What We Lost in the Cheap Seats

By Lisa Heegaard

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Intimacy. Presence. Smartphones. How and why do these three concepts relate?

         There is a new Broadway show. It’s the best that the Broadway stage has ever seen. The critics are going crazy. You love theatre and you decide that you must go see it. But alas, there are no tickets left. You dig through the inter web and find someone who is willing to sell you cheap tickets to let you in a back door where you can see the play from. You purchase them and count down the days. Soon, it is the day of the show. You make your way to your seat with the sketchy instructions you were given and soon realize that you can only see a quarter of the stage, and you can barely hear half of the orchestra. You decide that this is a price worth paying for seeing this show but as the evening continues you realize that you can smell something rotten coming from the bathrooms, and there is dust and dirt that drops down on you occasionally from the audience in the balcony above you. The night ends and you realize that you don’t even know what the play was about as you couldn’t see or hear most of it. You experienced it and got a basic understanding of the characters but the entirety of your understanding of the play was diminished and cheapened because of your vantage point.

         This is tragic of course, but it’s tragedy lies in your inability to have gotten better seats. What would have been even more tragic and also quite ridiculous is if you had had your pick at any of the seats in the theatre and had still chosen those ones. It would have been equally tragic if you were so used to sitting in these “cheap seats” that you didn’t even have a concept of there being something better. In the same way that an ignorant child would want to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can’t imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, it would be ridiculous and tragic if you chose to keep going back to the cheap seats even if you were offered the best seats in the house. This exact principle is at work in the lives of many U.S. Smartphone owners. The smartphones themselves not being the mudpies in the slum but being the means by which one is blinded to the richness of the seaside vacation. Because of the instantly gratifying nature of the computers that dwell in our pockets, we are robbed of the intimacy that is built on incarnate experiences and is key to our survival. That statement holds five concepts that build to its synthesis. Before we understand those five concepts, I am going to define a few terms so that we are all looking at the same cards.

         The first term that needs to be defined is intimacy. Defined by the American Psychological Association, Intimacy is “an interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each party’s personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort to that person. Intimacy characterizes close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationships and requires the parties to have a detailed knowledge or deep understanding of each other.”

         The second term that needs to be defined is incarnate. Defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary, incarnate means “A. Invested with bodily and especially human nature and form or B: Made manifest or comprehensible.” The word incarnate is most often heard in reference to Jesus’ Incarnation, or used in company with religious jargon and thus it’s definition as a term bigger than just that is important.

         The next two terms that need definition go hand in hand. The words Instant Gratification vs. Delayed Gratification must be defined. positivepsychology.com defines instant gratification by saying that “Instant (or immediate) gratification is a term that refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit.” study.com defines delayed gratification as “Delayed gratification refers to the ability to put off something mildly fun or pleasurable now, in order to gain something that is more fun, pleasurable, or rewarding later.”

         When you think of delayed or instant gratification, the definitions that come to your mind are probably not that far off from the definitions that I have listed. But as I stated when I spoke of incarnation, the definitions of intimacy and of incarnate that we are working with may not be the exact definitions that come to your mind when you think of these things. When someone hears the word “intimacy” what first comes to mind is romantic or sexual intimacy between two romantic partners. One of the things that I am proving in this essay is that defining intimacy as such greatly cheapens the depth of richness that the word intimacy can denote. Intimacy is a word that refers to an exponentially substantial and rich concept, one that is key to human beings survival. This is actually the first concept that makes up the five concepts that prove my thesis. 

These five concepts and the body of this essay are as follows:

  1. Intimacy is vital to the survival of human beings.

  2. Intimacy is built on incarnate experiences.

  3. Smartphones provide the illusion and reality of instant gratification for most anything a human could ask for.

  4. Through this instantly gratifying nature, these smartphones inhibit our ability to be incarnately present.

  5. There is a level and depth of intimacy that is being robbed of humans and thus lost because of the reliance on the instant gratification of these pocket computers.

