While this talk was given to a Jewish audience, and I use the Hebrew word "Shabbat" for Sabbath, I believe that all of us are in deep need of the message. So substitute your definition of Sabbath as you read this piece.
If only I could stop checking email and start writing! That is the thought that kept coming into my head as I sat and attempted to start this piece, one that is to be focused on the great challenge of technology and the enormous gifts of Shabbat. I read two very interesting, polar opposite, yet complimentary things this week that are coalescing into this thought: the Sabbath experience has never been more important than in today's world, which is inundated with information, technological distractions and the potential breakdown of the brain as we know it. The first thing I read was a frightening article in the New York Times called, "Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price," which looks at how all the devices that we use, computers, video games, iPhones and other PDAs, email, Facebook, are affecting our lives; the article focuses on one particular family that is fairly extreme, it seems, but growing more common. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html) The second is a book by Judith Shulevitz called The Sabbath World, where she explores our different relationships to time and how the Sabbath can come to save us from ourselves.
I debated in my head on which subject to begin with, Shabbat or technology. While the thought would be to start with Shabbat, the central aspect of Judaism and the foundational concept of our faith, I am going to start with what I know to be the central aspect in most of our lives today, namely technology. The NYT article follows the Campbell family and the father's major addiction to technology. Cord Campbell works in the computer field creating internet start-ups and selling them to other companies. The article begins by sharing that the biggest email of his life, one offering him $1.3 million for his company, was lost in his inbox for 12 days! How is this possible, you might ask? Here is a glimpse into how: his work station is comprises of 2 computer screens alive with email, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he is writing. He often adds two laptops to that set-up. He sends and receives over 75 emails an hour, follows 1100 people on Twitter, actively, and uses Skype to communicate with his work partners. And he works out of his home. He goes to sleep with his laptop or iPhone on his chest, and when he wakes, he goes on line. Breakfast is made in the tidy kitchen on his family's home (he is married with 2 kids), with his wife making the food while watching a newsfeed in the corner of the computer screen that Cord is checking his email on. I am anxious and uptight just reading about!
While this might be an extreme example, how many of us can relate to at least parts of it? How many of us have been taken over by the gadgets we so desperately needed? As always, this is not a screed on technology and the ills of computer gadgets; they have improved our ability to communicate, connected us globally and opened up the world in a way we never dreamed of before. However, what we have not fully appreciated is the way in which all of these devices are changing our brains and their capacity to process information. One of the big complaints of Mr. Campbell's wife (who in the end of the article also seems to be addicted to her gadgets, if not fully obsessed like her husband), is that he is "not fully present with the family," even when he is not using his gadgets. "He can no longer be fully in the moment." What a brilliant observation and argument for why we need the Sabbath! More on that in a moment. The article describes what happens to our brains when we juggle email, phone calls and other incoming information. Scientists say that our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information. Mr. Campbell, even after he unplugs, craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic devices. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family. As the article says, "This is your brain on computers." And, according to scientists, even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. "In other words, this is your brain off computers." Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and one of the world's leading brain scientists, says, "Technology is rewiring our brains." And Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at UCSF, says, "The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment."
For better or for worse, the article reminds us, the consumption of media, as varied as email and TV, has exploded. In 2008, people consumed three times as much information a day as they did in 1960. And we are constantly shifting our attention. Computer users at work change windows or check email and other programs nearly 37 times an hour. Case in point, I have check email 3 times, Facebook twice and sent 3 text messages during the writing of these first 880 words! Gazzaley at UCSF says, "We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things that we weren't necessarily evolved to do." Namely, the multitasking that is taking place is radically altering how we function, or not function, as the case may be. Here are just a few more tidbits to mull over before I offer some counter-point to this brain altering madness: According to researchers at UCSD, people consume an average of 12 hours of media a day, when an hour spent with TV and internet simultaneously counts as 2 hours. That compares with 5 hours in 1960. Computer users visit an average of 40 websites a day. And, as computers have changed, so has the understanding of the human brain. The article says that "until 15 years ago, scientists thought the brain stopped developing after childhood. Now they understand that its neural networks continue to develop, influenced by things like learning skills." We are also learning that multitaskers are actually significantly worse at filtering out irrelevant information and take a great deal longer than more focused individuals to switch tasks and refocus. We are becoming like the dogs in the movie 'Up," remember them? The would be talking about a plan then get totally distracted, 'Squirrel!' The little chime of our incoming email, say these scientists, is like the squirrel for the dog. And, technology is intensifying an age-old conflict in the brain. A portion of the brain acts as a control tower, helping a person focus and set priorities. More primitive parts of the brain, like those that process sight and sound, demand that it pay attention to new information, bombarding the control tower when they are stimulated. We can't control ourselves and our brains are being affected. The lower brain functions alert humans to danger, like a nearby lion, overriding goals like building a hut. In the modern world, the call of the email or instant message can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children. I think that you get the point of this article and the incredible changes that are taking place within us and around us.
