The Perils of an Anonymous Society(a sermon delivered at the Hamburg Unitarian Universalist Church on February 8, 2004) A lawyer asks Jesus how attain eternal life. No. This isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s actually Luke, Chapter 10, verse 25: “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying ‘Teacher, What shall I do to inherit eternal life.’” Jesus tells the lawyer, in part, that you must love your neighbor as yourself. What follows is the parable of the Good Samaritan, wherein a man traveling to Jericho is beset upon by robbers and left for dead by the side of the road. Both a priest and a Levite cross to the other side of the road and pass by the beaten man. But then a Samaritan comes by, bandages the man’s wounds, places him on his own beast, and takes the man into town, paying a full two day’s wages to find a place for him to stay until he has healed. The moral of course is that every man is our neighbor, and that by reaching out to those in trouble, we reach out to the divine. The interesting thing about this parable, though, is that the priest and the Levite (one appointed to assist the priests in the temple), the ones who pass by the wounded man are supposedly men of God, while the Samaritan—the man from Samaria—is from a land considered to be a place of iniquity by the Hebrew prophets. In fact, there was continual hatred between Jews and Samaritans at the time of the parable. Or, to put this into a perspective we can understand today,Samaria is the location of present-day Palestine. Jesus wasn’t trying to make a point about the decadence of the priesthood. No. His choice of a Samaritan as the hero of this parable, I think, was to show the Jewish lawyer that not only was the beaten man his neighbor, and that we must reach out to those in need. But that the Samaritan was also his neighbor; that we must reach out to those we hate as much—if not more than—to those we know. There are no strangers in the eyes of God. There is no anonymity. Now, I don’t know if you believe in eternal life, or in a day of judgment when our lives will be examined to determine where our souls should reside for all of eternity. I honestly don’t know if I believe in those things or not. But whether we believe in the hereafter or not, this question of anonymity is crucial to the morality of the human race—to how we treat one another. We have come a long way from Samaria and Jerusalem. Today there are over six billion people on the planet; most of whom are so wrapped up in their own problems and concerns and worries, that they have little time left over to think about reaching out to someone else; someone in need. Sure, we give to the church and to our pet charities. We write checks to assuage our guilt. The best among us even give of our time—delivering food to the elderly, collecting canned goods for the food pantry, or being a big brother or big sister to a disadvantaged child. But how many of us have driven past a stranded driver on a busy highway? How many of us have crossed the street or averted our eyes to avoid the gaze of a homeless person? Yes. We’ve come a long way from Samaria. A long way in the wrong direction. We’ve become anonymous. It’s all too easy to pass by the injured man lying in the ditch when ten, or twenty, or a hundred other people have done it before you; are doing it all around you. Sure. We tell ourselves that: “the police are sure to come along to help” or “he’s just a hustler. He should go find a job instead” or “I’m late. Someone else will stop” or “he’ll just use the money to buy booze.” But the simple truth is that it comes down to anonymity. We’re an anonymous part of the crowd passing by an anonymous person in pain. Personal responsibility in a world of six billion people may just be a pipe dream, and even religion seems to fail us in this regard. By some reports, as much as 80 percent of the world’s population believe in some God. In the United States, this figure is 95 percent or higher. And yet, war, hate, violent crime, and the problems of neglect such as homelessness and famine still run rampant in the world. How can a world full of God-loving people allow this to happen? Could it be that our belief in God and the hereafter have inoculated us against the suffering of our fellow man? This is one theory proposed in a new series of books by Robert Sawyer, the Toronto-based science fiction author I quoted extensively in my last sermon. His newest novels, Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids, tell of a parallel Earth where Neanderthals became the dominant human species. The Neanderthal society, while human in its own right, is quite alien to our homo sapiens sensibilities. For one thing, their entire species does not believe in God or eternal life. Now, you might think this would leave them with a bleak outlook on life. If there is nothing to live for after this life, then what makes life worth living in such a cruel world? Without the guiding hand of God, where does this intelligent human species get their morality? Well, it turns out their non-belief provides them with such a fine moral compass, that their world is almost devoid of crime. The worst war in their history, which they all recall with horror, killed 