Face Masks and Air Pods

Can we talk about it yet? 

Is it too soon to have a real conversation about masks?

Not some stupid politically motivated conversation about “freedom” or “social responsibility”, a real conversation about people, community, identity, and the impossibility of escaping our crippling loneliness if we continue in the direction we’ve been heading. I used to work on a college campus and one day, mid-pandemic, my teammate and I looked at each other and asked, “What’s the deal with the masks and air pods?” I went to college in the early 2000s, when we still had ipods and flip phones. I remember when I got my first beta-technology smartphone. All it did was send emails, poorly navigate, and do some word processing stuff. Oh, and Angry Birds. Can’t forget that.

People have been walking around listening to music on their headphones since the 1980s. That part isn’t new. The wireless part is newer, but that’s not even the worst part about it. It’s that now, technology has advanced so that we have headphones that are ergonomically shaped for our ears so that we get better sound quality and, here’s the kicker, noise-canceling features. Now, don’t get angry. I’m not against noise canceling headphones or even headphones in general. I’m against loneliness, people as islands and all that. Headphones were just the tipping point that helped me notice and understand just what a bad situation we are all in.

Before the pandemic, people walked around with their headphones or air-pods, jamming to their music or podcasts or whatever and basically ignoring everything around them. The last part was more consequential than intentional- we often don’t realize all of the ramifications of our decisions. Especially for those of us whose sight is good, we downplay the importance of our ears and so we think that we can get along just fine in the world by canceling out all the noise around us and solely listening to what we want to. (There’s a whole other discussion we could have about that, but I’ll leave that for another day.)

When all the regulations came into play surrounding the pandemic, people started to wisely wear their masks when the situation warranted it. But they also continued to wear their headphones as they walked from class to class on campus. And this created a problem for people, like me and my teammate, who wanted to interact with or meet others. We would try to talk to people, but they couldn’t hear us and I don’t think they wanted to. Sometimes I got ignored, even when I made eye contact. Whether folks actually talked to us or not, we couldn’t really get to know them because we couldn’t see their faces. If I saw them again on campus, I often failed to recognize them. 

Now, these circumstances on their own might not be so bad. I mean, the headphones and intentional ignoring of me still happens, but at least I know who I’ve talked to before and what they look like. But the combination of minimized recognizable facial features and complete sonic isolation made it nearly impossible to interact with or get to know anyone. Not to mention the general social phobia that ran rampant during the pandemic and is still somewhat at play three years on from it.

I’m going to do my best not to get distracted here. I have so many thoughts about things that happened during the pandemic that nobody talked about and we all just kind of accepted. A lot of nuance is needed and I don’t know that I fully understand it all, but one thing I’m really confident about is this: people were not made to live alone. 

I’m sure you’ve read about the increase of suicidal thoughts and crippling loneliness experienced by people during the pandemic. The stress and uncertainty alone were enough to make someone perfectly mentally healthy fall into a depression. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have changed our behaviors or been considerate to others or taken precautions to keep people healthy during the pandemic. What I am saying is that I think we went a little too far and gave into fear-mongering, to our lasting detriment.

I mentioned earlier that I used to work on a college campus. That means that I spent a lot of time with Gen Z. If you couldn’t figure it out from my earlier reference to the years in which I attended college, I’m a Millennial, so there was a bit of a learning curve as I aged into my career. One of the most characteristic features of Gen Z is their enigmatic anxiety. I say “enigmatic” because it’s really puzzling to those of us who’ve been walking the earth for a bit longer than Gen Z. We can’t seem to figure it out or understand it. Mostly because every human civilization has experienced anxiety of one kind or another- that isn’t new. There have been wars and plagues and economic crises and many other calamities for as long as people have been around.

And yet. People in their late teens to early twenties are the most anxious among us. Sure, they’ve experienced disasters, war has been a constant in their lifetime, they’ve lived through the opioid crisis, and the list goes on. They have had their fair share of social problems and stressors, not to mention the pandemic. But, again, this is not different from any other generation in history. The specifics are different, but the stress level and chaos is the same. So, what gives? I think I have the beginning of an idea.

Freedom. Choice. Control.

