A Sea of Screens
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
These words made immortal in the Book of Exodus now ring hollow to modern man. God is seldom the center—the pillar of most people's lives. Instead, people all too often center their lifestyles on a sea of screens consisting of televisions, personal computers, and pocket-sized smartphones, like a sacrificial altar onto which we give everything.
A little while ago, I watched a football game—I struggle to recall the exact teams that played or even the date of the game, but what I remember quite vividly from that time were the advertisements. They seemed to be everywhere and covered everything. Oversaturated with bright lights and flashing images, my television was attempting to persuade me to purchase a vast array of products intended to supposedly improve my life.
From novel dog food products to delicacies to gaudy trinkets, these were all items that I had to acquire for my life to be whole—the sense of urgency of those commercials filled my soul with an anxiety that I could not even articulate in those individual moments. What I was feeling was a fear of missing out—not necessarily on possessing the products, but more so on earning the validation of my television. In those moments of desired consumption, my image machine became an idol, a figure of authority, an entity to consume for—to live for, even while I was barely paying attention to what was before me on my screen. These images, which were flashing before me on the television, were attempting to habituate me into a new mode of thinking—a new position of morality, in which consumption was the ultimate good.
Saint Augustine wrote about this particular occurrence in his magnum opus, The City of God. Completed in roughly 426 AD, the work is a response to allegations from Roman pagans that the Christian faith was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire—exemplified by the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths on August 24, 410 AD.
In Book II of The City of God, Saint Augustine attempts to discern what led to the moral decline of the Roman Empire, making the case that the Roman theater had a degenerative effect on the souls of those who attended performances. Augustine states, "Theatrical shows were first instituted at Rome by authority of the pontiffs at a time when a plague was raging. And therefore any man will surely think that in the way he lives his life he ought to follow the examples set by what is acted in plays instituted by divine authority, rather than what is written in laws laid down by mere human wisdom."[1]
No divine authority has ever instituted modern televisions and screens for our enjoyment; instead, these screens’ perceived authority stems from us—from a secular culture that has sought to replace God with technology. These ubiquitous screens in our pockets, living rooms, and classrooms do have an authoritative effect on our moral sentiments, since we often pridefully believe as viewers that we can fully rely upon our rational capacity to understand and not be influenced by what we are seeing. However, the exact opposite is true: we cannot help but be influenced by the implied morality of the content we consume, unless we approach it with a preexisting moral foundation. A foundationless man builds his foundation from his surroundings—his perspectives form mimetically. We become passive vessels when we engage mindlessly with images– whether Augustine’s theatrical shows or modern commercials aired over football games.
Therefore, in a culture that seeks to avoid God, in a culture that rarely contemplates the value of moral education, our morals will inevitably come from images that we see in our day-to-day lives, and our souls will become reflections of them. Screens, whether televisions hosting football games interrupted by bombardments of advertisements, movie theaters blaring the latest cinema has to offer, or smartphones that frequently entice us to interact with them, become a sea of moral distraction for many living in a world that has forgotten God.
[1] Saint Augustine, City of God, p. 56.