I was listening to CBC Radio One this afternoon. I am not sure what the program was, but it featured a discussion around different musical genres and how to interact with them. One commentator had this to say (I paraphrase): “We live in a culture where we walk around like zombies with our earbuds in, caught in our own little bubble. We know what we like and we know what we don’t like. We are preaching to a choir of one. There is a even a term for this: it’s called ‘ego-casting.’ But don’t you think that if you wander through life this way, immersed in your own little world, that you end up cutting yourself off from other things that could enrich your life?”
Thought it is nearly impossible to be ignorant of this trend toward earbuds and ego-casting, when it is mentioned in such explicit terms one is suddenly much more aware of the pervasiveness of it and the its implications. I took a class not that long ago on ethics, and there was a whole session dedicated to thinking ethically and theologically about technology. I remember from that session the example of how to automobile can cut us off from others because it allows us to travel in a bubble of seclusion, listening to what we want on our iPod, radio, or a CD. When I (unfortunately infrequently, as of late) go to the gym in the morning, most people have their ears stuffed with earbuds, soaking up their iPod music. Each person is in his or her own world, unless they have come with a friend. It is to me an endlessly fascinating phenomenon that we can get some many people together in one place with the resultant communication being so minimal. And sure enough, this happens anywhere else there is a crowd: at the mall, on the subway. We are, apparently, not keen on exposing ourselves to difference or “otherness” in music. We know what we like and don’t like and interacting with someone else may introduce elements that we don’t like.
I got thinking that this doesn’t just apply to music. Isn’t it true that we all, if we are not careful, fall into the “I know what I like and don’t want to be bothered with anything else trap”? Our comfort bubble is only so wide, and we fill it with all the familiar things that manage to convince us that we are an island unto ourselves, despite John Donne’s assertion to the contrary. Now certainly I am not naive enough to suppose this self-imposed isolation is a new phenomenon, but it would seem that technology only exacerbates the issue.
This “eg0-casting” mindset is especially insidious as it affects the Christian realm. Christ call us to be — as I heard one young woman say — “willingly uncomfortable.” The great call of the Christian life is to go and embrace the other, just as Jesus, who is totally other from us being God himself, came to interact with us, exchanging the comfort of heaven for the uncomfortable cross. Jesus knew of humanity before he came, but he had never experienced it. In the same way, we can know of other cultures, ideas, and music, but we cannot experience this difference until we stop ego-casting and make a concerted effort to engage in this “otherness.” Only then can we truly understand situations outside of our own and be the salt and light that God commands us to be. Miroslav Volf, in his famous text Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, also speaks about this. The Gospel, at its centre, is a message of reconciliation that necessarily demands of its followers actions of embrace rather than those of exclusion, the latter often being predicated on the often subconscious belief that “otherness” is automatically evil. As with many other areas, the Cross sets up a counter-intuitive reaction to otherness that begins the process of reconciliation. I remember a professor assigning to us a text book with which he himself profoundly disagreed, and he encouraged us always to read things that flew in the face of our convictions. Again, all with the goal of creating dialogue and experiencing the other. This is the true Way of the Cross.
Tags: comfort zone, ego-casting, genres, music
