Sorry is a Sacrament

One of the year’s pleasant surprises for New England baseball fans everywhere was the Boston Red Sox winning of the 2021 American League East Division Series. It was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the home team and none of the baseball experts predicted them to be in a position to compete for a playoff spot this season.

The 2021 Red Sox team was a scrappy and likable bunch of players, fighting until the last out and often coming from behind to win games. They were underdogs all year but managed to squeak into a wildcard playoff position; where they then proceeded to defeat their arch-rival New York Yankees, and odds-on favorites Tampa Bay Rays – before finally losing in the championship series to the Houston Astros.

A lot of the credit for the team’s successful season was given to their young manager, Alex Cora. Alex had previously coached the Red Sox and was praised for leading the team to the World Series Championship in 2018. He was suspended by Major League Baseball for the entire 2020 season, however, when it was discovered that he participated in a scheme to steal the opposing team’s pitching signals back in 2017 when he was working as a bench coach for the Houston Astros.

Trying to steal your opponents signs is a tradition as old as baseball because it can give batters a significant advantage when they know which type of pitch is coming (Fastball, Curveball, Sinker, Breaking Ball, Splitter, etc.). Stealing signs is not against the rules as long as the players manage to decipher the signals using personnel that are on the field.

The most common way teams try to steal signs is for a runner on base to peek in and study the hand signals the catcher sends to his pitcher prior to every pitch and then relay the sign to his teammate standing in the batting box. If a team does not disguise their signals effectively or change them up occasionally, then the opposing team is usually able to decode them.

What made the sign-stealing scheme devised by the Houston Astros and Alex Cora against the rules is that their efforts made use of on-field technology. They used a dedicated camera in the center field stands of their home stadium that was focused directly on the opposing team’s catcher. The video was sent to a monitor near the Houston dugout where Houston players could examine it and quickly decode the signs being sent to the pitcher. Various methods were then used to communicate the decoded pitch signs to the batter, including hand signals, whistling and banging on a trash can. Alex Cora even received the stolen sign information on the smartwatch he was wearing.

Condemnation was swift when the scheme was first revealed to the public in 2019 by a traded Houston pitcher. The whole Houston Astros team was immediately branded as cheaters and the World Series championship Houston won in 2017 came to be seen as illegitimate, tarnished forever by the cheating scandal. Major League Baseball conducted a retroactive investigation in 2019 and punished all the managers it found participated in the scheme with a one year suspension.

This included Alex Cora, who had moved on to manager of the Boston Red Sox and led them to the 2018 World Series Championship. Cora paid a high price for his decision to participate in the cheating scheme. The once proud man lost his job, his sterling reputation, his dignity, and the respect of his friends, family and colleagues. He spent a year exiled away from the game he loved while he watched the media attack his character and his young children suffer because of his sullied reputation.

Despite the harsh judgement, Cora never complained. He sincerely apologized for his actions, admitted his fault in the sign stealing scheme, acknowledged that what he did was unfair to the teams they played against and accepted his punishment as well deserved. It was clear he truly felt remorse for his role in the whole affair.

I found myself becoming emotional while watching Alex Cora lovingly embrace his young 14 year old daughter Camilla in the immediate aftermath of the Red Sox victory over the Rays in the Division Series. A postgame reporter asked Alex what that moment meant to him after serving a year of suspension. Here is the video clip of that special moment courtesy of the MLB Network (along with a transcript of his remarks about his family):

“I’m happy for my family. I put them in such a tough spot last year and for them to be able to enjoy it is very gratifying, I’m very very happy for them. She [Camilla] suffered a lot and it was my fault, and sometimes we make bad decisions, and I made a horrible decision in baseball and I paid the price. But what really hurt me was for them to suffer because of my mistakes. And for her to enjoy this is very gratifying.

Alex Cora, Postgame interview, 2021 ALDS

So many people today are afraid to say they are sorry or admit they have done something wrong. They view apologizing as a sign of weakness and surrender; therefore their egos prevent them from owning up to their mistakes or attempting to repair and heal the hurt they have caused.

Still other people never develop the moral compass or sense of compassion and empathy that is necessary to understand how their actions negatively affect others. They feel entitled, believing that the world revolves around them – and they are so used to thinking about themselves that they have no capacity to think about anyone else.