70 people. Ponter, a Neanderthal physicist who accidentally finds himself in our world, has a chance to talk about religion with Mary, the Catholic geneticist (a seeming contradiction in terms) who is dispatched to determine if he is truly a Neanderthal. Ponter sums up Neanderthal philosophy this way: “A person’s life is completely finished at death; there is no possibility of reconciling with them, or making amends after they are gone, and no possibility that, because they lived a moral life, they are now in paradise, with the care of this existence forgotten. . . . If I wrong someone—if I say something mean to them, or . . . perhaps take something that belongs to them—under your worldview I can console myself with the knowledge that, after they are dead, they can still be contacted, amends can be made. But in my worldview, once a person is gone . . . then you who did the wrong must live knowing that that person’s entire existence ended without you ever having made peace with him or her.” Mary ponders these words and realizes the following: “God was the great compensator. If you were wronged in life, it would be made up for in death—the fundamental principle that had allowed parents to send their children off to die in war after countless war. Indeed it didn’t really matter if you ruined someone else’s life, because that person might well go to Heaven. Oh, you yourself might be dispatched to Hell, but nothing you did to anyone else really hurt them in the long run. This existence was merely prologue; eternal life was yet to come.” Of course, Rob Sawyer has carefully constructed his Neanderthal world so as to minimize conflict. For one thing, the total population of this alternate Earth is only 125 million—less than half the population of the United States. For another thing, men and women don’t live together in the Neanderthal world (which not only helps keep their population down, but I’m sure minimizes conflict more than any other single measure they have taken). Third, the Neanderthals have aggressively eradicated those with violent tendencies. Violent crime in the Neanderthal world is punished by castration—and not just the perpetrator, but anyone who shares at least 50 percent of the perpetrator’s genetic make-up. This not only ensures that the genetic trait doesn’t get passed on, it makes non-violence survival trait. Families will police themselves to ensure their progeny are protected. Genetic cleansing may seem an extreme step that we would never be willing to take, but it almost pales next to the final step the Neanderthals have taken to ensure their safety in the world. Every Neanderthal has implanted in their arms at birth a device that records everything they do. These recordings are stored in something they call an alibi archive. The Neanderthal don’t see this as an invasion of privacy because the archives are never viewed unless someone is accused of a crime. But in our suspicious world, this kind of information could never be stored safely. Someone somewhere would crack into the data storehouse, if not to snoop on the rest of us, then to erase the moment of a crime. Just take a look at the problems of the Internet. Here we find a great bastion for the anonymous. You don’t even have a face on the Internet, let alone a name or an address that can be tracked down by anyone without a degree in computer science. The big worry about the Internet is how much of your information is out there and how easy it is for crooks to find it and use it against you, but the reason these crooks proliferate is because it is so easy to get lost in the Internet. But there are smaller crimes I see all too often on the Internet as well. Crimes that are indicative of how different we are than the Neanderthals of Rob Sawyer’s novels. I’m talking about trolling and flaming, what David Brin, author of The Transparent Society (which I will talk about in a little while) calls “just a few of the new ‘rudeness plagues.’” A troll is someone who lurks around waiting to ambush people (like trolls do). They post inflammatory and controversial items online just to get people arguing. A flamer is someone who openly attacks another person during an online conversation, using words I’m sure their mothers never taught them. You simply cannot converse on a bulletin board or in a chat room without running up against trolls and flamers on a daily basis. They thrive on the chaos that ensues from their posts. They thrive because of their anonymity. But trolls and flamers are minor irritations next to things like hoaxes and viruses. These, for the most part, are instigated for the sole purpose of tying up the resources of the Internet. At its height last week, the Mydoom virus accounted for as much as 30 percent of all email traffic on the Internet. A hoax is nothing more than a virus that uses people to proliferate itself instead of software. Someone sends out an email with information on a “vital subject that everyone must know about” and a request to send it on to others to spread the word. The vital information is almost always completely false, and once again the goal is to tie up the internet—and the time of those using it. I don’t personally understand what trolls, flamers, hoaxers, and virus makers get out of their perverse need to mess with other people’s lives, but I do know that the anonymous nature of the Internet allows them to flourish. As Brin says: “Electronic anonymity brings out the worst in some of us.” A more serious ramification of our anonymous society, though, that we had brought home to us two-and-a-half years ago, is terrorism. Terrorists thrive on anonymity. They count on getting lost in the crowd, living under the radar until they emerge and use those same crowds for an even more sinister purpose: innocent victims. 