Jukka Paarma
SANCTITY
AND THE INCREASINGLY TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD OF COMMUNICATION
Opening speech at the Sacred Media conference in Jyväskylä July 11, 2003
The theme Sacred media is not only interesting but
very important too. It raises many questions.
There are the boundaries between possibilities and responsibilities? Which
are the main values in the mighty power of media? What means sanctity for us
living in the increasingly technological world of communication?
We in Finland have used to think that we are one of
the top countries of modern technology.
We are proud of our mobile phone industry and it was already many years
ago when a surprising number of people spoke on their phones while walking down
the street. This is nowadays a common sight around the world, but we are
thinking that it is very typical just for us that phoning and sending text
messages, and images too, is a means of keeping in contact.
What else is typical for us? Not only modern
technology, but Finland is also one of
the most Lutheran countries in the world. About 85% of the population belongs
to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. A recently published large-scale
study indicates certain characteristics of Finnish religion. Although we are
passive churchgoers, church services and church work still reach wide sections
of the population. However, one group has become most obviously alienated from
the church's traditional activities: young men living alone. They are not only
interested in their special hobbies and leisure activities but have a firm
belief in modern technology and its possibilities.
This fact raises a question that is relevant in this
conference. Have modern communication technology and the matters and values
represented by the churches anything in common with each other? Can
technology-dominated culture also convey the holy and the experience of the
holy?
As we ask these questions it is good to remember that
today's problems of communication technology are by no means new. Many times
before in the history of the church and religion it has been necessary to
ponder the issue of communication and the instruments of communication.
The church and the revolutions of communication technology
The first great revolution in communication technology in the West took place
with the shift from the spoken word to the written word. For the church it was not easy to accept. In
the first centuries the church was strongly committed to the legacy of
antiquity, where only living speech was considered to be genuine communication,
able to convey the mystery of faith even to the illiterate. Gradually, as the
number of Christians grew and they came into conflict with other religions, it
became necessary to record the central substance of the faith in written form.
An equally significant revolution was the adoption of
printing during the Reformation period. Technological progress made it possible
for everyone to be "readers of the same text".
It is interesting to note that the reformer Martin
Luther was both enthusiastic about and surprised by the power of this new
medium. Printing meant, in his own words, "an extreme demonstration of
God's grace", by which the holy could be conveyed to a larger number of
people. He also had to face very modern-sounding problems of copyright, when
illegal printers copied his manuscripts and traded with illegal copies.
Early technological revolutions in communication and
the associated questions of principle are still of relevance when we speak of
the media, religion and culture. We still have to recognize that nothing can
replace living speech and personal encounter. It is in the area of spiritual
life that living speech, music and a consecrated building are of primary
importance in conveying the experience of the holy. It has always been
necessary for representatives of religious communities to come together and
meet each other face to face. Live worship and a tangible church building can
never be replaced by a virtual celebration of mass alone.
Nor does this apply solely to the spiritual dimension
of life. Live encounter is just as important in all human intercourse,
including scientific work. This conference has been arranged for this very
purpose. For scholars it is nevertheless crucial to be able to meet face to
face and exchange experiences. There are many things in life, which certainly
cannot be dealt with through the Internet. This fact applies as much to
research and culture as to the closest human relationships.
In particular this principle of personal contact and
living presence is important for religion and the experience of the holy. Neil
Postman once wrote that in his opinion the modern media can only convey the
experience of the holy to a limited extent. His criticism had its origin in the
observation that television in particular is "so saturated with our memories
of profane events, so deeply associated
with the commercial and entertainment worlds that it is difficult for it to be
recreated as a frame for sacred events".
In order to be able to experience the holy, men and women must,
according to Postman, be able to "become absorbed in the aura of mystery
and symbolic transcendence" and be able to "separate a certain slice
of time and space, so that from it can be made a new reality which is not of
this world".
Postman is certainly right that the experience of the
holy always requires an environment tuned in a certain way, something other
than the mundane. This is today perhaps more important than ever. The more we
are surrounded by the artificial worlds, images and voices of the mundane, the
greater is the human longing for silence and authenticity. The holy, at its
most authentic, represents otherness, something other than ordinary life
blinded by the mundane.
The modern media unite and separate the world
Although we recognize the crucial importance of personal communication and
encounter, we must also acknowledge that our world is dominated by a
technological revolution in communications, which will undoubtedly influence
our culture in the same way as literacy or the invention of printing once did.
Many barriers, which once separated people, have fallen in the new web society.
We are able to be in real-time contact with people around the globe. At the
same time technological development has influenced our understanding of
originality and authenticity. The
assessment of the reliability of the information is increasingly more
difficult.
