My vote for the most fearsome Christmas Carol ever penned is a Tin Pan Alley ditty about an omniscient and omnipotent Santa, forever tasked with dividing the sheep from the goats.
By which I mean, splitting apart the naughty from the nice. And this, despite the fact that almost everyone you know prefers to opt for some kind of blend.
He’s notorious for the way he spies out data: “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, He knows when you’ve been bad or good…”
When the balladeering team of Coots & Gillespie concocted that instant radio hit in 1934, a cultural role model for an all-seeing observer and judge stood ready to hand. God the Father and His Recording Angel had already—for quite a few centuries—conducted similar feats of oversight from a somewhat more elevated position. Cloud Nine, I believe it was.
Now, me, I’ve (almost) never thought outsourcing the human conscience was such a hot idea. The single time I did, it was due to being heavily programmed to think that way as a child. But once freed from the notion, I replaced it simply and easily—by choosing to bolster my personal views of cause-and-effect.
Shorthand for this shift was my new motto: God is feedback. You see, this universe in and of itself shall always and forever seek to inform you, and rather directly, about what ought to be done. Your role in the matter is to choose to pay close attention. We might more habitually cling to fantasies and delusions, but after you start to perceive the harmful effects such clinging produces on your own well-being and that of others, such constructs can finally begin to crumble.
And once we stand high upon the heap of their noisome rubble, we can begin to discern a more interesting way forward.
ALL SEEING, ALL KNOWING
But there seems to be a huge segment of human society that depends on a feeling of being observed in order to generate its moral behavior. A famous experiment at Newcastle U. in Australia monitored an “honesty box” that had long been in place on a counter in that college’s very own Psychology Department. If a student or prof grabbed a cuppa “joe” and a slug of milk, they were also supposed to clink some coinage into the box, to help pay for supplies.
When experimenters posted a photograph of human eyes near the box, contributions shot up. However, when they posted a more innocuous image, wildflowers for example, payment dropped by a full two-thirds.
During the years I slaved as an ink-stained wretch at a major metropolitan newspaper, I observed very similar behavior. I watched the same Chronicle employees filch from our coffee machine over-and-over, while other people paid without flinching again-and-again. Then, one day—perhaps influenced by all the news out of Newcastle—our office manager hung a small mirror right by our brew hub.
Fairly astute, I thought. When I asked how payment was going, that manager told me, “Well, at least now, the expenses are being covered.”
KARMA, KARMA, KARMA CHAMELEON
His clever tactic underscores my point: the eyes that influence our behavior don’t need to be external to us. We do seem to require the presence of watchful eyes in some form. However, evolving them internally seems to me to be, by far, the most desirable solution.
We’ve all observed the shameless behavior of those who try to slide through life with a total lack of conscience. Their results constitute a resonant argument to either grow or acquire one, instead. And the higher one’s social status becomes, the more important (and consequential) the issue gets. For a sterling example of how fast and far things can go south without any internal auditor, the precedents set by a certain president spring quickly to mind…
I’m reminded of a Zen parable that goes like this. A student asks a Roshi, “Master, have enlightened beings moved beyond the laws of cause-and-effect?” And the Roshi replies, “Enlightened beings are not unaware of the laws of cause-and effect.”
In other words: you can certainly run, but you can never hide.
A short term for the realm of cause-and-effect is, of course, karma. This ancient Hindu concept holds that a person’s intentions, as revealed in physical acts, spoken words, or even our nurtured thoughts, always, always shall bear fruit, both in this and subsequent lifetimes. Including lifetimes that aren’t ours. And, y’know, not every single bit of the subsequent harvest shall prove all that palatable. Not to you, and not to others.
My first personal definition of karma was, “A fart in a spacesuit.” Sooner or later, and yet inevitably, full knowledge of the effects you’ve unleashed shall drift up into your awareness. It’s best not to impede this process; far better to just get it over with.
And yet, we must also realize that morality can serve as a punishing lash as well as a useful guardrail. Drawbacks occur when moralizing is imposed or inflicted upon others. Sanctimonious, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizing strictness, that can be as poisonous as indulging in any other type of gluttony. The fact that it’s a psychological vice, not a physical one, actually enhances—rather than reduces—its damage.
