Silence Your Phones

Why your inability to silence your phone is just one example of our failure as a species.

I’m on an Amtrak train. It’s 1018pm. Heading south from NY Penn to Baltimore. And someone’s ringtone keeps going off but they are fast asleep. It’s only the rest of us that can hear it.

Ok. I just got back to my seat. I went and asked the sleepy head to put her phone on vibrate. Well first I had to wake her up which was weird enough. I mean I’m 6’3 shaved head, 215lbs. It’s 10p. The car is dark. But I can tell I’m not the only one bothered by this.

And at first i didn’t think it was coming from this girls row. I mean she’s young. There is an old couple between me and her and I have spent the last hour convinced that it’s gotta be the old couple right?

I mean my dad does that shit. We’re in a restaurant. His phone rings it’s obnoxious factory-setting Verizon ring tone. You know the one. And instead of saying, ‘Oh golly gee I didn’t know this thing was turned so loud!’ he pulls it out and then stares at the screen like it’s sending Sanskrit messages to him. He’ll spend the length of the ring deciphering who it is, what they want, why are they calling and at no point will he just silence the goddamn ring.

Frankly, I think it’s rude but I’m not at all shocked. It’s the cost of doing business in the digital age.

Although it’s not like ring tones were ever something we really loved. I mean sure as a kid before the age of the cell phone we loved getting calls. The phone would ring and everyone in the house would yell, ‘I got it!’ ‘No, I got it!’ And we sort of took it for granted that the ringing would stop as soon as we picked up. The age of caller ID arrived and suddenly we could screen calls. And again back in the day if you screened and decided you didn’t wanna talk to the person you just had to let the phone ring itself out. The ring was noisy and my dad hated it.

But the cell phone/ smart phone/iPhone ring came along and suddenly it’s like my father enjoys the noise. It’s the only noise he’s ever enjoyed. He hates music. For years I gave him CDs for Xmas and he would put them in his car and never take the plastic off. My mother used to have the radio on in the kitchen and he would come in from work and shut it off and they’d fight about it. He hates noise. He even used to called me Noisy. And not in an endearing way like I was saving the family from a fire when everyone was fast asleep but Noisy, noisy. You’re worse than a woman, Noisy.

But then he gets a phone and he just lets it ring. Somehow this loud pitched annoying stock Verizon song to him sounds likeBeethoven’s 5th Symphony.

Anyway, so I’m on the train and I’m thinking okay this loud ringtone is absolutely 100% coming from the elderly couple one row up.

So I stand up. My girlfriend looks at me like she can’t believe what I’m about to do because in this day and age you’re taking your life in your own hands by talking to strangers about something that they might disagree on. So I stand and step forward and make eye contact with the old couple and realize that it’s not their phone. It’s the young girl sitting in front and she is passed out cold, sleeping right thru the noise. Like a Soldier on his 5th tour in Hanoi just sleeping like a baby as Robert Duvall napes a beachhead.

So I tap her on the arm and say quickly before she’s even really awake, excuse me but can you please put your phone on vibrate? She sleepily says oh yeah. And I quickly turn and notice not one but four smiles from surrounding passengers who were all clearly hoping for someone, anyone, to do what I had just done. I sat back down. Smiled at my girlfriend and we kissed just as the ringtone went off again.

So since I’m awake let’s talk about why I think we’re fucked as a species.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about mental health issues. Specifically how they are on the rise around the world. It seems particularly common among Millennials and the documentation of the issues they face seems to decrease as we look at older generations.

It occurred to me that one of the main reasons for the mental health issues were facing has a lot to do with our awareness of the world. Older generations, my own Gen-X included, still face depression and other issues but it is in a more traditional sense. Depression focused on providing for a family, having a satisfying and productive career. Younger generations are faced with a stress that is derived from their exposure and comparisons to other people their age on a world scale.

What both groups are realizing is they don’t have a lot to live for.

The world is at war. Genocide is happening constantly in places that aren’t significant enough to care about. The earth itself is slowly being destroyed by our careless greed. Any attempt to retreat into sports or entertainment is quickly exposed as being nothing more than flimsy distraction. Let’s not even discuss the way our politicians only add to our stress.

The reality is that this constant flow of endless information and knowledge has revealed nothing more than what our greatest comedians have prophesied and that is that we are a failed species of biblical proportion.

So what is worth living for?

Some would say our children. They are our future. Teach them well. Let them lead the way. And yet we are constantly shown more and more examples of how we are failing them and raising instead a bunch of wifi dependent catatonics with limited skills and even more limited manners.

And that’s not to point the finger solely at them. The reality is they are the result of older generations and the society we created. They are absorbing the knowledge that over the years the older generations have done some pretty fucked up shit. We have done everything I mentioned above. There is no retreat.

The internet and the information and digital age has added some wonderful perks to our ride toward destruction but it’s also exposed us to the fact that there is no Oz behind the curtain. The courage, thought, and love to create a better future lies within all of us cowardly lions, scarecrows and tin men and women alike but rarely do we try on a large scale to care for each other.

And all because this fucking kid still has the ability to sleep thru her own ringtone and I’m secretly jealous that I not only don’t sleep anymore but I’m constantly awake and/or dreaming about the end of human kind and how can we possibly do anything about it when we don’t even have the ability, desire, or care it seems to silence our ringtones.