When we speak of global media ethics or "sacred
technology", we need to remember that we are concerned with very Western
phenomena. New information webs have created a new global village, but this
village comprises at the moment only a small fraction of the human race.
According to the most optimistic estimates, 7 % of the current population of
the world has the opportunity to take advantage of the modern services of the
information society.
The "digital gulf" is a fact, and it seems
that this gulf is not necessarily becoming narrower. The world seems to be
becoming more clearly divided between those who are linked to the networks of
the modern information society and those who are not. And these frontiers
separating people run not only between nations but also within nations. No
wonder that at consultations of the churches, too, the issue of the
"information rich" and "information poor" has achieved
greater prominence in recent years.
New communication technology highlights in a new way
the differences in the world and its cultures. As we receive an increasing
amount of information and the wealth of cultures is more clearly revealed, we
notice how divided our world is. Famed global communication is after all the
privilege of only a few. From the point of view of global media ethics this
inequality is a central issue.
The new media compel discussion of values
The new digital media also seem to be characterized by
the disappearance of the traditional frontiers between the different media. In
the future we will no longer speak of separate radios, televisions or
computers. With the new technology modern societies are becoming more and more
generalized communication societies.
This development seems also to involve a strong
emphasis on freedom of speech and expression
That is why the traditional regulation and surveillance of communication
seem to be becoming more difficult or even impossible.
However, mass communication involves not only freedom of speech but also from
the outset the principle of responsibility. In communication freedom and
responsibility are closely linked. In European journalistic culture in
particular this linkage of freedom and responsibility has been visible both as
regulation of parliamentary communication and an emphasis on the professional
ethics of individual journalists. The document "The international
principles of the professional ethics of journalism", accepted in 1983,
requires that journalists live in harmony with "personal ethical
awareness."
I myself think, that to that awareness belong in the
first place a strict honesty and personal passion towards the truth.
This universal ethical awareness is important for the
ethical thinking of the Lutheran Church. It has traditionally placed emphasis
on the idea that people are guided by natural law based on the Golden Rule,
whereby all people possess a similar intuitive sense of justice.
Amidst the new media culture we have to ask more
forcibly what are the values that maintain our society and keep it together. Do
universal values, common to all, exist, such as can exercise influence in a
constantly accelerating and commercialized media world?
The common good and ethical principles of the community have even stronger
links with communication. In communication and media culture it is not just a
matter of the transfer of messages or information. What is at issue is
ultimately communicative contacts which keep the whole of society together. In
the first pages of the Bible we are given an example of this. The builders of
the Tower of Babel failed in their undertaking when mutual communication was
impeded due to the lack of a common language. If communication is prevented,
"society collapses like a brick wall when the cohesive cement is
removed", as Carlos Valle, General Secretary of the World
Association for Christian Communication, has aptly declared.
Media culture needs recognition of the dignity and sanctity of human beings
What is the communication cement which keeps the whole
of society together? In the case of children and young people in particular an
obvious threat to their growth to healthy adulthood is too early a
confrontation with the adult world, whether it is describing human violence or
areas of life or revealing secrets traditionally associated with the adult
world.
The powerful release of communication seems in a new
way to be leading people to seek both the background to and basis of their
common values and their entire concept of humanity. It is not at all surprising
that in recent discussion of media ethics trends seem to be reinforced in which
the common history of human society, tradition passed on from generation to
generation, and the indispensable value of human beings have acquired even
greater importance.
In their book "Communication Ethics and Human
Values" Clifford C. Christians and Michael Traber,
researchers in global media ethics, have sought moral models which transcend
cultural boundaries and common to all human beings. By analysing material from
different cultures the writers have noted that a common feature observable in
all the cultures studied is the notion of the common idea of morality
associated with human nature. Scholars even speak of the irrevocable sanctity
and dignity of human nature.
The "primal sacredness of life" is a force which is a universal bond
between people. Human society seems to be dominated by views transcending
cultural boundaries which can be used as a starting-point when speaking of
communication and its real task. "Sacredness in the media" thus means
something more than the treatment of religious themes or the reporting of
religious subjects. If communication lacks the vision of the uniqueness and
dignity of human beings - I almost said sanctity - then there is the danger
that communication is no longer the cohesive cement of the whole building that
it should be.
Ultimately communication conveys something
indispensable, on which our whole society depends and whereby contact between
people ultimately takes place. In the long span of Bible stories mutual
communication between human beings and God and between human beings is a
central theme. One may say that this
great theme is developed in the span beginning with the building of the Tower
of Babel and the failure of the project due to the lack of mutual
communication. At the other end of the span is the miracle of Pentecost, when
everyone heard other people speaking their language. It is to be hoped that the
participants in this conference will experience a journey from the confusion of
languages towards a common language and mutual understanding.