         While these five concepts build to the point that is being proven in this essay it would be a grave mistake to think that they are all that must be said. As important as it is to understand the smartphones ability to blind someone to the richness of intimacy that is offered them through delayed gratification and incarnate experiences, it is equally as important to understand that the smartphone is not an entirely evil tool. While it is grievously important to understand how to treat oneself and ones peers with honor and respect in light of the topics discussed in this essay, it is also important to understand how to honor and respect the Smartphone as a tool that can be used productively and purposefully. It is important to recognize how the smartphone can hinder relational presence while ironically sitting in the very presence of another. In understanding this though it must also be understood how to use the smartphone in a way that lessens it’s robbery of incarnate presence despite the fact that it is within it’s nature to do so.

         Intimacy. Presence. Smartphones. Two of these words refer to concepts and one refers to a technology. These two concepts are inseparable from the technology because of the Smartphones nature, the place it has taken in the majority of U.S. citizen’s back pockets, and the vitality of intimacy to those human’s lives.

1. Intimacy is vital to the survival of human beings.

         Intimacy is vital to human beings survival. Unfortunately, when understanding why intimacy is so vital to human survival, there isn’t an easy science that can be explained. There isn’t even a difficult science that can be explained. There is simply an assortment of evidence that when synthesized together, shows the importance and vitality of intimacy.

         In order to understand to say that intimacy is vital to human being survival,  it is key to understand what intimacy is. Intimacy is a word that at it’s core, refers to knowing. In any definition of intimacy that you can find, the vocabulary knowing or “knowledge of” is used. Why would this knowing of others and being known be so vital to human life? Genesis 1:27 teaches that humans were created in the image of God. This God that we humans were created in the image of is a God who can not exist outside of relationship. This God exists in a triune relationship that is ontologically definitive to who he is and he can not exist outside of that relationship. Being created in His image implies that us His image-bearers, like Him, cannot exist outside of relationship. This is true in that any human who exists, exists because two other humans came together and made that one human. No one exists independently from another. If intimacy is all about knowing, then these relationships are all about knowing. Later on I will dive deeper into what I mean by “knowing,” but for the time being we can acknowledge that there is both physical knowing and cognitive knowing. Usually these two types of knowing are woven together. For example, when a professional pianist is playing a song on the piano by memory, the muscles in the pianists fingers know exactly what each of the keys feel like, know exactly how many centimeters they have to move to play the next key, know exactly how far apart each finger needs to be at any moment. This is all happening in the muscles in the pianists fingers without them cognitively realizing they are knowing all of these things. At the same time, the piano player knows what the song they are playing is supposed to sound like and they are somewhat cognitively thinking about where to put their fingers. They can hear if something sounds off and fix it accordingly. This is an example of when both types of knowing are in affect at the same time. Both types of knowing are part of intimacy.

         The physical type of knowing is often thought of with the word touch in mind. Humans  need the touch of others to properly develop. There are a variety of studies that have been done proving that infants can die or be greatly harmed if they do not grow up with an adequate amount of physical touch. These studies have shown cases of the children’s hormone being greatly affected by the lack of physical touch, cases of the children’s physical growth being stunted, and cases were the children end up dying. 

         The cognitive type of knowing is also vital to human survival. This word survival that I am using is a very strong word. Claiming that intimacy is vital to human survival is putting it on par with food, water, and oxygen. The cognitive type of knowing that is intimacy is this important. In order to exist, one must have some sort of knowledge of themselves and some sort of knowledge of others. The deeper that these knowledges become, the richer the human experience becomes. “Richer” here does not mean better or more fun, it means that everything becomes more vivid, both the pain and the joy.  A study done by Susan Krauss Whitbourne  argues that a firm identity is key in order to have true intimacy. She argues that intimacy is built through closeness, communication, and commitment. Whitbourne argues that these three components measure an individuals capacity or potential for intimacy, not the quality of a relationship. Whitbourne does a study measuring the capacity for intimacy of specific individuals. This IMI (intimacy measurement index as I’m referring to it as) was able to predict how joy-filled, fulfilled, and “well” people were throughout the rest of their life through some long term studies. These studies proved that intimacy is vital to a “life well lived” and to deep relationships that sustain ones life.

