A pleasant Thursday to you,
This week our three youngest children went to camp, so David and I have been enjoying a week at home, finishing sentences and cooking small meals. I’m going to need a total rehaul when all of these people move out. I have forgotten how to make a normal amount of food.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Much Afraid
In his excellent book on The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes the following observation, about the concept of “doxing,” a term meaning “putting someone’s personal information online.” This term originated in the hacker culture of the early 90’s, being a shortened version of the word “documents.”
What’s mildly amusing is that, prior to the internet, most Americans doxed themselves. Home addresses and telephone numbers were listed in the phone book, annually distributed to every local home for free. Phone customers were charged a monthly fee if they didn’t want their home number included in the directory. And possession of the physical directory wasn’t even necessary. It was possible to dial the telephone operator and request an immediate connection to almost anyone’s home phone, without consent. All that was needed was the spelling of the person’s last name and an educated guess as to the area code in which they lived.
I remember certain friends who had unlisted phone numbers. As a kid, I thought this gave a certain air of exclusivity to your life. You were too wealthy or important or fancy to have a mundane gray line in the phone book like the rest of us.
Maybe it was just my youth, but I don’t remember being afraid that our home address and phone number were public information. My parents were comfortable enough with it that they let our listing remain, so I guess we were all OK with it. But now, in the year 2022, we have widespread fear about this form of information getting out publicly.
There is reason to be careful with what we say and do online, as social media is essentially the public square made worldwide. But I wonder if we are fearing the unknown in a way that doesn’t need to be feared.
Obviously there are real threats in our society, as there always have been. The man arrested outside a Supreme Court justice’s home last week reminds us that there will always be dangerous people, especially for those who are higher-profile. But these dangerous people have existed over the span of generations of humanity. Is it somehow more dangerous now?
For those of us who are not high-profile -- who aren’t handing down judgments on federal law or taking an oath of office -- what are we afraid of? I know of people who scour the internet, desiring to scrub any trace of their home address from its reaches. But as Chuck reminds us above, these people probably had their home address in a public file thirty years ago. Has the internet created an impression of danger that just didn’t exist back then? Has the ease with which we can access a map, directions to someone’s home, and information about their family, made it more risky to have a public listing?
Most of what Klosterman is getting at in the section I quoted above is how our understanding of privacy has changed since the 1990’s. But to me, it was more the concept of fear than that of privacy. We’re inundated with headlines now that use emotional phrases and words to elicit a reaction, to make us click on the article. We’re barraged with stories of frightful encounters with strangers and medical malpractice and relationships turned deadly.
I think it’s too much information.
Andrew Peterson makes a compelling case in his most recent book The God of the Garden that we used to be more accustomed to strangers. When commerce was side by side with residences, strangers were a frequent occurrence, because the business would draw in travelers or visitors to town. Now that we live in neatly cordoned-off neighborhoods, with shopping plazas far from our homes, we are not used to strangers. Our default position is to fear the unknown.
I don’t have a neat conclusion here. I just want to say that it makes me sad that we’re suspicious of one another in this way. Maybe it’s earned; maybe it isn’t. How can we pass on the love of God to our (stranger) neighbors when we are afraid of them?
For the Anglophiles
The annual horse racing event Royal Ascot was last week, which means GREAT HAT CONTENT:
Maybe you’d like to follow Chris Jackson on Instagram; he is the official royal photographer for Getty Images.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Here’s a good conversation about Biblical Christianity and Christian nationalism. Paul Miller’s book is entitled The Religion of American Greatness.
I love the idea here that friendship is a way of preparation for union with God. “With Dante’s model of friendship in mind, we can already begin to see that what Levin calls ‘pathological passivity’—falling away from communal life and obligations—is not an option for a life of joy or of restoration. We depend on others to accomplish the work given to us, to share moments of joy and love, and to live a fulfilling life—a reality that is easily overlooked in our atomized lives.”
Those of you who are still subscribed to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill feed got a bonus episode this week, chatting about Hillsong and some destructive patterns of church movements over the last three decades. When Mike Cosper and Russell Moore start talking about a Wendell Berry essay, they have my complete attention. “To lose the scar of knowledge is to renew the wound.”
Closer to Home
This week I mulled over what it means to imagine for other people, inspired by John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and the story of John-Mark from the New Testament.
“Where people live in the fear, love, and knowledge of God, social compassion and practical generosity are entailed; where God fades into the mists of sentimentalism, robust compassion also withers….” DA Carson, For the Love of God