An escape hatch from the twin plights of owning either zero conscience or deploying way too much of it lies in what’s called, “situation ethics.” This is a point-of-view articulated by ethicist Joseph Fletcher in the 1960s. He suggests that moral decisions are best made by evaluating a specific situation, then selecting a path that demonstrates the most heart while producing the least harm.
Not all of Fletcher’s examples of the finest ways to enact his policy pass muster with me. And yet, in general, I do believe the man was onto something savvy and natural, as well as endlessly useful.
I’ll illustrate by confessing my own policy regarding the newspaper’s coffee machine. If I had money in my pocket, I paid. If I didn’t, I simply grabbed my cup of brew and tried to remember to pay later. I couldn’t pull any change out of the cash box—that thing was a one-way street. So, every once in a while, I would shove in a fiver or a ten or even a twenty to more-or-less bring me up to par.
The only time I refused to pay anything at all was if the coffee had been scorched to the consistency of roofing tar, yet I had to gulp some down anyway, just so I could generate enough cerebral wattage at the end of a day to make deadline.
SHORT TRIP TO THE PRIVY COUNSELOR
These days, it seems easy to lament loss, since so much of it is happening. Perhaps t’was ever thus, but sand grains appear now to swirl into the neck of the cosmic hourglass at an accelerating pace—like bubbles vanishing down the throat of the Corryvreckan Whirlpool at flood tide.
Such as: birds, bees, clean water, fresh air, and a coherent American foreign policy, just to label a few of those plunging grains. And, overall, our privacy has become a seriously endangered species, too. It’s not just that people (and agencies, and institutions, and businesses) are trying to filch our personal information; we ourselves willfully toss it away wholesale.
The most oppressive, authoritarian governments of the 20th Century—Nazi Germany as well as communist Russia and China—relied on snitches and informants to tip them off to supposed “traitors” to policies of the regimes. We’re so much more technically efficient now, a layer of middlemen is no longer needed. We tote small devices around that constantly spew out information about who and what we like and how much, as well as exactly where we live now, came from, and could be heading.
It’s hilarious (but in a sad way) that we finally seem to be waking up to how electronic device inputs contort the minds of people, especially our younglings. These algorithmically curated inputs are seriously warping ideas, behavior, economics, political stances, and just about every other thing you can think of. As well as (probably) lots of things “they” don’t want you to even begin to think of.
At the same time, our devices also industriously extract scads of intelligence about who you are and what you’re up to and pass it out to… whoever. The entities mentioned above, certainly, but also swarms of scam artists who both post on and plunder the Dark Web in search of easy marks. If you haven’t heard of friends or relatives who’ve been challenged by deep fakes of their beloveds begging for funds quite yet, just wait till next year. After a chorus of AI agents asked to assist international criminals can more vigorously kick in.
SKY PILOT, HOW HIGH CAN YOU FLY?
And so, them thar good ol’ days—way back when an imaginary Mr. Claus or an omnipotent Creator of All could peer into every corner of your life and prompt you to keep on the straight and narrow—those seem to be drawing to a close. They’re about to be displaced by genuine physical entities who can tangibly accomplish that right here on earth, every day and in real time.
Which means: a great deal will depend on who gets to define what the straight and narrow (a “right” thing to do or be) is about to look like within our culture in days to come!
When I was in my 40s, and our time was in the 1990s, I spent just over a year touring Catholic monasteries in the West, to hang out with monks for weeks at a stretch. I wanted to see how my theological roots had evolved (or not), and whether there might be any fresh nutrients available in such places for me.
My journey careened to a halt after my stint at a Trappist monastery high in the Colorado Rockies, at Old Snowmass. It was a fascinating place, on 3,700 rural and remote alpine acres in the Roaring Fork Valley, where a dawn and evening chorus of coyote yelps helped to set the scene. I mean, that performance didn’t approach Gregorian Chant, but it still wasn’t bad.
I lodged in a barren cell with another spiritual tourist, a young car dealer in his 30s who’d suffered the ill fate to fall into love with a hooker. He’d begun to lose everything to her—his savings, marriage, and business. He’d come to St. Benedict’s to curtail that slide and regain his bearings. My chat with the guy about his frenzied slog through this type of trouble was certainly intriguing.