2. Intimacy is built on incarnate experiences.

         Having established that intimacy is key to humans survival, the question begs to be asked: how is intimacy built? Intimacy is built on incarnate experiences. While there are a variety of factors to intimacy, including identity, and while incarnate, proximal experiences are not the only thing needed for intimacy to be built, it can not be built without it. More simply put: while not the only ingredient, the removal of incarnate experiences from the recipe for intimacy would result in an entirely different cake. While it may be easy to grasp this in relation to physical touch and how that builds intimacy, what I am talking about is about much more than just physical touch. Let’s backtrack to when we established that intimacy is about knowing. To understand how intimacy is built we must then have an understanding of what knowledge is.

         The term “knowledge” is often thought of in the context of one of two things: 1. The longing to know and be known by another being and 2. The pursuit of knowledge of life and the earth. Both of these relate to the word “know.” Obviously the word “know” in the American language can be a way to signify that you are simply acquainted with someone, it can also be a way to signify that you have general knowledge about something. In general, Western culture, knowing has become about information. Because of this, when intentionally attempting to know someone else, someone coming from a Western culture would probably try to acquire as much knowledge as they could about that person. When attempting to “know” God that same person would probably try to acquire a vastness of information about God. And when attempting to have knowledge about something, that person would probably attempt to acquire as much information as possible about that thing.

         All of these attempts at understanding are not rooted in nonsense, there is truth to the fact that knowledge comes through understanding. Emphasis on the fact that knowledge comes through understanding. Yes, understanding can come through knowledge, but it is more often the case that knowledge comes through understanding. This raises the question of where understanding comes from.  The Hebrew word for know or knowledge has less to do with knowing information about something and more to do with experiencing and apprehending the reality of something. If this were the case, there is a new understanding of knowledge to be had than the one of the current Western world.

         Knowledge is something that can be sought and acquired but there is a whole level of knowing that comes from experiences that are mostly out of an individuals control. A great example of this is how if someone is grieving the loss of a parent, they usually would seek a support group at some point to process  and work through their pain. There is a comfort that comes from someone who has experienced a similar pain to you that can not come from someone who has not experienced that pain. There is a feeling of being known that is too deep for words that is shared when two people share the same pain together. There is a bonding in relationship, again too deep for words, that comes when two people share the same experience together, a bond that is deeper than the one built over a cup of coffee swapping life facts. At the core of a human’s being is a desire to know and be known. This desire leaves each human on this earth searching for places to find that reciprocal knowing and known-ness. Throughout time, humans have searched for this in a variety of places and found it in a variety of places. Of course, the only place to find relief for this desire is through Christ’s knowing and the ability to know other people that one only has through Christ’s knowing of humanity. All of these facts leave some questions that must be answered: How does this knowing of each other come about? What does it mean to “know” another human being? As previously stated, the true knowing that human beings long for in their core comes from experiential knowing. It comes from experiencing things with someone else and experiencing the way that they interact and respond to different things. That is what leads to knowing someone else. The “quest for knowledge”  would also be gone about differently in this definition of the world “knowledge.” The quest for knowledge would instead either be acknowledged as a quest for information or would morph into a quest for apprehension, for experience. What is often referred to as the “quest for knowledge” would be abandoned for the seeking of the richer, deeper life that comes with experiencing and knowing our God and the tasks he has put before us. It is a knowing that transcends information and pours into deep crevices in a humans soul, crevices that were meant to be filled by the knowing of God and the things he has created.

