Why are we unable to linger?
A dive into one of the many topics covered in Byung Chul Han's text, "The disappearance of rituals".
Bismillah
Before reading any further I'd like you to conduct the following test.
I want you to watch this clip from 7 Samurai, an Akira Kurasawa masterpiece. It's 1 min and 52 seconds.
Now that you've watched it, I'd like to ask if you did any of the following:
Did you feel a little bit of anxiety as you watched it because of how slow it was?
Did you feel the need to skip a part of it or play it in 2x?
Did you start to play the video in 2x?
We modern humans have lost something we once had, closure and the idea of lingering. It's not just our attention spans, we have become victims to the acceleration and the openness of the Neoliberal domination of the age.
For this reason, many have a hard time getting through less than 2 mins of a clip that was once considered action entertainment 70 years ago. We are unable to linger and wait and allow ourselves closure and completion. We move from one experience to the next, a continual escalation of experiences so that our current state is never fulfilling.
"The neoliberal imperative of optimization and performance does not allow for any completion. Everything is provisional and incomplete; nothing is final and conclusive. It is not only computer software that is subject to the compulsion of optimization. All areas of life are subordinated to its dictates, even education. Lifelong learning does not involve completion. It amounts only to lifelong production. The neoliberal regime abolishes all forms of closure and completion in the name of increased productivity." (Han)
There are two types of places in the world, places of closure, and places of openness. The globalized world does not make it easy for places of closure to exist, it removes all boundaries, and turns them into places of openness. It desires to accelerate all things to speed up the circulation of information and commodity to create greater production in the global marketplace. The internet is a place of openness, it does not allow you to dwell, remain, or linger. You 'surf' the web, and you 'visit' websites. You don't dwell on the internet. This is similar to modern tourism in the way tourists never linger, they visit and tour a location, and they circulate incessantly as if they were a commodity, a piece of information that was moving through the air on various airlines. Even photography is no longer meant for lingering. It is not something you look at for years on end or an art piece that hangs in your home but rather meant for a few second glance, a double tap to produce a heart, and a swipe to the next image.
Only contemplative lingering is capable of closure. The closure of the eyes is emblematic of contemplative closure. The flood of images and information makes closure of the eyes impossible." (Han)
In the center of my village back in India, there exists a small pond. My father would tell me that before the world changed, they would sit by this pond and be content. The pond was at one point very clean, kids would take dives into the water and learn how to swim. It was situated about 50 yards from the Masjid with a large open space in the middle which had paths leading off to the farms. The pond would pull all the villagers, children, and everyone into this particular area. It's where everyone met and connected. It was a place of closure.
You didn't even have to say much to one another, you just passed by in silence, sometimes stopping to give a Salaam, or nod your head. No individual person attempted to be heard or called attention to themselves, because it wasn't about them. It was about the community, the village.
"Community without communication gives way to communication without community." (Han)
Today, this closure has disappeared, it has been replaced with an ugly, and constantly leaking water tower with stale water and mosquito and bug-infected area where large piles of plastic waste, random trash, and hoodlums playing Fortnite, gambling hanging out with wild village dogs only returning home as the Maghrib Azaan goes off. The adhan for them has morphed from a call to prayer to a reminder that the day is over, let's go home. It is no longer a place you linger, a place of closure, all boundaries have been removed, and it's now a place of openness.
Human beings are people of closure.
Lingering and connecting with anything is necessary.
Even things have closure.
I want you to think about the difference between your phone and your sofa. Both of them likely cost a lot of money, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. But your phone is just a black screen, it constantly moves and changes, never remaining the same. Your sofa, on the other hand, lingers. The Prophet ﷺ would name his belongings such as his camel Qaswa, his sword Dhu’l-Fiqaar, his bow Al Zawra, his staff Al-Mamshuqh, his cup Al Rayyan or his bowl al-Gharra. No one does this today because we don't have a concept of lingering with our belongings. They are for using and throwing. Your phone is not an object you truly care about, it's just a screen, a place to visit.
This is why community is so important. It binds a person to a place. You can watch a young kid running around and growing up to become a leader and someone who supports the community. It's fundamentally a place of lingering, a place of closure. Rituals force the idea of lingering, repeated prayers 5 times a day, awrad repeated morning and night, Surah Yasin, Surah Mulk, and Waqiah and Surah Kahf on Fridays. The idea of ritual forces us to linger.
Allah Azzawajal likes the small act that is done every day over a long period as opposed to the large act done once.
Lingering. It is something we have lost and something essential to what makes us human. The AI does not grow attached and slow its pace to have a merry conversation of closure, it does not ponder, it does not slow down, and it does not linger, it calculates, accelerates, and opens.
And Allah and his Messenger ﷺ know best
~ muin