Missing Out
Some ramblings the day before a different kind of self imposed disconnection as part of my sabbatical.
One of the ways that the always on Internet, connections, social media, and the 24hr news cycle has seeped into my existence is something that effects iGen (GenZ), specifically, and all of privileged humanity: fear of missing out. The smartphone, for all it’s good, has made post-modern FOMO worse. It is one of my learnings, about myself, from sabbatical time. This fear of missing out is fueled by the responsibilities vested in the ministry position I currently hold and nurture. No matter how administrative my vocation becomes, it is still primarily about the good news of God, people, and connections. It is always fun to see the demeanor of a neighbor change when I’m sharing a beverage at a bar and the question, “What do you do for a living?” is asked. Serving in ministry and being a minister is a part of my authentic self. Being away from my Regional responsibilities is a gift, no doubt, for myself and our systems. My control issues aside, the FOMO is heightened with my iPhone not pulling office email and the decision every time to answer a text or call. It is an interesting tension. It was somewhat easier to disconnect before all the connections. So, the next step is to manage the fear of missing out better. Hello cruise ship. The financial cost of being connected is somewhat prohibitive so it is easier to let it go.
Cognitive load is real
Seth Godin, “Cognitive load is real.” April 10, 2019
Disneyworld is stressful.
The occasional visitor has far less fun than you might expect. That’s because without habits, every decision requires attention. And attention is exhausting.
And it’s stressful because the choices made appear to be expensive. There’s a significant opportunity cost to doing this not that. You’re leaving tomorrow, what are you going to skip? What if it’s not worth the line? What are you missing?
It’s all fraught. We feel the failure of a bad choice in advance, long before we discover whether or not it was actually bad.
And it’s not just Disneyworld. It’s now the whole world.
Every minute on a website is a minute not spent doing something else. Every decision about what to write in social media is enervating. It’s not like the old days, with just three TV channels and a TV Guide to make that difficult decision even easier.
(The most popular magazine in America, for decades, was devoted to helping people figure out which one of three channels to watch).
Here’s my list, in order, of what drives behavior in the modern, privileged world:
Fear
Cognitive load (and the desire for habit and ease)
Greed (fueled by fear)
Curiosity
Generosity/connection
The five are in an eternal dance, with capitalist agents regularly using behavioral economics to push us to trade one for the other. We’re never satisfied, of course, which is why our culture isn’t stable. We regularly build systems to create habits that lower the cognitive load, but then, curiosity amplified by greed and fear kick in and the whole cycle starts again.
And, an affirmation from sabbatical time: my love/hate relationship with the Church remains mostly healthy for me after all these years. There are days that persons may experience my relationship with Church negatively, and I can work on that. Perception matters. What people think of me and about me matters a bit, but I remember my mother’s words on the way out the door to school, “It doesn’t matter what people think. Stand up and do what is right. Be yourself.” The great NBA legend, Larry Bird, is said to tell young players entering the league to leave the game better than you found it. That resonates with one of the learnings from my time as a Boy Scout. When camping, always leave the site better than you found it. That is conservation of a resource for another person, another group of people today and tomorrow. Somehow on the way to making a buck, political power and immediate gratification, Americans have lost the vision and responsibility for conservation. As an aside, generic Christianity through personal salvation has displaced the importance of orthopraxy (right action), with a purity of belief as the identity that is the tie that binds. “I believe” has become more important that what one “does” based on that belief.
Conservation is not conservatism.
“Be without fear in the face of your enemies.
The Knight’s Oath (Kingdom of Heaven)
Be brave and upright that God may love thee.
Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death.
Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong – that is your oath.”
I think there is something to the psychology of birth order. I am the oldest of two children. The last time I took the Myers Brigs, (over 30 years ago), I scored INTP. I consider myself more an extrovert than introvert though working from home has altered me. I think of myself as a pretty easy going person, but alas, I am much more structured than I once was. Not rigid, but structured. Well, depending on a person’s experience of me and the context, one might think of me as rigid. Conventional wisdom about humans suggests that as we age identity is shaped by becoming a more conservative version of oneself, more risk adverse, more tethered to “traditions”, and skeptical of change. Now that I’m over 50, I more often “think before I leap” and I’ve come to categorize change as probable and or possible. I would use the term liberal rather than progressive to describe my theological perspective, biblical hermeneutic, and political worldview.
If one lives long enough one will experience few, actual new ideas, but more often old ideas packaged and marketed in new ways with different technology. The fear of missing out may have existed for the Boomer generation and GenX (my generation), but it was experienced by not finding out for a day or two or years later that one was left out of a work gathering, family gathering, school function, Church gathering, or some other social space. There were different lines of division, accountability, and community back then, bad and good. What have we learned from it? Now, one can know instantly, and can respond, to the feeling of being left out. The “bandwagon” mentality takes on new digital forms, and it effects every part of 21st century life in the developed world. I’m a Chicago Cubs fan. With Twitter or other social media, I can cheer and boo the team no matter where I am physically. I’ve found that I enjoy listening to the games more, win or lose, when I stay away from my social media.
By choices I make and choices out of my control, I’m going to miss out. I can probably be ok with missing out and possibly learn from it.
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Yoda