Kicking the habit
LOS ANGELES, March 25 (Reuters) - A Los Angeles jury found Alphabet’s Google and Meta liable for$3m in compensatory damages and an additional $3m punitive damages on Wednesday in a landmark social media addiction lawsuit.
I have been following this case closely, not so much because I am concerned about the social responsibility of the social media giants as for objective confirmation that social media is addictive. In truth, that’s hardly a surprise finding. All you have to do is sit in an airport departure lounge or stand in a supermarket lineup to see that almost everyone fills every uncommitted moment of the day with a glance at their phones.
The court case focused on the negative impact addiction to social media has on teens. My view takes in a larger field. I’m concerned with the impact addiction to cell phones has on our ability to tune into the holy dimension of life. The luminous presence of the holy is there – in every moment of every day, but we have no access to that radiant light of the divine when our eyes are filled with the glow of the screen in our hands.
That’s especially an issue on Shabbat. Or, should I say, on the holy Shabbat. Because when God created the seventh day, the verse says, “And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”
Shabbat is holy by its nature from creation, whether or not we acknowledge that or tune into it. But it also comes around every week and presents us with a recurring opportunity to tune into the holy. And in my experience, for that to happen, I need to tune out everything else that draws my attention to the more superficial level of the reality I inhabit.
And there in my hand is something designed to grab and hold my attention – I need to shut out the compellingly loud, coarse, colourful, flashing, base world that leaps out and grabs me from my screen in order that I can gather my attention to focus on a different dimension of life, one that is as delicate and beautiful as a butterfly’s wing.
Just like AA says about other forms of addiction, we need to acknowledge the carefully crafted power of the phone to demand our attention, along with our addiction to it. Of course, having made such a blanket statement, I need to acknowledge that there are some exceptional individuals who can take or leave their phones, but they are very much in the minority.
In my book and in the talks I have been doing based on it, I lean heavily on a medrash from the 5th century (in Bereishit Rabbah) that says that the mitzvot were given in order to provide human beings with a way to refine ourselves. I respond intuitively and positively to the notion of “refinement” and have written about that in regard to the traditional Jewish concept captured in the Yiddish word “erlichkeit.”
And so I was surprised when I encountered pushback on the idea of “refinement.” As someone said to me, “When I hear the word refinement, I see very cultured English ladies with long white gloves sipping tea from fine china.”
Needless to say, that is not what our rabbis had in mind when they said that purpose of themitzvot is l’tzoref a person. That Hebrew word – l’tzoref – actually refers to smelting, and specifically to separating precious metals like silver or gold from impurities in the ore. You can see why it’s a good metaphor for personal refinement, though the pleasure of eating crustless mini-sandwiches does not come into it.
The 16th century Mussar book Orchot Tzaddikim invokes a different metaphor that says basically the same thing. It refers to “throwing aside the husk and taking the fine flour.”
This is one of the subtleties of the Mussar tradition. Christians have a notion of “Seven deadly sins” but there is no such thing in the Mussar view. All traits are seen to be neutral in and of themselves. They only become positive or negative according to how they are put into play in our lives. As I have pointed out many times, you can do great harm with generosity (like when you spoil a child, or enable someone’s destructive behaviour) and, equally, make excellent use of a trait like envy (as a motivator).
That’s why I find refinement the right word for what a Mussar student does when they work on themselves. It is a process of cultivating traits so that the gold and silver is all that remains, because the dross has been purified out. Or to use the other metaphor, the fine flour is in hand, and the coarse husks have been blown away by the wind.
The Book of Proverbs (17:3) teaches: “Matzref lakesef ve’kur la’zahav ve’ish le’fi mahalalo,” which means, “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, and people are tested by their praise.” Rabbeinu Yonah explains that we can only assess the value of the gold and silver by smelting them, and in regard to people, we can gauge their “value” by observing what a person praises. A person’s choice of words, topics of conversation, and activities all reveal the state of their character. And, conversely, what we pay attention to, how we think and act, all have their effect on character.
Which brings us back to cell phones and social media. Anyone who is drawn to the notion of the holy, who is moved by the Torah’s insistent encouragement that we make holiness the north star of our lives, who understands that the world will not be redeemed except by our own acts of redemption, and who appreciates that the Jewish people will thrive only when individual Jews pursue their own thriving, will see the need to clear a period in their life that can be a receptacle for that holiness. Such is Shabbat.
Can social media be tamed? Will the court case cause changes of policy? Is a $6 penalty something the media giants will even notice? None of that is my primary concern. Rather, the conviction itself is cautionary. I encourage you to do your soul a favour and tune out, at least this one day a week, so that the vessel is prepared and ready to receive something totally different, something rare and precious, something paradoxically central yet seemingly alien to our world.
As you make Shabbat a vessel for the holy, so do you become a vessel for the holy.