The Electric Monk

The term "thoughts and prayers" has become shorthand for hypocritical inertia recently.  The first time I recall hearing it used as a punchline was in an episode of the most recent season of "Bojack Horseman," but I'm sure that wasn't the first occasion.  As of the recent Parkland High School it's come in vogue as parlance for "the assholes with the power to do something about gun control refuse to."

And why?  Well, imagine a sailor has fallen overboard and is drowning.  He sees his comrades up on the ship and calls out to them.  They even hear him.  They know he's there.  They even have life preservers, hanging right there on the gunwales or whatever they're called.  But instead of tossing the damn life preserver, the drowning sailors comrades call down to him, "We see your plight down there and we're really rooting for you."

That's what "my thoughts and prayers are with the victims" has become.  An infuriating statement of do-nothingness.

Gun control is a complicated fucking issue, and I'm not even very well versed on it.  But what's the point of me outlining any arguments here?  If you're on the internet to read this blogpost, you already know literally every talking point on both sides of the spectrum.  Guns don't kill people, people kill people.  Australia banned guns and they don't have gun violence anymore.  Switzerland has the highest gun ownership rate in the world and no gun violence, either.  But in Switzerland guns are locked up by the National Guard and ammunition is all but impossible to purchase.  Small arms are a constitutional right, and no one can trample on our constitutional rights.  But common sense gun control could at least keep people from dying all the goddamned time.  And without guns, the government could take over.  But what good are guns going to do against tanks?  And so forth.

So it's whatever.  I hope the Parkland kids are able to start a movement that changes gun culture in this country.  But I also know the genie's out of the fucking bottle, and there are millions of guns out there available today.  There's no easy solution to turning this thing around.  Doing nothing but sending thoughts and prayers seems untenable, but we've also been doing it for twenty years, so, you know, "untenable" is probably the wrong word in that circumstance.

Instead, today I'd like to talk about the relationship between religion and the internet.  When I was religious, prayer was  deeply personal business that I attended to by my lonesome in solemn meditation and thought, and once a week in a communal session where we were encouraged to pray about certain things.  My recollection of the Bible, admittedly coming from a certain religious vantage point from a certain cultural vantage point, and all of the usual caveats, was that you weren't supposed to pray in public.  Jesus condemned the Pharisees for praying in public and rocking and quaking, and calling attention to their piousness.  It indicated, according to Jesus, a lack of true piety, and a desire for recognition that was incompatible with real religiosity.

But people still pray in football stadiums and rock and quake and now they broadcast their thoughts and prayers on the internet.  Politicians broadcast it as the closest thing to action they plan to take on mass shootings.  And that made me wonder...are these people who claim to be thinking and praying even actually doing it?  Or is simply stating that you've thought and prayed the extend of your actions there?

Remember the Electric Monk from DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY?  He was a robot created to pray because none of the people had time to anymore.  The implication being that a deity demanded prayer of some sort, but it didn't really matter who was actually doing it, as long as it was being done.  And now it feels like the internet has become our Electric Monk.

Have you ever seen a meme on Facebook that indicated "like" or "share" this meme to pray for the subject...usually some miserable suffering little kid who likely doesn't even exist?  So in this case, is clicking like actually replacing prayer?  Is the implication that you can only click like if you actually got down on your knees and prayed about it?  Or, as it seems to me, is it that the act of "liking" the meme is the same as praying in the eyes of the Lord?  Because whatever your thoughts on religion, if FBing is replacing actually communing with your deity, that's a fascinating development of the modern age.