I mentioned the advances in headphone technology above. It’s a double edged sword. Technology isn’t bad. It’s good to learn how to use our skills and resources to make life and the world better. However, I’ve never encountered a technology that wasn’t misused or abused in some way. People are always defending social media because it can keep us connected and informed. A lot of things on social media are simply funny or even really helpful. But. We know the pitfalls. We know that we’re addicted to our phones and nefarious companies that are only interested in our money at the expense of our wellbeing are working to keep us scrolling. I haven’t talked to one person from Gen Z that disagrees with me about the evils of social media.

But we don’t use it in an evil way. 

Not us.

Not you.

Not me.

You could go as far back as ancient, Biblical times to find a group of people that invented bricks. After they invented bricks and had built themselves a nice city with roofs and buildings and places to store their food for winter they decided that what they really needed was a tower to reach all the way up to heaven so that everyone would know how great they were. They invented bricks and all of the sudden they thought that they were gods.

They…thought that they were gods.

The story of the Tower of Babel is a tragic one that becomes an archetype for all of humanity- we are wonderful, creative beings with the authority and skill to shape our world. And yet, we always go wrong. Whether we go too far or not far enough with our creative exploits, we are, at best, less than what we should be and, at worst, oppressive and destructive. We can’t have nice things. 

Now, in our current culture, the overload of choice, freedom, and control has put us in a position where we actually think that we can be the masters of our own destinies. We can decide what music to listen to and make it happen with our voice. We don’t even need to own music anymore, we can just pay to access the cloud. Don’t like what’s in your fridge? You can have your favorite restaurant delivered to your door. Don’t like the family business that you were born into? You can move, unlike your ancestors.

The freedom and choice are a good thing. The control is not. 

If I haven’t mentioned Sharon Hodde Miller’s book The Cost of Control yet, consider this my ringing endorsement. In her book, Miller discusses how we delude ourselves into thinking that we have control whether that’s through our many choices or conveniences in life. But the thing that we can’t control is other people and the circumstances of our world.

You might be able to control what you’re having for dinner, but you cannot control whether or not a tornado hits your house while you’re eating it. You might be able to control which activities that your children get involved in, but you can’t make them like them. You might be able to control which music is playing on your demon-possessed smart speaker, but you can’t control the companies that are listening in and storing your data.

I could go on and on and on. The problem that young people are facing is that the culture tells them that they should be in control of their lives and all the circumstances therein, but they know, deep down, that they aren’t. Gen Z is anxious because things are outside of their control and they’ve come to equate control with safety and they’ve elevated safety so high on their priority list that they won’t even take the minor risk of saying, “Hi” to someone new. 

So…they wear their masks with their airpods and ignore people that are looking right at them. The cure for our loneliness is literally staring us in the face and we won’t even turn off the music. We’re too scared. We might be uncomfortable. We might be exposed as not being in control. The other person might ask us a question and anyone who wants to get to know us must be selling something, right? No way another person could genuinely care about who we are.

I don’t have very many answers, but I am certain that we’ve bought into a whole heap of lies. For example, have you considered that the reason you think that kind people are trying to sell you something or that they have an angle isn’t because of anything they are doing- it’s because businesses have stolen kindness and common courtesy and used them to manipulate you? It’s not the people. It’s the culture. Kind people don’t have an angle. They’re just kind.

Given my most recent experience, in ministry of all places, I totally empathize with those of you who are skeptical of kindness. There is a certain brand of “kindness” that I’m skeptical of as well. It’s not kindness at all. It’s niceness, which is not, as I’ve said countless times, a fruit of the Spirit of the Living God. But even if we are surrounded by people who are nice and treat us well for the wrong reasons, we cannot live in isolation. Young people are lonely and so are the rest of us. We crave connection on a deep level, even if it terrifies us. 

The truth is, we control very little. We have lots of freedom and lots of options in our lives, but we don’t have lots of control. So, what are we to do? My vote is that we take the good with the bad. Be wary, ask questions, and don’t just trust everyone who comes your way, but give people a chance. You’re likely to get hurt, something I’ve experienced many, many times. You’re also likely to make better friends than you ever dreamed of having. If we never give people a chance, we’ll be lonely for sure. 

So, what do you say? Give up the mask and airpods combo? Please?