Better him than me, I mused.
Of far less interest was my contact with one of the place’s senior monks. I goofed up during Nocturns (a prayer service at 3 a.m.) by spontaneously joining a “walking meditation” around an altar. Next day, that monk collared me in a hallway—where silence was fully ordained—and he tore into me with a tongue-lashing for lurching through that meditation with no invitation and no training. Consequently, he claimed, I’d thoroughly disturbed, even ruined, the Nocturns for everyone present.
In his telling, even the Deity had likely grown rather pissed.
Now, this monk was straight out of central casting. Could’ve been painted by El Greco, I suppose. He had a thin body, white beard, sober mien, glowing eyes, and a set of published volumes on spiritual practice that crowded a shelf in the monastery’s bookstore. I didn’t buy or read any of these tomes, so I can’t critique their contents.
However, I feel prepped to review his performance, and I do so thusly: patience—lacking; tact—poor; charity—marginal; forgiveness—nil; generosity—scant; hypocrisy—significant; and supercilious sanctimony—top notch.
I departed the next day.
THE EYES OF TAX-US ARE UPON YOU
That very monastery and its sprawling, montane grounds got sold last December for $120 million to Alex Karp, a co-founder and the current CEO of Palantir Technologies, Inc. And a more resonant metaphor for the changing-of-the-guard, and a signal on whom our Recording Angel might become soon, I can’t imagine.
Palantir, named for the Elf-built, all-seeing crystal orbs of Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” saga, is a $400 billion firm that (according to Wikipedia), “Develops data integration and analytics platforms enabling government agencies, militaries, and corporations to combine and analyze data from multiple sources. Its flagship products—Gotham (for intelligence and defense) and Foundry (for commercial and civil use)—connect previously siloed databases to support intelligence operations, counterterrorism analysis, law enforcement, and enterprise analytics.”
In other words, it hoovers from digital silos like credit card records and Web searches the useful profiles of citizens, voters, consumers and employees. To what end? Well, if you ask me, you’re asking the wrong guy. Because I’m merely Analog Man, a savage teleported here via time travel from an earlier century. But there’s plenty of info and speculation out there.
Curious? Go for it…
However, add all that to the rapid and rabid extraction of public data by Musk’s DOGE, as well as the current administration’s demands for more and more intel from universities, state governments, and civic groups, and it’s not hard to see why eventual systems like China’s “social credit system” and Russia’s digital tracking systems will start to loom on our own horizon. Once they burst into full flower, these could determine and then inflict stricter limits on your career, income, possessions, travel, social contacts and clout, political and artistic expression, and much, much more.
So, unlike omniscient Santa, who simply acts on his findings at Christmastime, or an omnipotent Deity, who intends to deliver your fate on Judgement Day, your options and opportunities will be firmly decided here and now, and last throughout your life. And perhaps that of your offspring as well, should it be decided that you get to have any, and if they’re still allowed to live here.
To say submission to such a dense authoritarian milieu doesn’t much resemble our supposed American ideal of rugged individualism, independence and freedom, is to exegete the obvious. Land of the free and home of the brave? That line is growing tougher by the day to belt out with any real conviction. Though I must say, the good citizens of Minnesota have recently gifted me with some degree of hope.
So, what are we to do? Other than driving political pushback against such a fate while pushback yet remains possible, this savage would say:
- Don’t carry your phone everywhere, or use it for everything. And never, ever, give all your crap to the Cloud.
- Spend as much time as you can out in the wildest nature you’re able to find, and absorb as much inspiration as you can discover.
- Support the best independent media; ‘cos you’ll truly miss it if it vanishes.
- Do your own research and form your own opinions, don’t merely swallow what’s fed to you.
- Prioritize your physical and mental health.
- Cultivate close friendships with reliable people.
Let’s close with another inspirational ditty, shall we?
“The Eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live-long day. The Eyes of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away. Do not think you can escape them, from night ‘til early in the morn. The Eyes of Texas are upon you, till Gabriel blows his horn.”