What is so fascinating, at least to me, is that the answer to this problem is an ancient one, one that we have been exposed to for thousands of years: Shabbat, or the Sabbath, the day of rest which is the 4th of the 10 commandments. In her book, Shulevitz investigates the origins and practices of both Jewish and Christian Sabbaths, makes some erudite speculations about the nature of time, as she explores her ambivalence to the Sabbath. She loves the idea, wrestles with the practice. She reminds us that the American Puritans who came to this country did so, in part, to try and practice what they called, "the right kind of Sabbath," one that would transform, "their earthly existence into a New Jerusalem." She reminds us of what the Talmud tells us of Shabbat, that it is a bride given by God to her groom, the people of Israel, that it is a gift from God's treasury, that it is a Temple in time rather than space, something that Rabbi Heschel emphasized in his remarkable book, The Sabbath. Shulevitz wrestles with the laws and rules of Shabbat, even as she knows that they help her to keep its sacredness and holiness. In a discussion with her soon-to-be husband, he says this discussion of Shabbat is all about the social morality of time. Namely, that time is a moral entity, not just something we fill, waste, use or abuse. There is a sacred, moral, holy aspect to time and by not resting, not breaking from the work of the week, we are intruding on the moral code of time, which is essentially why it was part of the 10 commandments in the first place. As her subtitle of the book reminds us, the Sabbath is a "glimpse of a different order of time."
I truly believe that Shulevitz is onto something in writing her book in this exact moment in history. As she says, "Americans, once the most Sabbatarian people on earth, are now the most ambivalent on the subject. On the one hand, we miss the Sabbath. When we pine for escape from the rat-race; when we check into spas, retreats and encounter weekends; when we fret about the disappearance of a more old-fashioned time, with its former, generally agreed upon rhythms of labor and repose; when we deplore the increase in time devoted to consumption; when we worry about these things, we are remembering the Sabbath, its power to protect us from the clamor of our own desires." And yet, she reminds us, whenever we return from visiting a less developed country than our own, and feel a sense of relief that we can return to our 24/7 lifestyle, "at that point too, we are remembering the Sabbath. We are remembering," according to her, "how claustrophobic its rigid temporal boundaries used to make us feel." It is here that I think we all break down, and agree with Shulevitz that we like the "idea" of the Sabbath, but the "practice" of it doesn't jive with our sense of freedom. But, as we saw with the previous piece, our enormous freedoms are taking a huge toll on our brains, and I would argue, on our souls.
We are seeking lives of holiness but we are not necessarily ready to invest time and energy into making those lives a reality. We desire to live meaningful and rich spiritual lives, but don't like that we might have to adjust our schedules and priorities to do so. Shulevitz, in her introduction, quotes from Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, as he says, "that religion has a truth so purely interior that it approaches madness. The encounter with the holy has been described as a flash of hidden knowledge, a suspicion, an awe, an elation, a dread, a mystery, a mysterium tremendum. Whatever it is, it requires a courage that is as much social as spiritual." We long for deeper connection, yet isolate ourselves behind our computers. Shabbat is the ultimate social networking opportunity, Shulevitz reminds us, as we gather together, sing, eat, dance, pray, study and talk about our lives. Holiness doesn't happen without effort, if it is going to happen at all. The great equalizer to our mad rush into technological evolutionary change in the brain is to slow down and keep some form of Shabbat. At the end of her book, Shulevitz has some beautiful lines, when she says, "So why remember Shabbat? Because the Sabbath comes to us from our past...to train us to pay attention to it." Quoting a lovely teaching by 18th century master the Vilna Gaon, she says, "Consider the mystery surrounding the first Shabbat. Why did God stop, anyway?" According to the Vilna Gaon, "God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful only once we stop creating it and start remembering why it was worth creating in the first place." She closes by saying, "We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember."
Finding the balance between 5 computer screens and nonstop technology and ultra religiosity that ignores modernity is what I believe the path of Judaism I try to live and teach embodies. We can keep a Sabbath in our own way, without all the rigidities of the legal minutiae, and still find meaning it. We can turn off our cell phones, computers, shut our wallets and slow down without removing ourselves completely from the world. Shabbat is about remembering why we were created just as technology is about appreciating what we have created. Let us all strive to find this holy, and necessary, balance.
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"We are seeking lives of holiness but we are not necessarily ready to invest time and energy into making those lives a reality. We desire to live meaningful and rich spiritual lives, but don't like that we might have to adjust our schedules and priorities to do so."
So true! Thanks for reminding me that I need to get my priorities in order. I shall try to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Peace!