It finally occurred to me, yesterday, that a new age has dawned; not a new political age, but a new metaphysical age.

First, in case some do not remember what society was once like, let me recall.

In 1977, I was standing before the defensive coach at Trinity Middle School after scrimmage, having asked him how I could deal with the offensive linemen as a defensive end. Rick and I were leaving together. He came and listened alongside me to the sage advice, showing respect.

Likewise, the coach, understanding that Rick’s mother was probably waiting outside the school in an idling car, said just enough to get us thinking about our play reading retardation and promised to address things in detail next practice.

In this day and age, east of the Appalachians, in the Mid-Atlantic, hub of this evil world, this civility, this respect, is absolutely gone. I have paid attention as I came east, and have also looked carefully as I have lived in these parts that were once my home.

Yes, we have seen for a decade now, families at table for dinner ignoring each other, hypnotized by the sacred siren call of their smartphone. I have taken into consideration that this evolving situation began with TV. In my family, I can recall sitting at the kitchen table, discussing with a family member the last words of her sister, when the announcer of the Orioles game on the TV, in the next room, could be heard proclaiming a home run. The woman then got up from the reverent table, walked into the TV room to worship her millionaire avatars, and utterly forgot the subject of our conversation.

Many a time a man in my family did the same, asked me a question he seemed honestly concerned with about work, finance, news, loved ones, crime—then a first down was announced on the TV and the conversation ended, the man no longer able to even recall what we had been speaking of. In the east, with my family and hosts, as they are distracted every few minutes, I have been assigned the task of recalling what we had been discussing, what they had been doing, what they had been saying. For their memories are wiped clean.

People in the west, I know, do not suffer from this affliction.

I do not know why. Perhaps it is simply the people I know in the west. But when I am in Portland at a bar, or at an eatery, or in a house, few people are shirking their fellows and family for the sacred light of their phone: hipsters, Mexicans, tweakers, drunks most of them will set the phone aside for Sunday breakfast. In the east, no one even looks at each other as they stare languidly into the eternity beckoning from the palm of their hand.

I spoke of this to Nero the Pict, as he drove me from Harford County, Maryland to Lancaster Pennsylvania, two days ago, concerning this transformation of humans into autoclones. Nero is one of the few eastern men who, along with The Operator and Big Ron, [1] do not suffer from this autoclone impulse to enter the swirling vortex of distraction on automated command. He has noted in his frequent travels in scores of workplaces as a workspace maintenance man, that the staggering increase in speaker phone use in public has shattered all previous norms of privacy and of courtesy.

I will now recount the most egregious examples of this thing that I once thought was targeted invalidation of me, but now believe is a systemic capture and taking away from me, of friends, associates and family:

Thursday at the Dojo

Saturday at Breakfast

Monday During an Amish Country Drive

Thursday at the Dojo

A man who has waited for me to return to Baltimore for three months, to train him in boxing at his karate school, who is paying me to spar with him, called a halt to our sparring after 40 minutes. He then asked me what he could do to avoid having my slow, ancient ass hit him. I gave him three fights to watch, Haggler Mugabi, Duran Barkley, Haggler Duran, to search on his phone. I thought he was searching these on his phone, for I could not see, and was reeling off the technical lessons to be gleaned from each as he sat beneath me, head looking down into his phone, thumbs working.

Enter The Operator, “What!, Brutha! Mister [instructor’s name redacted] if this wasn’t your house I’d break that phone over your head. You have The Man, that you have hired to teach you how not to get your ass kicked, giving you the keys, and you are making ebay trades on your phone!”

The instructor, who had been sparring with me 20 minutes earlier, admitted, “I’m sorry. It was a lot to digest—I guess I just checked out.”

After my session with The Operator, who also uses a flip phone, he had much to say on this, including, “Mister James, imagine if my Battalion Commander, arranged to have an SAS operator advise me on surviving an enfilade ambush, and I just turn away to check my fantasy football status and even forget the subject. I guarantee you that if he was here now, I would hit him with the exact punch you were coaching him against. Mister James, these people, him, this entire world, they are not human. They are just puppets in a window; they are mere THINGS I use to mark range, keep time, and, if necessary, present with the question that THEY are not capable of answering.”

Saturday at Breakfast

I sat at table with three loved ones. The elder, the matriarch, with tears welling in her eyes, dearly wanted me to outline my winter travel plans, city by city, a verbal map. This takes 2 minutes, as I have done it often for the curious.

30 seconds in the other man’s smart phone rings.

In an age of respect, he would have excused himself and taken this urgent call. In this age of rude, hypnotic negation he answered on speaker phone, talking over me. She, our mother, silenced me, “Shush, don’t talk while he is on the phone!”

I was astonished.

He spoke briefly then signed off. Her inquiry, which was writ with urgency on her face, erased all knowledge of our iced conversation which, forty second earlier, had her near to tears, “What was that? Why did you hang up so soon? Is it an emergency?”

He said, “A telemarketer. They wanted to know if my car needed detailing.”

She never asked me again where I was going, forgot the conversation. Numerous other conversations, between the family were totally iced over facebook video advertisements, Nigerian scam artist calls, ball game scores on the TV in the other room, weather forecasts on the TV in the other room…

What is left of my family is not able to speak with each other due to TV, radio, smartphone activity trumping even our medical and mortuary discussions. Indeed, when my flip phone happens to be out on the table, always on silent, usually so I can check to see if my ride is on the way by text, and it lights up, they are all, always shocked and offended with my rudeness to the flip phone! They cannot fathom me valuing our rare conversation, perhaps the last of our lives an hour before I head out of state, over the probably spam caller on the phone.

“I will check it,” and they fume, almost angry that the conversation they initiated with a heartfelt question, was not being terminated in favor of a battery and a light.

Then, yesterday, being driven through Amish Country, by a man who is troubled by a particular social question as much as he hates high way traffic, and therefore took this scenic way past buggy and farm, he asks me to answer a heartache question for him, which he seems to think I might have the answer to.

I begin to answer, which is going to take some qualifying questions to help him out.

His phone is somehow wired into his car. The car begins to ring! Without asking if I mind, or saying excuse me, he answers the car phone round, knowing from the dash display, that it is a mutual friend who calls daily to chat about current events. Unlike most folks he at least lets our friend know that I am in the sound car.

The call is over in 15 minutes.

We have 15 minutes to home—we have time. I wonder, ‘Were his concerns erased?’

He begins speaking of the stupid, fake, distant, current events. He gets angry at these events. He argues down the anger. He looks around at Amish Country and gets angry at them for some undefined reason. We drive on and I ask, “Brother, is there anything you wanted to talk about, anything on your mind, anything I could help with?”

“Ah, uh, I don’t know. I’ve been forgetting stuff lately—it’s weird, one reason why I look forward to our time together. You don’t forget. You’re therapeutic.”

I let his concerns die in my mind.

I have decided that I will no longer bother recalling the concern of someone who is taken over mid conversation by Leviathan. Autoclones might be people we love. But, they are only people until the TV, the radio, the phone, the watch, the talking automobile! summons them to the Conclave of All Forget.

I hope now, to die in the west, rather than here in the evil east, where nearly all of us are alien and alone by phone.

…

Notes

-1. Interestingly, my webmaster, a real tech head, does not suffer from this and stands outside of the pervasive rudeness, auto invalidation, and autoclone alienation of this beastly east.