         This is the kind of intimacy that we are created for, the kind of intimacy that human beings are capable of. This kind of intimacy requites proximity, it requires incarnate experience. If there is something that threatens your ability to develop this intimacy, that blinds us to the places we can find this intimacy, wouldn’t you want to know? If there was a seaside vacation that you were passing up because you were too busy making mudpies in the slum wouldn’t you want to know? Enter: Smartphones.

3. Smartphones provide the illusion and reality of instant gratification for most anything a human could ask for.

         Smartphones are powerful tools with both wonderful and terrible potential. I want to dig in for a bit to a certain aspect of smartphones that could easily be missed: their instantly gratifying nature. Smartphones provide the illusion and reality of instant gratification for most anything a human could ask for. What is instant gratification? As I previously quoted: “Instant (or immediate) gratification is a term that refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding but more immediate benefit.” In this case, the future benefit is richer intimacy and deeper life. The more immediate benefit isn’t simply “the smartphone” it’s any variety of imitations and cheap versions of intimacy that the smartphone can offer. Sometime it’s not even an imitation or a cheap version of intimacy, it is small acts and small ways of using the smartphone that while in and of themselves are not bad things, they inhibit the ability to be incarnately present and thus rob us of opportunities to build intimacy.

         What is the nature of instant gratification? The concept of Instant Gratification in light of it’s defined terminology was first introduced by Freud. But the human nature on which Instant Gratification is defining is something that has always been around. There are warnings in the bible against taking the easy path (Matthew 7:13) as well as passages that hint at the fact that God makes beautiful things over time (1 John 2:17, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Galatians 5:22-23, Psalm 37:7). There are also many proverbs that speak to this value of waiting, of patience, of letting good things develop over time (Proverbs 21:5, Proverbs 15:18). This is obviously a subject that God speaks to and that he calls his children to be aware of. What is the nature of instant gratification then? This phrase refers to the temptation or the option to relinquish a possible future gain for a lesser, more immediate gain. Most people have heard of the old marshmallow test that went something like this (recalled from middle school memories of being told this story): children around the age of four years old were offered a marshmallow but they were also offered the option to decline the marshmallow. They were also given the option to decline the marshmallow. If they did this and waited, they would be given an even better dessert. The un-scientific explanation of the studies results is that the children who were able to delay their gratification went on to perform better later in life. The ability to delay gratification led to better abilities to handle stress, better academic performance, and a higher ability to perform in a variety of social situations.

         We have established the nature of instant gratification, but how does this relate to the nature of smartphones? With both the facts of instant gratification and the examples of God’s command to wait, it seems that the ability to delay gratification is a very important one. With that in mind, it seems that whatever could be done to cultivate this skill should be done. It also seems that putting palm-sized computers in the pocket of every human, palm-sized computers that can answer any question at a moments notice, palm-sized computers that can arrange to have something delivered in as little as thirty minutes with just a few taps, palm-sized computers that can contact anyone else with a palm-sized computer; it seems that this would be dangerous and while not inherently unbiblical, it would be rather unhelpful. Smartphones give the opportunity for their owner to be holding almost anyone’s live face or voice in their hand in a matter of seconds, have almost any item delivered to them within thirty minutes, and have almost any question answered instantly. These smartphones live in the back pockets and under the pillows of 81% of American adults.

         The exact details of how each individual uses these smartphones definitely differs from individual to individual but the fact remains: 81% of American adults have access to the illusion of anything that they want in their pocket at a moments notice.  Anyone could agree that there must be an affect on the brain from having this option for instant gratification in their pocket. Any desire that someone has can be at least met by a temporary fix with the device in their pocket. What I would love to do right now is to talk about all of the joys and benefits of practicing delaying gratification and how to do that well with smartphones. While that would be a wonderful topic to explore more, it would move us gravely off the current topic.

