Who Sets the Agenda?
In high school I learned this card trick. It’s called the 21 card trick or the three-pile trick. It’s a mathematical formula that allows me to see which card the participant chooses. It looks like they choose. And they can choose any 21 cards and any one card as theirs. But that’s when their choosing ends. The rest is up to me.
The trick is that they feel like they’re choosing, like they’re setting the agenda. But the agenda is all mine.
In media studies, agenda setting is a major part of what we study. A famous quote about media is, "It’s not what to think, it’s what to think about." (McCombs and Shaw)
And media studies scholars point out that one of the major powers of a US president is setting the agenda for what we discuss. Ever thought about Greenland? I haven’t! But since Trump is bringing up Greenland so much, many people are considering the implications of Greenland. (Great, now I have to have an opinion on Greenland.)
For most of us, our phones are choosing what to think about all day. The dings, rings, pings. The messages, emails, and notifications.
It’s setting the agenda for what we think about all day.
Have you ever stopped to consider what all of this activity on the phone is yielding? I would argue that most of it yields nothing. That you could walk away from your phone and stare at a wall and get more out of the moment than being on Facebook.
And have you ever noticed that your job on your phone is never finished? It’s never done. Always more time. Always another page to refresh. The tasks are endless. The power of the agenda is theirs and there's always more to do.
What if your primary struggle in life is to leave enough space to allow yourself to set the agenda? To make room for prayer, for Scripture, for boredom, for creativity, for building something, for a new book, and for brand new thoughts?
About kids and media, it has been pointed out that technology opens the world to them but it opens them to the world. When you pick up your phone, you’re opening yourself up to the agenda of the world.
We say that we’re busy, but we allow Netflix and the Instagram algorithm to determine what’s up next for our minutes.
Today’s a great day to make room for a new kind of day. Maybe just focus on 30 minutes. What would 30 minutes with no agenda feel like?
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And, of course, one of my favorite quotes from Screwtape:
“You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked". The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,
Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE”
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