SMARTPHONES, EMERGENCIES, HORROR MOVIES AND CORONAMANIA

As an attorney, I litigated for 30 years. I’d still be doing so, except for something a low-integrity judge did in the case that became my last. I won, but…

That story’s too long to tell today; maybe on some other occasion.

During those 30 years, I went up against countless attorneys. I got along well enough with most of them. With a few, there was reciprocal antipathy. It depended. Once someone crosses a line with you in that realm, it can be hard to overlook.

Because there are logistical breaks in various proceedings, attorneys who get along often get to know a little about each other, e.g., where you live, went to college and law school, whether you’re married and have kids, what you do for fun, etc.

One afternoon in the early 2000s, I presented argument in a matter in which I was friendly with the attorney, named Matt, for the other side. Aside from being a straight dealer and having basic social skills, Matt grew up in the town next to mine. While discussing our hometowns, we learned that he and I had dated sisters from the same family. Mostly, we talked about our wives and kids.

As sometimes occurs, following a calm back-and-forth in a stately old courtroom, the judge summoned Matt and I to his chambers, i.e., his office, behind his courtroom bench. The judge wanted to discuss the case with us off the record. After some additional discussion, the judge suggested how we might settle that matter. His approach was roughly reasonable. The judge told me that I should go out in the hallway, call my client and tell the client how the judge saw this case and how we might resolve it without going to trial.

I said, “Judge, I’ll be happy to do that. But that conversation will have to wait until I return to my office, 45 minutes away. I don’t carry a phone.”

The judge was surprised to hear this. So was Matt, who turned to me and said, “Mark, you don’t have a phone? You have kids!”

I turned to him and said, “Matt, my father had kids.”

And of course, no cell phone. Because these didn’t exist in the 1960s and 70s.

I still don’t carry a phone for several reasons.

First, I like to travel light; a phone is just another thing to carry, charge or leave behind.

Second, I don’t want to be reachable at all times; I like to be where my feet are and to have some time to think or just rest my mind. In my law office, I had a landline phone, email, voicemail and a secretary to answer those who called me when I wasn’t available. I also sent and received faxes and—hard to believe—regular mail letters. There were plenty of ways to reach out to, and to be reached by, others.

Third, I don’t like being tracked. When I was nine years old, my older brother told me about a TV show entitled The Fugitive, that was on after my bedtime. I asked him what a fugitive was. He defined it as a grown-up who hides from the police. As a kid, that idea appealed to me. It still does.

Fourth, I like dealing face-to-face with people. Having a phone allows people to live insularly. Phone users can keep in constant, lasting touch with those whom they know from back-in-the day and, in so doing, block out the world in front of them. Marriage rates are at an all-time low. One reason for that is that phones have allowed people in their twenties to cling to their old friends instead of getting to know new people, including a mate.

I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of carrying a phone. People seem to love them. Though some tell me, “I wish I could do without mine.”

It’s not hard. I can think of hundreds of much bigger challenges. I think my life without a phone is better than it would be with one. As with all technologies, people should consider all of the pros and cons before embracing a given invention.

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The main concern expressed by Matt and others who find out I don’t have a phone is “What if there’s an emergency?!”

This motivation to carry a phone seems flimsy. There were four, often free-ranging, kids in my pre-cell-phone childhood home. In all the years we spent growing up, nothing was such an emergency that things fell apart because we didn’t carry phones. Occasionally—rarely—undesirable stuff happened. You dealt with it. You walked home. You asked strangers for information or some other assistance, or they asked you. You passed some time as you waited. You got home late. You did without a few, typically unnecessary, things.

Sometimes—rarely— there were hints of danger. But these were in places and times when no one I might have called could have helped. Sometimes you were—and sometimes still are—on your own. Ultimately, both then or now, no one I know died, or suffered terribly, because they lacked a phone.

The mass-scale adoption of the “emergency-managing” cell phone both reflects and promotes the unrealistic and destructive notion that life is an emergency waiting to happen.

Before the phone, the TV news—especially the 24-hour version—had planted the seeds of this DEFCON 2 mindset. The news created the impression that serious trouble is either always brewing or occurring. But if we didn’t see news about a given event, its effects would seldom trickle down to us. It’s a big world; of course, some bad stuff is going to happen, and some people are going to die, somewhere. Yet, the odds that the world can surprisingly, suddenly impose physical harm on most Americans are microscopic.

Nonetheless, the ever-looming-emergency orientation explains why many people bought into the Scamdemic. When the news portrayed a microbe-driven crisis that might potentially infect and affect newswatchers, many newswatchers embraced the terror. “The Pandemic(!)” was a ratings bonanza because it fulfilled a long-held doomsday fantasy. Fear-o-philia explains why people watch axe-murder movies. But how often do real-life axe-murders occur?

When the Scamdemic started, fear-seekers were ready, willing and able to suspend disbelief and conclude that a respiratory virus would—despite that it had not done so in the modern era—suddenly evolve into some lethal form that would threaten everyone. Only those with dysfunctional, baseline anxiety would seriously consider such an improbable scenario. But the media and cell phones have, over a few decades, swollen the ranks of the emergency-ready.

Smartphones have also lowered peoples’ tolerance for inconvenience. When I pointed out to people that no healthy person whom I or they knew had died from Covid, they promptly, and spuriously, retreated to, “Yes, but some got sick!”

That was an unsustainably, ridiculously low threshold. Ultimately, this irrational affinity for emergency caused hundreds of millions of people to decide that because some people might get sick, everyone must stay home and, later, submit to experimental shots. Together, this foundational fear and the consequent mitigation compliance demands have senselessly exacted extremely high social, economic and individual costs for three-and-a-half years.

Grab your phone and call whoever you want. Ain’t nobody who can undo the damage that’s been done to placate the emergency junkies.