Face to Face

This is not going to be a sermon. Nevertheless, I am happy to share a text from the Bible, specifically from 1 Corinthians:

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Of course, I am not going to regale you with Biblical exegesis. I am going to misread, or perhaps even, misapply the text.

I am going to follow the thought of one Jessica Grose, from the New York Times, to the effect that we lose something when we only relate to other people via screens. We lose something when we do not relate face to face, person to person.

Naturally, the Biblical text does not refer to the internet or to screen time. If it did, that would grant to the apostle far more prescience than is reasonable.

Grose presents her thinking:

The pro-tech argument I often hear in my reporting on education and mental health therapy is that it’s “better than nothing” for people who would otherwise not have access to services. Which is to say: Emotional support through a chatbot is better than no support at all, and A.I. tutoring is better than no tutoring at all. Too many people accept these arguments as true without considering the social cost of cutting out everyday human interaction and the financial and environmental cost of the technology itself. A.I. chatbots don’t come for free.

In part, the issue involves the question of whether it is better to see a real doctor or to engage in online care. Then it also asks whether it is better to see a doctor or to be diagnosed by AI.

But, Grose takes it a step further, correctly so.

Overall trust in institutions is at historic lows, according to Gallup, and the picture is one of declining faith over the past 40 years. That’s roughly the same period in which technology has accelerated and replaced or bowdlerized a lot of low-stakes human interaction, otherwise known as “weak ties,” like the ones you have with a grocery store clerk you see regularly or even the primary care physician you see once a year.

True enough, we have lost the knack of having weak social ties. We have lost the ability to engage in small talk. We are up with efficiency and with economy and down with low stakes human interaction.

I will not opine here about our shredded social fabric or even our wobbly institutions. But I would add this. When you have occasional dealings with the grocer or the dry cleaner, you are affirming your membership in a community. You are engaging in an economic exchange, a transaction, where you both follow certain rules. This is what makes the nation cohere. It is what makes people belong to a community. You cannot gain the same advantage by interacting with a screen. 

Why does it matter that it occurs face to face? Primarily because you are identified by your face. People recognize you and know who you are when they can see your face.

Too often members of the psycho professions encourage people to expose personal secrets, as though sharing intimacies produces a connection. In truth, this form of incontinence only tells people that you cannot be trusted with secrets. Why confide in someone who shares confidences?

As I have often remarked, you are not how you feel. You are how you look to other people. And how you engage in social transactions with other people.  

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