That is why it was so refreshing to watch how Alex Cora handled the fall out from the cheating scandal. Here was a rare example of an authentic apology, one where Alex confessed remorse for his mistake, admitted that it was wrong, fully cooperated with the investigators, accepted his punishment and attempted to make amends with those who were most hurt.

I can’t help but contrast Alex Cora’s apology with one recently made by the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers. Aaron was widely criticized when it was discovered that he lied to reporters at a press conference when he told them he had been fully “immunized” against the COVID-19 virus. The truth that he had never received a vaccination was only revealed after he became infected with COVID and was forced to go into NFL quarantine protocols.

Rather than apologizing for lying to reporters and his failure to follow mandated COVID-19 safety protocols, Rodgers first tried to explain that when he said he was immunized he meant he had taken some (ineffective) home treatment and he didn’t actually say that he was vaccinated. He inferred that the reporters were to blame because they assumed immunized meant vaccinated.

When that explanation was roundly ridiculed, Rogers tried again by issuing a statement saying that some people might have felt misled by his comments and that he takes full responsibility for the misleading comments.

Notice in this example of a fake apology Rogers never says he is sorry for putting people at risk and he never says he regrets what he did. He apologizes only to those who “felt misled,” as if it was just their feeling, and not his own actions, that were to blame. The reality is that people felt misled because Rodgers misled them.

Rodgers elaborated further, explaining that he believed strongly in body autonomy and that he wasn’t up-front with people because he didn’t want to acquiesce to a “woke culture” or a “crazed group of individuals” who harass those who choose not to get vaccinated. With this explanation, Rodgers again shifts the blame for his wrongdoing. It is not his fault that he lied and exposed others to potential risk, – it is the fault of a group of crazy people and the toxic culture.

After this explanation was also criticized, Aaron Rodgers just refused to talk anymore about the subject. This was probably his wisest decision since bad apologies that blame the victims usually make things worse than saying nothing at all.

Looking in someone’s eyes and offering a sincere apology is not easy. Many people, like Aaron Rodgers, attempt to get by with with fake apologies which seek to avoid responsibility by making excuses, shifting blame, downplaying what was done, invalidating the hurt person, or trying to move on prematurely.

By contrast, Psychologists say that authentic apologies have most or all of the following elements:

• It is freely offered without conditions or minimizing of what was done
• It conveys that the person apologizing understands and cares about the hurt person’s experience and feelings
• It conveys remorse
• It offers a commitment to avoid repeating the hurtful behavior
• It offers to make amends or provide restitution if appropriate

During my lifetime I have given more than my share of ineffective apologies, but it is a life skill that I’m still working to improve because it is impossible for any of us to go through life without hurting someone. As Bob Dylan once sang: “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it; you can hurt someone and not even know it“. We are all human and in the daily course of our existence, no matter how hard we try, there are going to be moments ahead when we are guilty of hurting people. During those moments of our life, we should try, like Alex Cora, to put aside our egos and summon the humility and dignity that is required to repair the damaged relationship and make it stronger.

A good apology is like an offering or a gift that has a supernatural power to heal. The Catholic faith believes that admitting to our faults and seeking reconciliation with God and our neighbors is so important that they have established it as one of the Church’s seven sacred sacraments. The practice of Confession and forgiveness are referred to as a healing sacrament, one in which a spiritual power is believed to be transmitted through channels of divine grace.

During this season of thanks giving and gift giving, may you too come to experience the holy and redemptive power of the Sacrament of Sorry that is just waiting for all of us who seek it out sincerely.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing

Humans have reached a point in their evolution where they can use technology to manufacture artificial climate silos in their homes, cars, and workplaces that insulate them from the effects of uncomfortable weather conditions. Even on the field of play, athletes labor under precisely controlled environmental conditions designed to prevent their performances from being disrupted by wild card weather elements.

This capability to create our own ideal environment is a relatively new phenomenon. It was only 250 years ago when the first efficient wood stoves were invented and only 100 years ago in the 1920’s when cars started to be mass produced. My mother who is 93 grew up in a house that had no indoor plumbing or home heating (except for the kitchen stove). The first new car I bought in 1982 did not come with air conditioning.

Back then, weather conditions were a big deal because you couldn’t avoid them. It was not really possible to separate life’s activities from the daily whims of Mother Nature. By necessity, people were exposed to the elements every day and had to learn to adjust their lives according to the ever-changing weather conditions.

