A prayer in Mammon’s church

I visited the shopping mall at Cavendish square for the first time in a long while today to get a UPS system for my home internet connection. The man in the computer shop said he had just the thing for me, a three power source solution for the router, the little box that attached to the fiber network and the extender that ensures that the network extends into the bathroom in case anyone should need to get hold of me there or I want to look up a precise definition of eschatology while I’m abluting.

He told me he knows that it works because he has the same system at home, “otherwise the kids want to come lie by the adults” as soon as the power goes out.

My thoughts about the impact of technology on family life were disrupted as I walked past the food court where I tried to map whether the colour of the lights correlated at all with the kind of food that was being pedaled.

Was it orange and lime green for sugar and red and yellow for the animal fat? I caught myself thinking “fattist” thoughts as I surveyed insulin resistant bodies at the doughnut shop. An impossibly sweet smell, like mince pies the day after Christmas, wafted from the open counter, as if from the mouth of a luminous diabetic monster about to enter renal failure.

I used to visit malls as a recreational activity in my 30’s. This was well before the CD shops all closed for good.  I would spend a couple of hours browsing the jewel cases and then have a cappuccino and open them to read the librettos of my selection. The advance of tech has involuntarily stripped me of this consumerist pleasure and without it, there is no reason for me to visit. The bookshop might tempt me, but I frequently find myself annoyed by the hype surrounding whatever is the latest release that all too often reads like a yarn spun into shape by the candy floss machinery of a focus group selected to meet the publisher’s target market.

My bedroom has become my mall now – Tidal for music and Kindle for literature.

With the electronics that would enable my uninterrupted access to these pleasures clutched to my chest like hymn books under the vicar’s arm as he bustles along late for evensong, I hurried to the exit.

It took me three attempts to insert my credit card into the machine to pay for my parking. Eventually I realised that a screen at groin height was asking for my PIN number. I put down my precious package of microchips and, muttering profanities to Nietzsche’s dead god ¹Nietzsche’s famous quote pointing out the implications of the tremendous cultural shift accompanying the enlightenment’s emphasis on intellect and rationality over religious and spiritual understanding. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” I have discussed this here. I knelt in front of this altar to artificial intelligence and genuine stupidity and like a supplicant in Mammon’s temple, I whispered my PIN to free my car.

There, on my knees, in the biggest building in the village, a chain binding me to the banality of my errand snapped and I left the church laughing like Elvis.

Footnotes

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  Nietzsche’s famous quote pointing out the implications of the tremendous cultural shift accompanying the enlightenment’s emphasis on intellect and rationality over religious and spiritual understanding. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” I have discussed this here. ↩︎