On Our Way Up, I Bid the World Goodbye.

I.
On our way up Cold Mountain, I bid the world goodbye — that is, the one in my phone.
Out of the four of us, Justin alone matched the daddy-long-legs-on-eight-cups-of-coffee kind of pace I’d inherited from my dad. So for him, it meant that he was the only one who had to endure my waxing philosophical (also a paternal inheritance). But he was good about it, and I didn’t have to monologue. The two others with us, Liz and TJ, were twenty-or-so paces behind us, saved from hearing all this by their blessedly shorter legs. And as we climbed, Justin’s sleek, black camera swung by his side, lifting every so often to pixelate the ever-upward trail. The morning had been a little chilly, but now his jacket was tied around him, and mine was stuffed in my daypack. The path was steep, and we talked about belonging.
It was Richard of St. Victor’s idea of “fittingness,” but we used the term belonging. It’s about how things belong in reality, in the divinely created order; water doesn’t exist in one reality and fire in another. They are in the realm of being together. Each thing in the world then metaphysically fits, I guess, or “belongs” with each other thing. Not only does it all belong with itself, but it all belongs to something (“In Him we live and move and have our being”). That’s is a really incomplete way of putting it; in short, nature itself tells us that we belong in reality and to God (Psalm 19).
We were really into it; I was getting riled up for sure. I didn’t always notice that the distance between ourselves and the two behind was extending: partly because I was talking all uppity, partly because they too were photographing the hike up on their phones. Every so often, they’d bend down low like willow trees and give the 3G salute to every rock and leaf. I would have too were it not for the discussion topic. I had my chance coming though.
When we were only about a quarter of the way up the mountain, I had drunk the last bit of water from my rather small “recycled” bottle (it had previously been a sweet tea bottle peppered with rather incoherent copy). And stopping to fill it at a creek, I took the time to snap a picture (below). Crouched down on the large stones cut by the little vein, I lifted the phone to my face, and peering through the virtual glow, I hit the programmed point on the screen, somehow making the whole world mine. But as I turned to go on up, a sharp sense of disconnectedness got a hold on my gut. It was like I had momentarily stepped off the path and into an “elsewhere” situated between the mountain and my Instagram feed.

II.
Not being a real photographer like Justin, I don’t possess the rare capacity to be fully present while taking photos. That, I think, is what distinguishes a good photographer — presence. I do, however, have an Instagram feed that I’ve been obsessively “crafting” for years.
I mean, I even have what passes for an aesthetic: I catch a picture on the fly (A picture per errorem optimum adds to the appeal, or whatever), add B&W filter (X1, obviously), amp up the vignette, post, and check every 5 minutes for likes. I go through a whole process-and-a-half to take one measly picture. And already I’m estimating the amount of likes I’ll get: I’m thinking ahead and I’m thinking through my phone. For that one moment, I’m thinking about anything other than where I really am and what I’m really doing. For that one moment, I’m in limbo.
III.
READERS BEWARE: waxing ahead.
Yeah, it’s just a moment, but the moments stack up. Neither is it just a free-standing point in time either: It’s an act, a repetitive disassembly of mental collectedness in the present and subsequent reassembly in the virtual. And as actions form the habit of seeing myself primarily through my phone, my own soul begins its habitation of the virtual.
This “habitation” is actually a massive philosophical problem: a promotion of a technologically enabled mind-body dualism. That is, while our soul can metaphorically “take up space” in the virtual, the body cannot, and so it’s left behind, so to speak, to work ever more for the soul’s virtual furtherance. The soul, thinking itself its own master, masters the body. The body is then enslaved to the soul’s disorder. It becomes the soul’s envoy to the physical world solely for promotion of the virtual.
This is in the ballpark of what C.S. Lewis called a “tacit atheism,” a foundational principle of about the way the world is which we accept without question because it’s been presented as presupposition. Christian teaching, however, has never (or never ought to have) bought into the mind-body divide. For the Christian, the distinction between the soul and body ends in the unity of the human being. The soul is the substantial form of human life. It is what actualizes or animates (anima) the human body. It is psuche, the principle of mind, memory, intention, consciousness, identity, and action. The soul is what makes us as a who and not a what.
But because the soul does not enslave the body to do its bidding, a better metaphor than slavery for the relatedness of the soul and body is that of friendship, or even marriage. The body and soul are sort of like what Aristotle called “true friendship” or a husband and wife, in step with each other, seeing themselves in one another, even sharing the same being. It means that part of the way we are is the generosity, not slavery, between the soul and the body.
Obviously, all this was not going through my head when I took the picture of the creek. But my questions about my culture’s technological norms were forming clearer than ever. Things just started clicked, I guess. We reached the summit of Cold Mountain, and it was beautiful. It’s a simple and yet irreplaceable pleasure to be with friends, especially whilst hiking.