They never knew what surprise weather conditions they would have to face when they woke up and would have been astonished at the advances in the meteorological sciences which gives us the capability to predict future weather events.

Today, we take it for granted that we can get accurate weekly, daily and hourly weather forecasts for any location in the world; but the value of this foresight is diminished by the fact that most people don’t even bother to check weather forecasts any more because our technology can overcome the weather. The outside weather now has very little impact on our life.

I was not sheltered from the weather when I was growing up. I had a paper route that required me to get up before sunrise to deliver newspapers to the homes in my neighborhood. Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall under hot, cold, rain or snowy conditions I delivered those papers. I walked to school on the other side of town in all kinds of weather conditions. I camped out with my friends in their backyards, at the city playground, and at the town cemetery. I spent many hours out in nature fishing, hiking and trapping with my father and brothers.

It is a shame, I think, that most people try to avoid having any direct exposure to the elements. I think the avoidance of what many people refer to as “bad weather” has taken some of the fun, excitement and wonder out of living. Some of the most memorable moments in my life have occurred when I stepped outside to embrace the elements head on.

Moments such as:

• Laughing while running with my children through the puddles on my street in my bare feet and shorts during a rain storm that broke up a prolonged heat wave.
• Paddling down a frosty river in an aluminum canoe during a cold and windy November afternoon to help my older brother check his trapline – my hands and feet numb from the 10 below zero wind chill.
• Walking home from a card game at a friend’s house during the great Blizzard of 1978 and losing my sense of direction in the whiteout conditions.
• Riding around with my Dad in a DPW snow plow, cleaning up the streets of the city after a big snow storm.
• Fly Fishing in the middle of a rain storm, catching one trout after another, only stopping when a bolt of lightning suddenly came down out of the sky and struck a tree on the other side of the river, setting it on fire.
• Walking home from my job late at night in the middle of a light snow flurry and being mesmerized by the big snowflakes doing a dance as they floated slowly down illuminated by the parking lot flood lights.
• Listening to the rain fall on the roof of my tent while camping – the repetitive sounds of the rain drops lulling me to sleep.
• Playing soccer with my colleagues after work during the steaming dog days of summer and drenching ourselves with water (and cold beer) to cool down.
• Standing in the face of gale force winds at the top of Mount Monadnock while doing some Fall hiking – the temperature 50 degrees cooler at the top than it was at the base of the mountain.

Sure, I was wet and cold or uncomfortable from the sun, heat and wind during many of these moments; but that is what made the moments even more memorable to me. We become so used to our creature comforts and living within such a narrow range of climate conditions, that it becomes remarkable to us when we choose to step outside and expose our bodies and our senses to something new and different.

I’m glad that I was taught not to fear bad weather, otherwise I never would have gathered first hand experience of the fury and majesty of our remarkable planet. I am in agreement with Alfred Wainwright who once wrote “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”.

Wainwright was an author, illustrator and naturist who devised the popular Coast to Coast walk in England.  A shy and unhappy kid, Alfred hated to be inside. To escape, he began walking up to 20 miles at a time; and creating detailed maps and drawings of his local area and all the places he visited in England.

Wainwright believed that the precious moments of life are rare and to be treasured:

“The precious moments of life are too rare…we should hoard them as a miser hoards his gold, and bring them to light and rejoice over them often. We should all of us have a treasury of happy memories to sustain us …to be stars shining through the darkness.”

He also believed that direct exposure to nature in all its forms was one of the the surest pathways to create happy memories:

“Oh, how can I put into words the joys of a walk over country such as this; the scenes that delight the eyes, the blessed peace of mind, the sheer exuberance which fills your soul as you tread the firm turf? This is something to be lived, not read about. On these breezy heights, a transformation is wondrously wrought within you. Your thoughts are simple, in tune with your surroundings; the complicated problems you brought with you from the town are smoothed away. Up here, you are near to your Creator; you are conscious of the infinite; you gain new perspectives; thoughts run in new strange channels; there are stirrings in your soul which are quite beyond the power of my pen to describe. Something happens to you in the silent places which never could in the towns, and it is a good thing to sit awhile in a quiet spot and meditate. The hills have a power to soothe and heal which is their very own. No man ever sat alone on the top of a hill and planned a murder or a robbery, and no man ever came down from the hills without feeling in some way refreshed, and the better for his experience.”

