As you read this, I'll be playing golf, probably badly, at a tradition-bound golf club not far from the ocean. Our collared shirts will be tucked in; our caps will be brim-forward; we will stand still and whisper while the other fellow lines up his shot; we'll carefully take turns to ensure that the furthest player away from the hole putts next. It's costume and choreography and it's probably not all that different from what the people did on this same weekend twenty or fifty years ago. While you are permitted to use your phone for scoring the round, other phone use is expressly not permitted. There won't be any music coming from a golf cart speaker. Like the English, they sort of frown on any exaggerated displays of emotion—you can't yell, either in victory or defeat. It's the 75th running of the Webhannet Member-Guest.
Don't get me wrong: I like other modes of golf, too. Others of my most fun golf memories include playing with a barefoot, torn t-shirt wearing guy in the foothills of Tennessee, or blasting tunes from a golf cart-mounted speaker with some coworkers, or charity golf scrambles with more ways to cheat than a wild west poker game. There are many ways to do it. But it's cool to have a particular culture and to expect people, when they're joining, to respect the culture. That's why I'll be wearing a necktie and jacket when we have Saturday evening cocktails on the, uh, driveway (it's still Maine, after all). Culture is about creating something where things are done a little differently than the easiest or most comfortable way. Culture is a way of creating meaning.
There's a great line from the end of the luddite piece below. To set it up, our journalist is exploring a small community of tech-critical people in New York City. They mount a play in the park and towards the end of it, our journalist goes into modern journalism mode, pulling out her phone to take a picture of the actors, stage, and set. And then,
Someone tapped me on the shoulder: a Luddite organizer I hadn’t yet met. “Could you put that away?” she asked, mild irritation in her face. “We don’t do that here.”
We don't do that here. Not "that's wrong" or "forbidden by law" or "unhealthy," but that's not a thing we do. To fit in, culturally, you limit your behavior to what is the acceptable norms—even if the norms seem arbitrary. There's perhaps nothing wrong with using your phone to record an experience. I did that very thing last night, recording my kids's performances at a parks 'n' rec talent show (of sorts). Later, they enjoyed seeing themselves on stage from the audience. Of course, I wasn't completely focused, in the moment, on their performance. I was focused on getting my phone to record those performances. In a sense, I ignored what they were doing to ensure it was captured. My memory of it won't be as strong as if I'd put all of my sense and attention towards the stage. The modern luddites are very concerns with presence and attention and experiences not mediated by personal technological devices. What the luddite organizer meant when she said, "We don't do that here." is that they are creating a specific culture where people are fully present.
A culture is strong when it stops people from doing things. When I tuck in my shirt and respectfully whisper, rather than yell, the golf club's culture is visible. It's good to be stopped from doing things, even if they're not wrong or illegal or unhealthy. In nudging you to decline to do something, culture teaches that in self-control and abiding by norms you can find meaning. In the "we don't do that here" energy you find yourself guided to become, temporarily, a different and perhaps a better kind of person.
Hanging with NYC’s tech-critical youth cultural front
Going offline and unplugging each week reconnects us with something ancient.
Welcome to the age of decadence without pleasure. Decadence in our era comes in technologically mediated forms, emptied of desire and obsessed with self-optimisation.