A Lesson Fro Two Interviews

The Time's "The Interview" Reveals Truths About Our Social Landscape

I listen to podcasts. There is nothing special about that. At first, I started listening to them for passive entertainment. It made the radio experience more “on demand” which suited my busy schedule. But as the medium has evolved and me along with it, I now listen for another reason. Podcasts help me dip my intellectual toe in and out of waters. They are great places of introduction for ideas that might be worth my time. Frankly, they serve up a speedy amuse bouche and get me ready for deeper and broader intellectual exposure. One podcast that I have found of interest as of late is called The Interview which is produced by, and featured in print as well on the New York Times. Each episode of the show is a deep dive interview with a noteworthy subject. The second half of the show is a follow up phone interview after the initial in person one—to see whether or not the subject has further thoughts on their answers and so on. I have discovered two episodes of this show’s initial offering that help to explain much of the social, spiritual, and habit landscape of our world, one with Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, the other with public intellectual and academic Robert Putnam. When you put both of these interviews side by side, I argue, you’ll discover some of what makes our present age challenging for greater development of spirituality as well as healthy community life.

In the Sarandos interview, you will hear the fascinating story of how Netflix went from a DVD shipping company to a pioneer in streaming content and industry disruption. The interview also follows the story of how show business once belonged to a studio system, but now, and because of Netflix, it is very much a hybridized business made up of studios, the tech industry, and an international/global market of consumers and producers. Lulu Garcia-Navarro, an insightful conversationalists, asks no small question, “has streaming been good for culture?” No surprise, for Sarandos, it most certainly has been. He explains,

Oh, I think it’s been great for culture. Not only great for culture; in a strange way, I think it’s been great to make the world a safer place. I think you’re exposed to cultures around the world in a way that makes you more understanding and empathetic. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “A Separation” from Iran? It’s a story of a couple getting divorced in Iran, and you realize when you watch it how much we have in common with each other.

Not shying away, Garcia-Navarro inquires about the algorithm associated with streaming. The algorithm attempts to make suggestions based on your viewing preferences, so in a way, does the algorithm work to further “atomize” you by serving up, as she puts it, “more of the same…and the idea of communal culture gets sort of pushed away?” For Sarandos an example like the show Baby Reindeer demonstrates the opposite, because it is such a unique show, on the surface it would fit into a very niche market space. But, precisely because it was watched and liked, the algorithm pushed it up the queue and exposed unintended audiences to it. And apparently, according to the numbers, those audiences loved it as well. For Sarandos, streaming is a cultural gemstone, because it can widen an audience’s horizons by exposing them to stories and story-tellers they would have otherwise never had the chance to experience. And as the interview goes, Sarandos wants us all to stream much more than we do already.

That last bit startled me. I stream enough, to be sure. And I have no data or research to back it up, but my suspicion is that there is a sort of dopamine dump or at least some sort of addictive pleasure principle at play in the way streaming works. I assume it is not unlike what has come to be known as “doom scrolling” with social media. But it is also startling, because of the other interview, one that I view as a sort of companion to the Sarando’s piece, called Robert Putnam Knows Why You Are Lonely also conducted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Putnam is a Political Scientist who wrote a highly lauded book in 2000 called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. This book attracted the attention of so many thought leaders and politicians in that day, because there was the growing sense that Americans were becoming polarized and lonelier than they were in the mid-twentieth century. And maybe the reason for the loneliness of American’s bled into the reason for the rise in polarization.

One interesting aspect of this interview is that it takes place 24 years after the publications of Putnam’s data soaked book, and American’s are reporting higher levels of both loneliness and polarization than they did when it came out. This leads Putnam to tell Garcia-Navarro that perhaps he failed to do much to change that growing trend, and as a retrospective on a career and calling it is a fascinating conversation. Of particular interest to me as a theologian and clergy-person, thus someone who has an interest in spirituality, communal life, and virtue formation is that Putnam is still convinced of his thesis from Bowling Alone—we contemporary folk are lonely and more isolated, because we have stopped joining things like bowling leagues, churches, rotary, Boy Scouts, etc. Or, at least, membership in these voluntary associations has been on a steady decline for at least 50 years (for more on the decline of voluntary associations and the decline in church attendance see Ted Smith’s wonderful work The End of Theological Education. For my money it needs to be read alongside of Andy Root’s work on ministry in a secular age). In the interview Putnam says:

I think we’re in a really important turning point in American history. What I wrote in “Bowling Alone” is even more relevant now. Because what we’ve seen over the last 25 years is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. We’ve become more socially isolated, and we can see it in every facet in our lives. We can see it in the surgeon general’s talk about loneliness. He’s been talking recently about the psychological state of being lonely. Social isolation leads to lots of bad things. It’s bad for your health, but it’s really bad for the country, because people who are isolated, and especially young men who are isolated, are vulnerable to the appeals of some false community. I can cite chapter and verse on this: Eager recruits to the Nazi Party in the 1930s were lonely young German men, and it’s not an accident that the people who are attracted today to white nationalist groups are lonely young white men. Loneliness. It’s bad for your health, but it’s also bad for the health of the people around you.