Alfred Wainwright

So if you want to create new perspectives and feel a powerful stirring in your soul, I suggest you take Mr. Wainwright’s advice and find yourself some suitable clothing that allows you to get out and experience the weather in all its forms. Be one of the people who feels the rain and not one of the crowd who just gets wet!

Keep On the Sunny Side

It seems like everyone I talk to believes that 2020 was a terrible year. It’s easy to understand why given the COVID-19 pandemic, the global recession, numerous episodes of racial injustice, refugees fleeing their homes, continued global warming, and to top it off, a bitter election year battle for the soul of the America.

Every day we are assaulted with negative news about wars, shootings, protests, pollution, inequality, poverty and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These stories suggest that the world is in bad shape and many people living today are convinced that things here on earth have never been worse.

Despite all the depressing news coverage, people ought to be told that the world has actually never been better than it is right now. As hard as it is for us to believe – humans, as a species, are doing a lot better than we ever have.

That is the conclusion that Harvard professor and acclaimed science writer Steven Pinker comes to in his 2018 Ted Talk and in his book Enlightenment Now. Pinker argues that the world is not that bad. In fact, he says when you look at all of the objective data, our world is in the best shape it’s ever been and humanity is improving every day. He concludes that now is the best time in the history of the world to be alive.

We know that people did not live well in the distant past, regardless of how much money they had. For the vast majority of human history — if you were lucky enough to survive childbirth, life really was nasty, brutish and short. It was lived at the edge of starvation, and to modern eyes it looks unpleasant, boring and sometimes terrifying.

Pinker uses numerous categories as a yardstick to measure the variety of ways that the world is better for humans now compared to the past:

We’re all Living Longer

The average life expectancy of people today compared to the past clearly shows that humanity is flourishing. Just 250 years ago, one-third of children in the world’s richest countries did not live to see their fifth birthday. Today, even in the world’s poorest countries, more than 94% of children survive past their fifth birthday.

The life expectancy of a person born in England in the year 1558 was 22 years old! It slowly increased over the next few hundred years but it wasn’t until 1907 that the average life expectancy reached 50.

Today the average worldwide life expectancy is 70 years old and in developed countries it is over 80. There is nowhere on Earth where life expectancy is less than 50.

The advancements we’ve made globally in the last 100 years, even in our poorest, most war-torn countries, are incredible. The life expectancy in Somalia today is higher than the highest life-expectancy of any country in the world 100 years ago. In this respect even the poorest of third world countries is better off today than the richest, most powerful countries were in the early 20th century.

It is hard for those of us living today to imagine living during a time when so many people died so young. But all you have to do is walk around an old cemetery of people who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries to get an idea of how commonplace it is to encounter the gravestones of infants and children who died at a very young age; and how remarkable it is to encounter a gravestone of someone who lived past 80.

As an example, during a recent hike I came upon an old cemetery and was struck by the tragic family gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard. They had three daughters: Sally born in 1825, Silvia born in 1827 and Nancy born in 1834. All of them died young. Nancy in 1836 at the age of 2, Silvia in 1845 at the age of 18 and Sally in 1846 at the age of 21. What heartache their parents must have suffered.

Family Gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard

We’re Healthier Now

A big factor behind the gradual increase of human longevity has been incremental advancements made by the medical field over time. The discovery of antibiotics, vaccines, targeted medicines and proven disease treatment protocols – along with the increasing availability of clean tap water – have kept us alive and made our lives less miserable.

Our increasing knowledge of the human machine and how to keep it healthy has directly led to more people adopting healthy lifestyle regimens (diet, exercise and sleep) that when followed prevent or delay the onset of aging related diseases.

Thanks to the discovery of antibiotics like penicillin, developing an infection does not have to mean death or the amputation of a body part; and thanks to vaccines, virulent contagious diseases like Smallpox (which was responsible for the deaths of more than 300 million people in the 20th century) no longer terrorize the earth.

We’re Safer Now

If you only paid attention to the news, you would probably think that crime is at an all-time high, when in actuality the American crime rate is at a 50 year low and roughly half of what it was in 1990. In the last thirty years alone, the homicide rate has dropped from 8.5 per 100,000 to 5.3 per 100,000.

There is also less conflict between countries today. Before the advent of modern democracies most of the world was run by fanatics and madmen like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan who would destroy entire cities and murder their populations over the slightest provocation.

