Why It’s So Hard to Throw Your iPhone into Mount Doom
On more than one occasion, I have come dangerously close to chucking my iPhone off my back porch--only to recoil back from the edge and check Gmail for the third time in as many minutes. Or, in my saner moments, I have considered trading in my iPhone for something that is only good for calling, texting, and playing Snake. But, like any good millennial, I find a dozen reasons to justify keeping it. Even if I really wanted to get rid of my smartphone, it feels like I have no will left in the matter.
I just finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings (which is a monstrously difficult task in a digital age) and I was finally able to feel with Frodo when he is on Mount Doom. Standing there on the edge, after months of journeying with the Ring, he is unable to resist the allure of the Ring and, to Sam’s disbelief, he places it on his finger and disappears. Whether you are reading or watching this scene, you find yourself yelling at Frodo, saying, “I did not just read a thousand pages (or watch twelve hours of extended cuts) to see you keep the Ring for yourself. Just take it off and throw it in the fire already!”
Yet, Frodo is us.
And, the One Ring is whatever device you’re keeping in your pocket.
Maybe, we intend to have a face-to-face conversations with our friends, but somehow we discover that our phone is in our hands and we are scrolling through pictures of what other semi-friends are doing tonight. We want to resist the gravitational pull of the vibration we just felt, but in the end, it proves too strong. We say that, if it really came down to it, we could get rid of our smartphones, but could we? Or, would we stand there with Frodo at the edge of Mount Doom and walk away still hunched over iPhones?
In “The Shadow of the Past,” the second chapter in the book, Tolkien makes sense of what Frodo will eventually experience on Mount Doom and what we experience nearly everyday. Like our phones, the Ring is an object, a thing, something you can carry with you, that seems to exert a will of its own (or of someone else) on us. In themselves, they do not have power, but rather they become channels for another Power to overcome our best intentions (i.e., Sauron in LOTR, Sin and Death in Romans). Next time you read LOTR, listen to the verbs associated with the Ring and you will notice that, as Fleming Rutledge comments, “The Ring is the active subject; no one possess it.” Rather, it possess us.
In our secular age, we do not have a way to make sense of something outside of us having power over us. We do not have the language of St. Paul, who says, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:18-20). Yet, this is precisely what happens to you, me, and Frodo Baggins.
And Gollum.
Gollum is what all of us could become after years of possessing these objects. Gandalf explains that Gollum was once Smeagol, a being not too unlike Frodo. Explaining this further, Gandalf says, “I think it is a sad story [...] and it might have happened to others, even to some hobbits I have known.” It’s where Bilbo was headed had Gandalf not intervened. It’s where Frodo was headed had Gollum not intervened. We are not too far from those we see who are deep into the thrall of digital devices. Describing this journey, Gandalf says,
“A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings. Yet, sooner or later--later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last--sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.”
The more we use our digital devices, the less able we are to resist them. Eventually, we start to fade into the background and become invisible permanently. At first, it was just a quick check here and there, but eventually our devices consume us and make every last minute a weariness. What felt innocent at first turns into something that no one is able to resist.
There is a scene at the Prancing Pony a few chapters later in which the Ring accidentally slips onto Frodo’s finger. In trying to understand what happened, we catch a glimpse of Frodo’s internal confusion, in which the narrator says, “How it came to be on his finger he could not tell. He could only suppose that he had been handling it in his pocket while he sang, and that somehow it had slipped on when he stuck out his hand with a jerk to save his fall.” This is what I feel nearly every time I am in a social situation in which I am required to talk to other humans whom I barely know. Somehow, my phone slips out of my pocket and into my hand. Our phones provide us with momentary invisibility, which mutates into continuous invisibility lest we risk the kind of vulnerability true conversation requires.
Frodo, like many of us, was on his way to where Gollum would eventually end up. Gollum knew the Ring was wrecking his life, but because of its grip on him, he could not get rid of it. “He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself. He could not get rid of it. He had no will left in the matter.” This what many of us feel It is language to describe what many digital refugees I know, including myself, are experiencing. We have no will left in the matter. While we might not yet refer to our iPhones as “my precious,” many of us are pretty close.
This is where we are headed unless Grace, another Power with a stronger will, intervenes--a Power, which St. Paul experienced firsthand. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, he quotes what Christ, the one Ruler and One Lord of all things, said to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Grace was Gandalf intervening to rescue Bilbo. Grace was Gollum biting off Frodo’s ring-finger, which happened to rescue to Frodo. Grace is the Holy Spirit setting us free from the Power of the Sin and Death at work in and through our digital devices.
Perhaps, there are some of us who need to throw our iPhones into the fires of Mount Doom (which if we are sticking with the metaphor, probably means that we need to go find the factories where they were constructed and throw our phones into them).