Classics Considered

Recently I have started bicycling again. My family and I used to go on Sunday outings, way back when, and we’ve recently resumed this pastime. Once cycling past fields of cows and mountain views, now we cycle in wooded urban areas and past rivers and golf courses. Same rhythm, different scenes.

You notice the people who go by, and catch snatches of their conversations. Sometimes they’re conversating with someone who isn’t there—you just see their phone or their airpods. No judgment, I do that myself.

As one man in shorts and shades strides by, I hear the magic word: Instagram. Funny thing is, I had just been thinking about Instagram a few minutes before. What are the chances?

The chances are pretty high, actually… as I reflected once he was gone.

A great classic of liturgical writing, The Book of Common Prayer contains a program of Anglican worship, doctrine, and sacraments, as well as regular devotion known as the Daily Office. A priest must pray the Daily Office every morning and evening. An especially dutiful lay person is encouraged to, as well. I am not especially dutiful.

You know what most of us do dutifully? We check social media.

Social media is our morning and evening and midday ritual, the daily office of the masses. We adhere to it with near-religious fervor. We follow the patterns and forms of its use that others do, and we dress up our profiles in the way that is expected, and we use the latest hashtags that signify relevance and awareness. If someone isn’t on social media, we look at them a bit askance. Or perhaps with admiration, if we view nonconformity as an emblem of individuality. But the platform remains, whether a few people reject it or not.

There is nothing inherently wrong with social media, to my mind. This is not a rant against it, nor against technology in general. I devour classic literature and history for their glories and the flaws they expose alike. They dispel the utopic aura of the past, and I do not hearken after it, unchanged or unreformed.

My weekend thought is merely this: social structure is alive and well in the form of social media. I suspect it’s in the acknowledgement of this reality that both its proponents and its opponents might find a way to actually resolve the issues that it causes. But extolled as a public utility or dismissed as a drug, our new institution remains the elephant in the china shop that just grows and grows on our unwillingness to admit its strength and authority.