During the 1950s, there were an average of six international wars per year going on, with approximately 250 people per million dying war-related deaths. In the last ten years the world has averaged only one war per year with less than 10 people per million dying per year. There has also been a reduction in the number of nuclear arms from more than 60,000 in 1988 to 10,325 in 2017.

There are still far too many conflicts in the world, but as hard as it might be to believe, there are much less of them than there ever have been before.

And let’s not forget that a great Civil War was fought to eliminate the scourge of a robust slave trade that abducted millions of Africans, shipped them to foreign shores where they lived in bondage and were subjected to the atrocities of rape, beatings, family separations, lynchings, racial hatred and political disenfranchisement.

Other developments over the last 50 years years that have served to make us safer include:

• Labor laws ensuring greedy businesses do not exploit children or force workers to toil under unsafe operating conditions.
• Civil rights laws preventing discrimination against employees and job applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age.
• Department of Transportation agencies establishing codified safety standards for automobiles, highways, railroads, aircraft, boats and the safe transport of hazardous materials.
  • Because of our adherence to these safety standards over the last century we’ve become 96% less likely to die in a car accident, 88% less likely to be killed on the sidewalk, 99% less likely to die in a plane crash, 95% less likely to be killed on the job, and 89% less likely to die from a natural disaster.
• Environmental Protection regulations protecting the nation’s air, land and water from being polluted by the waste generated by the Industrial Revolution.

Prior to these environmental protections laws, the industrial waste generated by factories was allowed to be dumped directly into the environment poisoning the air, land, and water and sickening the people who came in contact with it. Thirty years ago in the US, there were 35 million tons of hazardous particulate matter in the air, today that has been reduced by 40% to 21 million tons.

As a young boy growing up in the 1970’s I remember there were rivers that were considered too polluted to fish because they were downstream from a paper mill or factory. Other rivers had no fish because they had been killed from the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide compounds that poured into the streams in the form of “Acid Rain”. Today, these rivers run clean and the fish thrive.

There is Less Poverty Now

Global poverty is one of the worst problems that the world faces. The poorest in the world today suffer with diminished health because they are often hungry, poorly educated and have no reliable access to electricity, plumbing or medical care.

For much of history, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as ‘extreme poverty’ today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease. Over the course of the last two centuries, one of the most remarkable achievements of humankind has been the reduction in the share of people that are living in extreme poverty.

Two hundred years ago 90% of the people in the world suffered from extreme poverty, today less than 10% do. As recently as 50 years ago, half of the people in the American South lived in extreme poverty and had no hope of improvement – but today no southern state has a poverty rate higher than 20%.

Cutting the global poverty rate in half since 1990 has translated into approximately one billion less starving, desperate people in the world today.

The trend continues to be positive due to globalization of the world’s economies and government social programs that provide aid to the needy. It is important however, for us living today to recognize how incredibly privileged we are to live at a time when, thanks to technological advancements, even the poorest citizens live in more comfort than the richest kings of yesterday.

We’re more Educated Now

When my mother was a young girl growing up in the 1930’s she was lucky to attend elementary school through the 7th grade. She was part of a farming family and her father thought it was more important for her and her seven siblings to stay home and help him run the farm.

That was the norm back when children were put to labor at an early age on the farm or in the factories. Educating children was not a priority or a requirement, so many children never participated in formal school training.

Before the 17th century, only 5% of Europeans could read or write. Today, more than 90% of the world’s population under the age of 25 can read and write. Literacy is at an all-time high and a more educated populace has had a direct effect on lowering the global poverty rate.

In addition, patriarchal dominated systems around the world are now being pressured to offer equal education opportunities for the women in their country that were denied in the past.

We’re more Productive Now

Constant advancements in science and technology have been the foundation underlying most of the reasons why humans are better today. Poverty, life-expectancy and quality of life are all better because science is being harnessed to make us more productive.

Take hunger as an example. Back in the 1970s, many people were concerned that the world would not have enough food to keep up with the growing population. That fear was portrayed in the old movie Soylent Green. Food shortages would have been a major problem indeed, had not science made remarkable advancements in the areas of agriculture and food-resource management which enabled the food industry to exponentially increase their crop yields.

People also have more free time today to devote to productive pursuits because new labor-saving gadgets have been invented that dramatically reduce the amount of time we spend doing housework. In the last 100 years, the average time spent doing housework has fallen from 60 hours a week to fewer than 15 hours a week! That gives modern humans an additional 45+ hours per week to spend pursuing productive activities, making it possible for women to leave home, join the workplace, and make positive contributions to society.

