Progress

Audio version now available.

Waymo cars driven by humans are techno-mapping the streets of Denver. Local TV ads are recruiting D.P.D. officers to fulfill their destinies and become ICE agents (read that sentence in your best James Earl Jones voice). There are over eight billion people on the planet, but a handful of lunatics possess nuclear codes that could wipe us all out. People get their news from platforms that also allow us to sell our old air fryer or garden hose to our neighbors. I miss plays at the high school football game because I get distracted by the drones filming the action. And I just want to go deep in the mountains and build a lean-to out of sticks and mud.

In the 1986 movie, Hoosiers, team bench warmer, Ollie, who declares, because of his diminutive stature and lack of basketball skill, “Equipment managing’s my trade,” reads his assigned essay to his classmates. “Progress is electricity, school consolidation, church remodeling, farm tractors, hay balers, corn pickers, combines, and indoor plumbing.” How quaint. Now progress is algorithms that foment hatred, a trading market for Monopoly money, school shootings, and billionaire pseudo-astronauts. Now that you have indoor plumbing, Ollie, can I buy your outhouse on facebook marketplace to take to my lean-to deep in the mountains?

Is progress really a good thing? I know medicine and soap and a generally accepted moral code have dramatically increased life expectancy, but isn’t that only better because we are all afraid of dying? When people spent their days hunting and gathering, they worried about food security. Now people spend their days with a refrigerator full of food and advanced communication tools at their finger and thumb tips, and we still spend our days worried about survival–but now it’s survival of democracy, survival of our economy, and survival of our children.

Last week, these two things really happened: I spent a few hours snaking a greasy hairball that was about fifteen feet down our basement shower drain, and we received a letter from Denver Water reaffirming that the service line to our house is a lead pipe, and that we need to drink filtered water. Progress is indoor plumbing? Are we sure that’s a good thing? Maybe humans are too inventive and advanced for our own good. Our cats poop in a box, and their humans clean the box for them. Are we sure the prefrontal cortex makes us superior?

We live in an addiction economy. We can get dopamine from porn, gambling, shopping, stream binging, and gaming from a supercomputer the size of a playing card. In Denver, we can use the same playing card to order booze, weed, and loaded tater tots delivered to our front doors. Now that we can work and bank from home, I wonder why retailers even sell pants anymore.

When people think of addiction, they often think of a tent city in a modern urban area with heroin addicts sharing needles. Or twitchy men smoking cigarettes outside a church basement where they try not to drink vodka for breakfast. But that’s naive. That’s as naive as thinking indoor plumbing is all upside.

Progress is overrated. We still spend the majority of our waking hours in fear or distracting ourselves from fear. Progress makes both the terrifying things and the distraction much more accessible.

I coached a soccer game on Saturday night. Coaching games is just 90 minutes of fear for me, sometimes followed by a several-hours-long respite from fear of any kind. A window of, “I could die happy right now.” I think that’s why I do it. That, and the things I witness from young people that bolster my hope for the future.

On Saturday night, a young man in his early 20s stood on the sidelines after scoring our second goal, and cheered with enthusiasm for his teammates. He never shut up. I didn’t even hear him quiet long enough to refill his lungs with oxygen. He is one of our best players, and with a three-goal lead, the players he was cheering for are often on the bench while he is on the field. He was offering encouragement like we were down a goal in extra time. His enthusiasm for his teammates moistened my eyes a bit. Except for the field lights that made a night game possible, we were engaged in a tradition, a competition, that has been played since well before indoor plumbing with only minor tweaks to the rules and the tactics over the decades. And one of the players–while not in the actual game–engaged in a way that temporarily restored my faith in humanity. I bore witness, and it filled my body with tingles of joy. More joy than all the IPAs and small batch bourbons in the world could have provided.

Remind me again of the glories of progress.

I had a buddy in college who came up with the “slingshot theory” of partying. Someone would come late to the party, and he would do a few shots to “catch up.” Pretty soon, he was the drunkest person in the room, stumbling and puking while partiers wondered, “When did he get here, and why is he so drunk?”

Are we all living through the slingshot theory of progress? Was there a sweet spot when we had a generally accepted morality that valued the sanctity of life, but we didn’t yet have clay poop-distribution tubes that were susceptible to tree-root damage?

The best part of my last week was brought to me by planned human connection with an unexpected twist–a highly skilled player rooting hard for the up-and-comers. Come to think of it, the best part of most of my weeks comes from human interaction with a twist.

Progress brings me access. But is that good? I recently had access to the mispronunciation and unscientific advisory of a power addict about one of the world’s most trusted pain killers. That didn’t bring me joy. It brought me fear in many forms: anxiety, anger, frustration, sadness and befuddlement.

I think about what I would miss if I lived in a lean-to deep in the mountains. I can honestly say I wouldn’t miss the technological marvel of the 21st century–the smartphone/internet combination. I could 100% live without that. No question. I never need another update on the Kardashians or trending purse trinkets or the teen popularity of sequential numbers or the 20-something girlfriend of a 70-something football coach. Never.

I can feel myself getting dumber as I learn sometimes.

And my stupidity is all thanks to progress.

If I lived deep in the mountains with Ollie’s used outhouse, I would miss human connection. I could not survive without my wife and kids. I am not emotionally strong enough. I think the six of us could get through a Colorado winter in a lean-to. I’m physically strong enough for that. The anger-heat coming from my wife’s opinion of our life choices would keep us warmish. I could eat squirrels and grubs and tree bark.

But I need people. If needing people exists on a continuum, I know I am on the needy side of the needing-people spectrum. But all people need people. Except for crazy mountain hermits. Man, I hope I don’t run into any of them while I’m hermitting with my family in the mountains.

Because technology is billed as a tool for connection, the cultural dismantling of this attack-by-progress has been cloaked until now. It is not unlike when someone calls alcohol a social lubricant, as though saying dumb shit at a slowly increasing volume is good for connection. Just because someone talks more when consuming a toxin doesn’t mean connections are forming. Likewise, knowing about dysfunction across the globe doesn’t yield human connection, either. Alcohol is a toxin. Technology is a toxin, too. We can live 100% without alcohol with no negative impact on our quality of life. Living without technology, because of the way our society has progressed, is not as simple.

Unless, of course, we move into a lean-to in the mountains with a few of our favorite people. I checked for you. At least locally here in Denver, facebook marketplace has a surprising number of outhouses for sale.

If you are moving past alcohol, and ready to consider the role of technology in addiction in our society, we welcome your perspective in SHOUT Sobriety. Please consider joining us.

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