind that is unprecedented in the entire history of mankind—in the entire history of the human brain. This quantum leap has occurred within a single generation. One might call it the internet generation, for whom the exterior world is perceived and experienced inwardly. Cyber-interaction. Intimate e-relationships. Avatars and spammers and firewalls and blockers and bloggers and twitterers—with disconnects spreading in every direction, all justified by the illusion of human connection— which is the longing within each of us for human communion, which in turn is a foretaste of the complete and eternal communion of Love which we will know fully only in Paradise.

. . . Does the apparent connection to a global community offered by the internet give us a genuine communion, or does it offer us a dangerously misleading pseudo-communion? Does it disconnect us even as it tells us it is connecting us? Is it merely a new tool of communication, or is it a palantir, the ‘seeing stone’ in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, opening the portals of mind and soul to the eye of the Dark Lord at the tap of a computer key? The palantir was all about communication, all about transcending the limitations of human sight and hearing, dissolving distance, dispelling separation. But what is this newfound power, this instant knowledge of good and evil, really about? Why has it appeared so swiftly, and spread everywhere, and why does it engender so much addictive behaviour in its devotees? That it is a tool with potential for immense good is undeniable. That it is a tool for immense evil is also undeniable. The internet is neither good nor evil in itself. Evil cannot be created. No created thing is evil. As the Lord says, it is not what goes into a man that is evil, but what comes out of him. Even so, we must always consider whether our tools and powers are disposing us toward good or toward evil. Do they make it easier for us to live the good, or more difficult? The question I am asking is, are there consequences to an omnipresent e-culture other than its obvious good and evil effects?

Untold millions of stunning images are available on the internet, most of them for free, most of them produced by cameras, most of them made not so much by art as by mechanism, of course with a human being controlling the mechanism. It begs the questions: Does the controller shape the work of the mechanism, or does the mechanism shape the controller? Or both? And is the near-totality of mechanistic culture altering everyone’s consciousness? If so, in what way?

Perhaps we will have a clearer understanding of the question, and the answer, when we turn off the machines and go out into the cold clear air and walk among the marvels of nature’s universe. Perhaps as we walk we will meet a family traveling across snow-covered hills in weakness and need, seeking a stable under an unexpected star. Let us go with them.

Yes, let us go with them, and let us stay with them all the way. Let us find shelter together, and in that place of holy silence we will see birth and revelation and holiness made flesh. We will kneel before this ‘ordinary’ man and this ‘ordinary’ woman and their ‘ordinary’ baby. We will awaken to the fact that we have been desensitized to the truly glorious, that we have subtly, subtly, subtly become numb to the meaning of this gift. We will understand that with all our riches we have not yet learned poverty of spirit. As never before, we will know our need of our Saviour.

Let us gaze at this little child and accept our poverty as creatures, as he accepted the poverty of his own life. Let God incarnate show us that we do not need to ‘be like gods.’ Let us see a crucifix over the crib, and beyond the crucifix an empty tomb.”
~Michael O’Brien (from Waiting: Stories for Advent)