4. Through this instantly gratifying nature, these smartphones inhibit our ability to be incarnately present.

         What then does all of this instant gratification have to do with incarnate presence? Through their instantly gratifying nature, these smartphones inhibit our ability to be incarnately present. Incarnate presence, as I defined earlier: “A. Invested with bodily and especially human nature and form or B: Made manifest or comprehensible.” This all has to do with physical presence and proximity. When we use this term we are referring to an actual physical, proximal, incarnate being. As we have already established, this physical, proximal, incarnate presence is a key factor to the development of intimacy. This presence is literally about physical bodies being proximately present with other physical bodies.

         This is where the instant gratification comes in. With the ability to feel as if you are anywhere in the world with anyone (over call, text, facetime, or any other messaging or video app) can cloud this understanding of bodily presence. The first semester of my undergraduate career, I had just left a season of living in physical proximity to some of the closest friends I had ever had. When I moved to Chicago, I stayed in touch with quite a few of these friends through constant FaceTiming. We would be on FaceTime as if we were just hanging out all the time, my best friend would be on FaceTime in my hand an alarming percentage of the time. My roommate would come home and I’d say “hey! Kat’s here!” and point to the phone sitting on my desk with my best friend on FaceTime. I’d walk around with my earbuds plugged in, Kat on FaceTime in my hand and order a coffee at the coffee shop that I work at. I’d say to my coworker “do you want to say hi to my best friend?” and let them talk to Kat.” I had an assortment of friends who knew that I preferred FaceTiming to talking on the phone or texting and would just FaceTime me if they had a question or wanted to say hi. I would be in a conversation with someone, receive a FaceTime call and answer it as if that person had just walked up and interrupted my conversation. I would treat FaceTime as if it was a portal to bring people who weren’t physically near me, physically near me. There wasn’t much wrong with this in my eyes at the time. Sure, I was “outsourcing my community”, sure I wasn’t building friendships where I was because I was spending that time talking on the phone to old friends, but I couldn’t see much wrong with this. And then a friend remarked to me one day “Lisa, there’s really nothing that will stop you from answering a FaceTime call and that’s made it hard for me to be around you sometimes.” I was stopped in my tracks. Something that I thought I was using to bring people together was pushing people away from me? How could this be? This began a long and slow process of wrestling with my theology of the FaceTime application, or what could just be referred to as video chatting. That wrestling is what birthed this essay. That wrestling led to a lot of questions that led to the thesis of this paper. My understanding of the value of incarnate presence had become clouded and foggy. When I am in my apartment, FaceTiming someone on my laptop, and my roommate walks into the apartment at the end of her day, I am immediately torn between being two places at once. I want to be present and not rude to the person I am on the phone with but I also want to be present with and hear about my roommates day. This is the loss of an ability to be fully proximally present. (FaceTime isn’t the only way that iPhone’s and technology in general can get in the way of one’s ability to be fully presenet and thus develop true intimacy, see this link for further examples.) It goes farther though. It is not just the FaceTiming that robs us of our presence but it is the entirety of the instantly gratifying nature of Smartphones. With a Smartphone in your back pocket, you immediately become accessible to anyone who wants to summon you with a text or a call. With a Smartphone in your back pocket, you immediately have access to buying anything you want, having the answer to any question. With this power, how could anyone just be where their body is? With there being over a thousand things vying for your attention, all in one computer in your back pocket, how could you be incarnately present where your actual body is? The instantly gratifying nature of these smartphones cause us to lose sight of the quickly blurring line between what is physically present and what is not.

5. There is a level and depth of intimacy that is being robbed of us and thus lost because of these pocket computers.

         With everything that we have seen thus far, the only next conclusion is that there is a richness of intimacy that is being robbed of us and thus lost because of these pocket computers. “Us” means everyone. Wether you own a smartphone or not, everyone is affected by them. The constant demand to be multiple different places (on call to whoever chooses to ring up your cellphone through whichever means they try [snapchat, instagram, text, FaceTime, etc.]) makes us unable to be actually incarnately present. We are in body present but our hearts and minds are forced to travel away from where our bodies are. In losing this ability to be actually present, we are also losing the ability to build the intimacy that we are designed to need.

