麻豆社

Good morning.

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality." That haunting line from T. S. Eliot was ringing in my ears as I visited Little Gidding last week, the small Cambridgeshire village whose name Eliot took as the title of the final instalment of his Four Quartets.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality: the sentiment rings true. It鈥檚 why doctors reach for euphemisms when breaking bad news. Even death itself, that very final diagnosis, is rarely named directly. Patients are said to have passed away, or not to have made it 鈥� anything other than the plain statement that a person died.

Other professions do similarly. As someone who teaches at a university, I don鈥檛 coddle my students, but I do recognise that it鈥檚 sometimes appropriate to soften the blow. A botched essay may have 鈥渁 lot of promise鈥�. Students who lack the requisite knowledge may yet be commended for their 鈥渋nstincts鈥�.
So much for mediating reality. What about coping with too much unreality?

Last year, the World Health Organisation declared loneliness a 鈥済lobal public health concern鈥�, and subsequent studies looking also at rises in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicide and self-harm have pointed the finger at social media and smartphones. Young people have been hit especially hard. The American psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes the situation in his book, The Anxious Generation, as 鈥渢he Great Rewiring of Childhood鈥�.

Eliot wrote of being 鈥淒istracted from distraction by distraction鈥� many decades before the digital revolution. So it may be that the negative effects of our new technologies are only part of a larger problem. What is not for up for debate is the dire state of mental health itself.

St John鈥檚 church in Little Gidding was a fruitful place to think about these things, not only because it was quiet and beautiful 鈥� no online distractions there 鈥� but also because communities have gathered in that place for hundreds of years, to submit themselves to the highest reality they can fathom. An embroidery on the wall quotes directly from Eliot鈥檚 Little Gidding, enjoining the reader to kneel, 鈥淲here prayer has been valid鈥�.

Such words ask us to believe that, as the opening of the book of Joshua would have it, we must not be frightened or dismayed because we are in fact never alone 鈥� because God is with us wherever we go.

Some will call such faith a fantasy. But there are today no fantasies as invidious as those online platforms whose entire business models are built on monopolising our attention in their unreal worlds. Whether or not you believe in God, the church community may be an inspiring model for how people can come together in real life, to express and encourage their gratitude and joy.

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