For Putnam the community feature of what he calls “social capital” or the social connections and networks that one is imbedded are in some ways the cure for loneliness. And if this capital can ameliorate loneliness, then it can quell silohed and polarized thinking. Putnam wishes that people would join groups more often, and when he first started thinking about this as a solution to the problem there was no ill-effect of social media on society—which seems to be part of so many contemporary problems like anxiety, sectarian/tribalism, and polarization. Not to oversimplify, but Putnam thought that 25 years ago, we were increasingly isolated and lonely because we were staying in at home and watching television and other media on our own as opposed to being out in the community with others. And now, with social media, that has only increased exponentially—even when people are together, they are alone staring at screens etc. But as far as polarization goes and with it the way we tend to demonize others, what Putnam thinks is the problem is trends in morality. Or the decline in morality, to be specific. And he thinks this occurs because people are with others less, which lessens “a sense that we’re all in this together and that we have obligations to other people. Now, suddenly, I’m no longer the social scientist, I’m a preacher. I’m trying to say, we’re not going to fix polarization, inequality, social isolation until, first of all, we start feeling we have an obligation to care for other people. And that’s not easy, so don’t ask me how to do that,” he says.

As I re-read these two interviews that I initially listened to, I saw dovetailing connections. One of them presents a leader who wants us to stream more digital content at home. Not only will this grow his bottom line and produce better content, but it may just expose audiences to narrative and points of view they would otherwise never have contact with. And that is good, because it expands horizons, ethical considerations, and dare I say it opens the possibility for a more cosmopolitan consciousness. The other is from a thinker who is burdened by how digital offerings turn us away from groups, gatherings, communities and clubs. Those represent the social world’s opportunity for building relationship with other people. And by being brought into various relationships one’s consciousness about other people, points of view, and concerns broadens. The result is that people will be less alone as well as more committed to one another. Which one is more true?

Dualities make thinking easy, but they do not get to the depth of our human condition. Can watching shows open our minds? Yes, just as much as reading widely can expose you to world’s and points of view beyond your own, so can streaming content. But it is also true that streaming widely in no way requires you to build empathy or engage with other people in personal ways. Can joining a voluntary group connect you to others and expose you to a wider world? Certainly, but could you also join groups that are homogenous in ideology and experience? There is no panacea to our modern problems. But as I ask the question of how do we encounter the divine in ordinary life, I am forced to face the narratives above. And in so doing I am left with a few cautionary thoughts.

First, I think it wise to consume content (books, podcasts, television, film, news) from a wide array of backgrounds. In an algorithmic age that is driven to keep us on one platform or another, we have to force ourselves to curate the wider world, so that we engage in diversity of expression. And we must also be mindful of how much we consume. We are animals hungry for story, but if all we ever do is consume stories, then we will not be making many of our own. Secondly, I think it wise to heed Putnam’s concern about digital spaces and being alone while engaging them (or alone together, as Sherry Turkle called the phenomenon). If all we do is alone, then we will miss out on opportunities to have our lives transformed by the stories of others in our midst. If all we do is mediated by watching a screen, then we will miss out on the somatic reality we were designed for. These two cautionary thoughts are not novel or that interesting. What I am more compelled by is that Sarandos and Putnam want the same thing, but as their separate interviews go, my guess is that they would go about it in very different ways. I always find it interesting when the end goal is the same for two very approaches to a thing!

I do worry more about Sarandos’ hopes that we stream more than we do now. And while I think it is true that we can expand our understanding of the world by watching diverse stories, I believe this really requires mindful watching, not the mere passive viewing that streaming promotes. I am afraid that our culture’s addiction to streaming and scrolling harkens back to Nietzsche’s discussion about the “last man,” the lazy or passive life frittered away. And while I am more sympathetic to Putnam’s claims about belonging, I am afraid that the the age of voluntary associating is an age that is dying, as Ted Smith expertly shows in The End of Theological Education. As if just joining things would fix all our woes, it seems like the sorts of things we join today do not look like the same things we joined a half century ago. But I am interested in his more communitarian focus. In the end, for those of us who are thinking about theological, spiritual, ethical, or simply religious teaching and so on, these two articles help us to understand the cultural landscape, and they help us see some proposed aids for all that troubles us. There seems to be some truth in both, though they are not equal in measure. We live in a world of digital entertainment. How can we utilize that to help expand people’s experiences and thus train them in empathy? How can we speak of the concern of loneliness and offer communitarian helps in order to expand understanding and empathy? Can they, if framed rightly be seen as spiritual tools? I think so.

Perhaps, for our purposes, it is enough to raise the caution flag and heed the call of self-reflection. Instead of passive viewing and streaming can we watch with a more reflective eye? Instead of just joining things or going alone, can we reflective seek gatherings that may challenge us? It is all food for thought. One thing is for sure, if we are going to be more than idle, and more than lonely, then we will have to be intentional!