Finally, the advent of the world-wide Internet and global cellular communications has had a tremendous multiplying effect on society’s productivity. We take it for granted today that most everybody has a smart phone genie in their pocket that, within seconds, can connect them to anyone at any time, give them precise directions on how to navigate to any destination, play any song ever recorded or answer any question that they can think up.

None of this technology existed 20 years ago. Think about how amazing it is that you can find just about anything you want within seconds – a book, a movie, a new pair of boots. We get to live in the kind of world that used to be imagined only in science-fiction novels. My 92 year old mother, who we are training to use an iPad, stares at us in wide-eyed wonder when we show her what she can do with the device. She can attend her Church service, visit with her grandchildren and watch her soap opera all without leaving her chair!

Of course, constant communication and information overload also plays a part in explaining why everyone is so convinced that things in the world are so bad now. Everything is so immediate, the entire world laid out in real-time before us – and that can be scary and stressful.

But the information overload may actually help save us because it makes us look the world in the face and confront all the evil that has nowhere to hide anymore. We can’t pretend George Floyd wasn’t unjustly killed because we all watched him slowly murdered by the police on our TV screens and Twitter feeds. In a sense, the outrage, horror and disgust that gets generated by exposing these heinous events actually helps keep the world from spinning further out of control by bending the arc of the moral universe further toward justice.

Contemplating all the ways that the world is better for humans today compared to the past was a good exercise for me because, as my wife reminds me, I do have a tendency sometimes to focus on the negative (when I do this, my wife calls me Eeyore because my behavior reminds her of the gloomy sidekick character portrayed in the Winnie the Pooh children’s books).

You can always fool yourself into seeing a decline if you compare the constantly bleeding headlines of the present with the rose-tinted memories of the past.

Pinker concludes that while the world still has plenty of problems to solve, it’s healthier for us to look at the big picture and see the glass as half full. “We will never have a perfect world, but there’s no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing and if we think of issues like climate change and nuclear war as problems to be solved instead of apocalypses in waiting.”

I have a new appreciation for all the blessings that come with living in the present age, I feel grateful to be a beneficiary of all the progress the world has made, and I look toward the future with optimism, in the hope that it will be an even better world for my grandchildren.

So, I salute 2020 as the best year ever! Henceforth, whenever I feel my inner Eeyore rising, I will remember how good I have it and remind myself to always keep on the sunny side of life.

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life
There’s a bright and a sunny side, too
Though we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life

Lyrics to old Folk Spiritual “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” as sung by the Carter Family

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”

I recently completed watching the brilliant science fiction themed television series Black Mirror on Netflix. The episodes were chilling and had me wondering how society will manage to maintain its humanity and compassion in the face of ever-increasing advances in technology.

All of the Black Mirror episodes deal with life in the near future – showing us the potential impact and unintended consequences that new technologies could inflict on our society if they are misused. The series name “Black Mirror” is a reference to the ubiquitous black screen surfaces that stare back at us while we fixate on our smartphone, tablet, television and personal digital assistant devices.

Each episode in the series is independent of the others and can be viewed in any order, similar to the iconic Twilight Zone television series created by Rod Serling. Black Mirror episodes differ however in that they are longer, darker and more focused on contemporary themes related to unease about our modern world.

The show’s creator Charlie Brooker said he wanted Black Mirror to focus on the side effects of technology and highlight the areas between delight and discomfort where it resides. The show touches on important ideas – the false way we sometimes present ourselves online, our growing addiction to virtual lives and even a touching exploration of grief.

Below is a brief synopsis of each of the episodes in the series along with a list of the important issues they raise about how technology could be used in the future:

National Anthem – A beloved princess and a member of the British royal family is kidnapped and held hostage. Her freedom is guaranteed on one condition: The prime minister must have sex with a pig, live on national television.

This episode highlights the increasingly tenuous grasp governments have controlling the information they want to disseminate to the public because of the uncontrollable power of social media, viral videos and internet leaks. Other issues raised are rules for how to effectively deal with terrorists who target celebrities, how all political decisions are being driven using real time popularity polling data and the difficulty of being a responsible journalist in the age of instant communication.

