It is a bit weird in Finland, as they generally don't give the child a public name until the Christening, which is about two months after birth. That means that everyone calls it by some "working name" which is generally a fun nickname.. I was forced by my wife to do this with Smallsteps also, even though she is an unchristened heathen who is going to hell. We had a "naming party" for her in place of the church thing, and invited friends and family to gather for food and the reveal of the name.
Today, Smallsteps got to take part in her first Christening, except instead of getting all dressed up for church, we sat on the couch and watched it in normal clothes, and the comfort of home.
Not quite the same experience.
Not that I minded.
Even though I am still standing, Smallsteps and now my wife are both ill with influenza, so it is far better not to be the ones to give it to a little baby. Instead, we watched it through the screen broadcast by a family member. It was quite a different experience than Smallsteps would have got otherwise, but something struck me afterward that highlighted an issue.
Normally, when we go to these kinds of events (like weddings) she has a million questions and asks about what she sees, hears and how people behave. Yet, once we were looking through the narrow lens of the screen where she saw and heard the main bits but didn't have peripheral sight, she had zero questions after. That is unlike her, as she has questions about everything, even the most mundane.
This is an observation with a sample size of one, but for a long time I have considered and spoken about how no matter what information is coming through the screen, it is not only less rich, but far less thought-provoking than direct experience. As touched on again the other day about the space to think, the screen seems to be one directional, where it is just a consumption mechanism, and unless we actively make the space while or after consuming, it doesn't make much of an impact on our experience. It just takes up time.
Had we actually gone to the christening, not only would it have been more valuable for Smallsteps, but it would have also been valuable for the shared experience of family and community, as we would have interacted with the people there and discussed things like the name, congratulated the parents and godparents and had stories to tell, while making new stories. And I think that last bit is important, because when we are experiencing from behind the screen, are we actually making any new stories?
Sure, we might learn something that we might tell forward, or share forward digitally, but is it creating a moment of life experience that we will recall as an event in our lives. There is no "I was there when" from behind the screen, as it is all indirect consumption. Even if we make an event of it and go to the movies, the movie can be remembered, but the act of sitting in the movie theatre itself is not very eventful. Dinner and a movie on a date though, and that becomes a shared experience with someone else, where the consumption of the movie is contextual, not the meat of experience.
Yet I think that so much of our *experience potential" is being pushed onto screens to become not only voyeuristic, but indirect at all levels, to the point that it doesn't even register as an experience at all. Not only is the narrow view of an event incredibly poor in experience, but it doesn't engage our bodies, or our minds at anywhere near the level reality does. But, we keep telling ourselves that this is "good enough" because it is convenient, cheap, and safe. We don't put ourselves into real experience, because we have an alternative.
Some time ago though, the only way to experience something was through direct experience or the direct experience of someone telling a story about it. The story didn't give us much information though, so we would engage our creative minds to imagine what actually happened, what it felt like, and what impact it might have on us. But if we wanted to taste reality, the only way was to participate in life itself.
Are people still participating in life?
I am not talking about simply breathing, but actually putting themselves into a life where they experience reality and create new stories. Or are people avoiding the dangers and discomfort of reality and instead choosing to be passive consumers, believing that the viewing of an event is the same as experiencing the event? And what happens when we aren't creating new personal stories that impact and influence us and our world, and instead are made up of only what we have consumed through a screen - the engineered stories that are omit all the richness of peripheral and random experience?
As I see it, if we aren't engaging in life, if we aren't creating relationships with our world, if we aren't sharing experiences and building new stories, we are not really living. We are taking up space and resources, but adding nothing to the narrative of our species. And if we aren't evolving ourselves, what are we doing?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Note: It is also common for people to guess at the name they will give the child and my guess was spot on, except that they went with the Finnish variation of the name.
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