         That first semester of my undergraduate, I developed relationships with my roommates but looking back, I see how I missed out on a richness of intimacy that would have come if I had shared with them about the disgusting lunch I ate or the great class I went to. In sharing these kinds of things with people who are proximally present, a potential for intimacy inevitably develops. When we see our Smartphones as an extension of ourselves, we begin to see ourselves as omniscient and omnipresent. It is easy to then to stop valuing true, fleshly presence, as our smartphones provide a substitute that is more immediately satisfying. This even comes when someone finds them themselves texting their significant other about everything that happens in a day and when they finally see them in person at the end of the day, they have nothing left to say. Just as the children chose to make mudpies in the slum instead of the seaside vacation, we are trading in the opportunity for intimacy and instead accepting a cheaper, shallower, more fleeting version, forgetting what was originally given. The thief here isn’t FaceTime nor is it Instagram nor is it even the Smartphone. The thief is the capacity that this technology has to inhibit incarnate presence.

         So what can be done to make sure that this thief does not win? Shall we throw our smartphones into the ocean? Shall we delete the FaceTime app or disable Siri? This is not the answer because these tools have powerful and lovely potential. FaceTime provides the opportunity for a child to be able to develop a relationship with a Father who is deployed across the country or for a social worker to get to know and help women stuck in slavery half way around the world. This is a powerful tool and that is not to be ignored. Moving forward, the first step (as in any problem) is an awareness. An awareness of both the wonderful potential and the terrible potential that these Smartphones possess. An awareness of the importance of proximal presence in the building of intimacy. An awareness of one’s need for intimacy. Another way to phrase C.S. Lewis’s quote is by saying that humans are happy to sit under a table and pick up the scraps being dropped before they climb out from under the table and see the seats set for them to feast alongside the rest of the guests. The questions that you should be asking yourself as you walk away from this essay sound like

“What feast am I missing out on by keeping my phone in my back pocket?”

“What ways can I protect my incarnate presence?”

“What boundaries do I need to set around my Smartphone?”

“What am I missing out on because of the instantly gratifying nature of Smartphones?”

“How can I protect the growth of intimacy with Christ, myself, and others in my life?”

         Even if you don’t own a Smartphone, these questions can be asked of the people around you to understand the way that Smartphones are affecting your relationships from either end. The solution is not to be gone with these technologies, the solution is to gain awareness of how they interact and affect your identity, relationships, and community. There are also practical steps that can be taken to lessen the power that the iPhone has to rob us of our incarnate presence. Wether this be turning notifications off on your phone, deleting social media apps, disabling apps for certain times of the day, putting your phone in another room when you sleep, or buying a regular flip phone, there are ways to raise your awareness of the effect of iPhones on incarnate presence. There are ways to fight against the theivery. 

         Whatever is to be done, the goal is intimacy. Intimacy with oneself, with God, with others. An experiential knowing, a tapping into of the rich intimacy offered by our Creator. A fight to give up the slum for the seaside vacation: a fight we never thought we would be fighting but a necessary one all the same.

Works Cited

“6 Questions to Reveal Your ‘Intimacy Quotient’.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201203/6-questions-reveal-your-intimacy-quotient.

“Demographics of Mobile Device Ownership and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/.

Kelly, Matthew. The Seven Levels of Intimacy: the Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved. Beacon Publishing, 2005.

Lauer, Christopher. Intimacy: a Dialectical Study. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Levy, R. (2017). ‘Intimacy, the drama and beauty of encountering the Other’. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98, 3, 877–894.

Nouwen, Henri J. M. Intimacy. HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Prager, Karen J. The Psychology of Intimacy. Guilford, 1998.

Struthers, William M. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain. IVP Books, 2009.

“We All Need Some Intimacy in Our Lives.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201210/we-all-need-some-intimacy-in-our-lives.