El Papa Knows Best....Father Knows Best

A sitcom from the late 50s, "Father Knows Best", depicted life in America in idyllic terms. The grass was cut, the children behaved and most problems were small enough to be solved in 30 minutes, 22 minutes if you don't include the advertisements. The actor Robert Young depicted father as a gray-haired kindly man with the wisdom to keep the family on a healthy, happy course and that reflected the optimism of Post - WW II life in the United States.

What made me think of this show in the present era, a time of intense globalize, all-at-once communication was an article I read in a Spanish newspaper while on my travels in Northern Spain. My Spanish language is less than perfect, but... here's what it said. The Pope, El Papa, presiding over the mass of Corpus Christi, said (my interpretation follows) "pages move quickly and our exterior  life gets fragmented while our interior life stays inert." He added a cautionary word on the importance of memory saying with "living in the instant and we run the danger of living permanently in the superficial, in the style of the moment without understanding who we are and where we have been."

First, I apologize foe any mistake in translation. As a big fan of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media guru, a convert to Catholicism, I got a kick out of the Pope's observations on a topic that would interest Professor McLuhan.

Listen to this quote from Janine Marchessault on page 182 of her book "Marshall McLuhan" (Sage Publications, 2005). She, explicating McLuhan, confronts the inert feeling inside of the digital generation:

"McLuhan sees the electric environment as a homeostatic system. According to Selye's theory, any physical extension is an attempt to maintain equilibrium. They regard any technological extension as an 'auto-amputation'. In the midst of the electronic environment we numb our central nervous system when it is extended 'or we will die'. The new media support an awareness of others and of social responsibility. They compel commitment and participation through their creation of Anxiety, for in 'the electric age we wear mankind as our skin'."

There's a lot there, including Selye's theory which I do not know. McLuhan stated all technology is an extension of the human body, from clothes, to hammers, to automobiles. The cellphone extends our central nervous system outward. We must numb ouselves to deflect the power of this extension. That may be what the Pope has observed?

Because Pope Francis has dared to go where no other leader seems comfortable on so many issues, including ecology and climate change, he must be applauded. Now he discusses the reality most of us choose to ignore, the way digital technology rules our every moment.

"History has become a thing of the past," as Marshall McLuhan and his colleague Edmund Carpenter, the anthropologist, so sagely warned, long before we had cellphones. They anticipated the terrible challenge of such formidable change ahead where we "wear mankind as our skin."

Pope Francis, El Papa, has stepped forward like Robert Young in the final 2-3 minutes of "Father Knows Best" with some fatherly advice. The question remains-- is any anybody paying attention? Or just going to their next text message or Facebook or Twitter post...