My Savior Phone

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MY SAVIOR PHONE

Yesterday morning, following my usual morning routine, I went into my studio and turned on my computer. The lines were down, however, and I was unable to log on to the Internet.

- So I did what many do─I picked up my smartphone. Within seconds I had checked local weather, the definition of antimony, world news, the status of a UPS delivery, my email inbox, and I did a quick Facebook scan.

All was well and I felt happy.

My faithful phone had reached out and pulled me back from the brink of disconnection.

- And it was then, at that moment, that epiphany struck and I realized─I loved my phone. That the little electronic object cradled in my palm had evoked in me a very real human emotion. For a moment I saw my phone as a friend, even a savior.

Expression of human emotions therefore, even our most elevated ones, are not reserved for loved ones and God. They are evoked by anything that provides what loved ones and God provide: a greater sense of value and security.

- My phone makes the world cozy and easily accessible.

- Many older or elderly people resist new devices, not because they are confusing but because they threaten to expose sacred emotions to stimulation by a soulless device.

But such stimulation, in fact, is not new. Over the ages men have found affection and comfort in a warm fire, strong bow, rifle, truck or home. All of which, we believe, have no soul.

But what if they do have a soul? What if my loving my phone awakens the soul in my phone? What if my loving my Jeep or home awakens the soul in them, or the reverse? Does loving them awaken the soul in me? What if soul is not what we think it is, and its origin and purpose not what we believe its origin and purpose to be?

Has anyone ever captured a soul─yeti of the afterlife? Examined one in a bottle or test tube? Do we have photographs or footprints of souls? By what measure can we state without doubt that souls exist, that our body comes with a soul when we are born; an appendage of necessity equal to that of our heart, lungs and brain?

A now departed and very dear friend of mine once asserted that some people were born soulless and for this reason human life gives rise to vicious dictators, cons, rapists and murderers; orotund things that look manlike but lack even the virtues of a beast.

But what if we are born soulless and some people are just born more soulless than others? What if having a soul is only made true by disbelief in and non-attachment to the soul?

I don’t want to believe this, certainly, and neither do you. But we are faced here with a frustrating antinomy: a contradiction between two apparently indubitable propositions.

That we can neither prove nor disprove that a soul exists has wide ranging implications and brings us, rather circuitously, to the point of this article:

Are we here?

Right now you think you are reading these words in your present while I am here in my present writing them. Are we? How can we be certain of this, or anything else given the very limited scope of human vision, if in fact we are human and have human vision?

“But we are human,” you say. “We have bodies; a fleshy mass that shutters in the cold and sweats under the gaze of a noon day sun.” And I agree we do, we do feel these things but does being aware of our physical body constitute proof of the existence of that body?

It is by human definition that we certify ourselves as human and living, but what of the bug’s point of view, or that of the stars, time, space and God? Is man by any other definition still a man?

Putting my finger into a cup of hot water provides means for me to determine if the water is hot. With my eyes I can see shapes and color, my brain provides means for me to think and to evaluate my thinking, and clocks give us a measure of time.

These are reasonable assertions, however, in the absence of clocks and means to make them would there also be an absence of time and the measure of time? Likewise, absent means of measuring life after death (the presence or absence of our soul), we must ask, is there life before death?

Are we here, now?

Descartes, the French philosopher/mathematician, stated “I think, therefore I am,” and maybe he was right. Perhaps all we require to bring ourselves, our souls and God into existence is to think them.

Perhaps, but absent the perspective bias of our human point of view we cannot prove without doubt the existence of our human point of view.

In the end we are, or are not, what we think we are, and the importance of either, either matters, or it does not.

Greater clarity would be helpful. Indeed… let me check, there may be an app for that on my phone.

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