IV.
Justin and I touched upon one other idea: the way we treat our own souls is analogous to the way we treat the world; the human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The analogy breaks down with the technological self. The division of mind and body instills in me the temptation to “escape this world” via technology, but it goes beyond mere escapism. It’s more accurately a for-now-benign techno-gnosticism in which the material and the truly social world is entirely abandoned for the virtual. But it’s all completely ironic: the more we try to “escape” the more deeply we are proved to be embedded in it, we end up simply tearing ourselves to pieces. But go back to Richard of St. Victor, or read Genesis and count how often that mankind is associated with the “ground.” To dust we shall return, and that is a noble thing. But our (ab)use of technology (not to mention political barbarism, ecological apathy, systemic racism, and war) settles us in the comfortable belief that we no longer belong in the world, and we should pass it up for one of our own making.
I say “for-now-benign” because we haven’t come to the point at which we actually abandon our bodies for mechanical, downloadable, upgradable ones (which I think is quite impossible). But a lot of contemporary atheisms are in an Advent-esque season, eagerly awaiting that great and coming day of downloadability. Even so-called Christians (see Kevin Kelly) find many aspects of post-humanism to be the cause for celebration. The late, great Neil Postman has, however, already said everything I could ever say on the subject; I will not try to add more. But anyway, if we keep going down this road, a host of other issues most of us can’t yet see are going to work their way into our habit of being. It’s not God that we’re making in our own image, it’s the world.
In order to capture the present moment, you have to pull yourself out of it. For now, the act of choosing to inhabit virtual space over and against the real will incrementally dissolve the unity of our person. All of those moments spent on our phones will become a perpetuated way of being alone and nameless in the world. It already hinders our ability to connect to others, especially those from other walks of life than our own. What I call my “aesthetic,” my habitation of the virtual, is a habit of loneliness. I’ve been a techno-gnostic prototype for I don’t know how long now, and I’ve stopped being a friend to myself.

V.
On our way down from the idyllic summit, we were still talking about vague concepts like “reality” and “being” and whatnot. We went and got coffee afterward, and the conversation has continued off the trail. That was three months ago; since then, I’ve been stewing on the thought of what it’d be like to just get out, say goodbye to the world I made myself. Well, I’ve come to a conclusion.
I am simply not man enough for social media; I am not mature enough to be so heavily invested in it. My habit of being has been shaped from its earliest stages by computers, video games, and Facebook. It all so easily influences the way that I think, speak, and act. And frankly, it’s often overwhelming; that’s why people take social media fasts. It’s hard to reform your soul when you’re preoccupied with making the virtual one look as dope as possible.
We rarely ever talk about the great responsibility we have as Christians in an ever more online culture. I never really had that kind of conversation; the transition in my lifetime from no computer to a family of faithful Mac users was far too quick. My family was never not had a computer since I’ve been a part of it. So now, twenty-two years of tech dependence later, I’m following the advice of poet, David White;
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
VI.
Effective August 5th, I’m deleting my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter entirely and cutting out every useless, time-wasting doohickey on my phone. It’ll just be for calling Mom. I will be keeping this Medium as a portfolio for written content, and LinkedIn for potential employment. But that’s really about it.
This obviously challenges my ability to keep up the newly minted norms of Western life. I’ll be less up-to-date. I won’t see as many pictures of my amazing nephews. I have friends around the world whom I will miss (and who I hope will miss me). I’m also dating this really classy lady, and her friends and family are customarily encouraged to snoop through photos of me on the junior varsity soccer team (complete with zits as numerous as the stars; henceforth procurable upon request). I have my own apprehensions about cutting out the brunt of my social media outlets, but I’m counting on the good to come from it.
I hope to forego the itch to look at my phone every five minutes, helping me to better listen to my grandmother recount her years at art school. I won’t be tempted to text someone I could otherwise seek out in person, forcing me to be more truly intentional. And my phone won’t be flooding with updates about the “barbaric lunacy” (as John Milbank has called it) that passes for American politics, which will (with any grace) improve my general admiration for humanity at large. But above all, I think I’ll enjoy hiking more.
If you should want to find me, send an owl… or just email me at rmichaelwilcher@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
R. Michael Wilcher
Epilogue
Cold Mountain is the closest thing to the Scottish Highlands you’ll see on the east coast. It’s magnificent in any season and a fun hike for outdoor enthusiasts of any fitness level. At the top, a long, rolling meadow is peppered with stones among swathes of emerald and encompassed by blossom trees. It all belongs to the Blue Ridge Mountains, rising in veiled ranks, and disappearing into a hazy, azure yonder. Be sure to take a friend or three.