9/11 was a wake-up call about the perils of our anonymous society. Homelessness, poverty, drug addiction, crime, even terrorism. These were problems that happened to other people—to faceless, nameless, anonymous people who were not us. But 9/11 put a face on one of these horrors of modern society. In fact, it put 2,749 faces on it. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, there was a rush to curtail civil liberties in order to bring the anonymous terrorists out into the harsh light of day. But that rush has turned into a two-year marathon, leaving too many people held captive by our own government, out of the harsh light of public scrutiny. Now, we hear of new legislation being considered to give the government even more freedom to snoop on our private conversations; to look through our private online conversations. Sure, these are the very anonymous activities I claimed were part of the problem. But is this the path we want to take? Must we give up our privacy for our safety? Can we trust the government to do what’s best for us? Do we really want any government legislating—or dictating—morality? Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers for these questions any more than I have answers to the problems of the anonymous society. Perhaps the answer lies not in giving governments more power to invade our privacy—our anonymity, but by stripping that anonymity away from us entirely—at least in public. Brin’s The Transparent Society (subtitled Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? was published in 1998—three years before 9/11 and the privacy backlash, but has some interesting things to say about what is happening now in our own government Brin argues that loss of privacy is inevitable. Technological advance makes it unstoppable. But unlike George Orwell’s dystopic 1984 society, where loss of privacy work only one way; where the government enforces their intrusion yet maintains secrecy about what they are doing, Brin believes we can maintain freedom in the face of electronic snooping by demanding the ability to watch the watchers. The idea is that if we all have full access to the surveillance apparatus and personnel, then the government will be much more circumspect in their intrusions. We can watch the watchers. According to Brin: “In the Information Age to come, cameras and databases will sprout like crocuses—or weeds—whether we like it or not. Over the long run, we as a people must decide: Can we stand living exposed to scrutiny. . .our secrets laid open. . .if in return we get flashlights of our own, that we can shine on anyone who might do us harm? Even the arrogant and strong? Or is an illusion of privacy worth any price, even surrendering our own right to pierce the schemes of the powerful? There are no easy answers, but asking questions can be a good first step.” Brin’s electronic eye utopia won’t be easy, though. It’s hard enough to let the government snoop on us. Think how much harder it will be to let our neighbors snoop on us. As Brin puts it, “Whenever a conflict appears between privacy and accountability, people demand the former for themselves and the latter for everybody else.” He later adds: “Matters of privacy, accountability, and freedom are often judged first and foremost on the basis of whose ox is being gored.” This then seems to bring us right back to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Until our ox is gored—until we are the one lying in the ditch—we humans (even the best among us) tend to look the other way; to see it as “somebody else’s problem. Are the only answers genetic cleansing or pervasive snooping devices to keep us all in line? I don’t know. But it seems that a belief in God has not made this problem any better over the last 2,000 years. There just aren’t enough Samaritans to go around anymore. If there is a God, perhaps we are all headed toward another flood—God’s own genetic cleansing. If not, then we may be heading toward the bleak future described by humorist Scott Adams. In The Dilbert Future, Adams offers what David Brin calls “a look at the next century that is both earnest and bitingly sardonic at the same time.” According to Adams, “In the future, new technology will allow the police to solve 100 percent of all crimes. The bad news is that we'll realize 100 percent of the population are criminals, including the police.” I, for one, hope we can find a way to avert this future. But until we find a way to deal with the perils of the anonymous society; until we learn how to live with each other instead of next to one another—apart from one another—this will be a world of strangers instead of neighbors. |
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