Pop 89: Lies We Can Trust

By Madonna Hamel

I don't trust popular culture's take on what's important for all of us. I have zero desire to spend time and energy listening, watching and absorbing lurid details about the lives and behaviours of celebrities and politicians. But, of course, that doesn't mean I don't get sucked into the screen. Too many mornings, I attempt a bit of research, only to look up and discover it's lunchtime. 

By now, we all know that the internet is designed to grab and hold our attention. It's no different than the shopping mall. An architect friend once explained to me that we are supposed to get lost in malls. They are designed to deliberately confound our sense of direction, forcing us to pass as many alluring opportunities to spend our money as possible before reaching the exit. We know how this works. But we kind of like it. We see it as a service. A convenience. A welcome distraction.

So when did buying, owning, accruing, distracting and diverting become of primary importance among our species? How did the basic well-being of ourselves and others, connection with the earth and community, observance of traditions - including pausing to give thanks for meals, shutting down shopping on Sunday and living within our means - fade into obscurity? How did the "rights" of the individual become more important than the "responsibilities" of the community?

Well, for one thing, we are not that unique as individuals. Despite how we might believe we are special in our own way, we live in a culture that has lumped us into a tidy little marketable collective. Today, as a species, the markets, the culture, the taste-makers and the system that shapes our minds and cravings define us as "users." We use applications, services, devices, and, ultimately, each other.

But once we were "souls." For those uncomfortable with that idea, I understand. To be souls, in the past, meant to be threatened by forces outside us with hell and damnation if we didn't toe the line of corrupt religious institutions. But to be a soul also meant focusing on the interior life and on a power greater than our terminally unique selves. There was a God, and it wasn't us. And while we, as a species, were interested in warmth, food, shelter and safety, we were also interested in finding peace of mind and spiritual succour. To have a soul was to be precious, to have inherent worth, to value contemplation, reflection, and awe.

I remember my grandmother referring to a man who pushed his cart down our road. He could cobble shoes, sharpen knives and mend just about anything. But his was a dying trade. She paid for some small service, and when he left, she shook her head and said: "Poor soul."

After "soul" came "citizen." To be a citizen was to pursue something more than self-interest. To think of one's neighbours as part of the human family. To be a citizen does require soul-searching in order to examine one's conscience. But the goal is to turn our eyes outward again. To be a soulful citizen, Paul Rogat Loeb writes in "Soul of A Citizen" that we "connect with each other, express our compassion, experience a sense of purpose impossible to attain through private pursuits alone." If we don't find ways, or a place, to express this "larger self," our "most generous impulses have nowhere to go." And, I would say, they atrophy. 

Enter our next collective appellation: "Consumer." I remember when I first noticed a newspaper article referring to us as consumers. I was 14 years old, so I didn't have much spending power. (Come to think of it, I still don't.) It was the Regan era. The consumer was king and needed protection from faulty products and false advertising. It was the launch of the Me generation, with slogans like: "What's in it for me?" and "Are you getting your needs met?" And "I deserve it!" And I remember going to mass and feeling robbed of the mystery by priests trying too hard to be hip. It was the beginning of a very "beige Catholicism," as bishop Robert Barron calls it.

Consumers look inward, but not too deeply. And we never come out. Except, perhaps, to see what impression we're making. Or what we're missing out on because whatever it is, we "deserve" it. Those were the days of home hair colouring in a box, proclaiming: "I'm worth it!" The prosperity gospel began its ascendency, re-writing the gospel to claim that Jesus came to make us rich.

Today, we are called "Users." And, just as consumers become consumed by consuming, so users get used through using. Leaving no one to trust. Knowing we cannot believe the lies we are told through advertising and promotions, we accept the lies. In fact, we simply ask, like any good addict or partner of an addict, that if you must lie, make it good. Like they say in recovery: How do you know the addict is lying? His/her lips are moving.

Some of us prefer to live in denial. Some of us don't even know we do. (Another saying defines "denial" in the acronym: Don't Even Know I Am Lying.”) It's worth pondering: Do we prefer to be "users" or "souls"? Do we prefer the AI version of a girlfriend over a flesh-and-blood human being? 

Then start by getting off the screen; don't start your day as a "user." It's like waking up to a shot of whiskey. You go down, down, down into that dark tunnel (I don't call it a rabbit hole; that would be an insult to rabbits for whom burrowing is in their nature), and low and behold, there are a million different carrots to follow, each of them with the promise of instant gratification lurking just an inch from your nose, requiring one more click, one more scroll, one more hour of your precious trust.