Fifteen Million Merits – Set in a bleak future, where most of society must cycle on exercise bikes to power their surroundings and earn currency called “Merits” that can be used to buy food from vending machines or watch shows from giant television screens. The only way out of being a caged rat on an exercise wheel is to trade-in your merits to enter the talent game show “Hot Shots” (similar to X-Factor) where the winners can escape by choosing to become part of the national entertainment industrial complex – or the attractive ones can choose, under the influence of a drug called ‘compliance milk’, to become stars on one of the national porn channels.

This episode raises the potential danger of technology being used by governments and industries to enslave the people and highlights society’s trend toward glorifying the false and superficial at the expense of the real.

The Entire History of You – Shows a society where most people have computerized ‘grains’ implanted in their skulls recording everything they do – allowing them to play back their memories in front of their eyes or on a screen for all to see. We watch a marriage unravel as a husband forces his wife to play back scenes from her past.

This episode explores the effect body camera technology and memories uploaded to the cloud could have on relationships when it becomes impossible to keep secrets anymore.

Be Right Back – As a woman mourns the sudden death of her boyfriend in a car accident, she learns of a company employing artificial intelligence that can create a hauntingly accurate replica of him, first as a phone app, then as an actual body using synthetic flesh; his personality and likeness created from the output of all his social media communications, emails and everything he ever tweeted or instant messaged or filmed himself doing on the internet.

This episode exposes the limits of artificial intelligence in replacing the human spirit and raises the question about what should happen to our online ‘presence’ after we are gone.

White Bear –  As punishment for a horrific crime, a woman must relive the same nightmare every day (and go through a painful memory wiping process at the end of each day). She is forced to navigate a brutal, merciless world, filled with horrifying imagery, before an audience who pays to secretly watch her suffer.

This episode shows the tendency in society to dress up the humiliation and punishment of others in the name of entertainment and wonders if it is possible to sympathize with someone whose crime was unforgivable.

The Waldo Moment – The comedian behind a blue cartoon bear named Waldo comically interviews politicians and other authority figures – making fun of their hypocrisy and the corrupt political system. As a joke his producer decides to have Waldo run for election to become the town’s member of Parliament. The joke begins to take on unexpected proportions as Waldo’s popularity begins to gain traction with the public.

This episode comes close to reflecting the reality of recent elections across the world that feature cartoon-like anti-establishment candidates who try to win elections by appealing to disaffected voters using social media channels to spread populist messages that play to the fears of the populace and divide the voting public.

White Christmas – Three interconnected stories show a “communication facilitator” who applies psychological based technology in the not too distant future to help desperate men pickup girls, train newly created artificial intelligence slaves and manipulate criminals to confess guilt to crimes that they have committed.

This episode imagines the chilling ways technology could be used in the future against the cracks of human weakness and how such an uncaring world would destroy any possibility of mercy and peace for its citizens.

Nosedive – Paints a picture of a world where all people are judged by their social media rating. Society’s status and benefits accrue to the members that have the highest rating, transforming every encounter with others into an exercise in false playacting, as disclosing your true emotions could negatively affect your “score” – which all people can see instantly by wearing special contact lenses.

This episode warns about the danger of a society becoming overly obsessed with their social media ratings and how developing technology can drive humanity to indulge in its shallowest impulses. It is a little eerie as we can see China experimenting today with using social media ratings as a means to control and encourage good behavior of the people.

Playtest – We witness a video game company testing games using new technology which allows the program to have access to the user’s brain – as well as the deepest and darkest fears of their minds.

This episode shows how the arms race between video game manufacturers to develop ever more realistic and adrenaline producing products could have deadly consequences to those who become exposed to them.

Shut Up and Dance – A hacker who has compromising electronic evidence on  a group of guilt-ridden online users blackmails them into performing a series of increasingly dangerous crimes to avoid having their secrets exposed.

This episode exploits one of the most pervasive nightmares of the modern age: what if someone’s watching you at your most vulnerable? And what if they have it all on videotape?

San Junipero – The minds of the dead or near dying have an option to live alternative versions of their younger selves forever in a simulated reality of their choosing.

This episode shows the hopeful ways that technology could be used in a humane way to ease the passing of those nearing end of life – merciful palliative care designed for no greater goal than easing the suffering of others. But does that mean we would lose the value that comes from accepting that suffering is an essential part of existence?

Men Against Fire – When a future society determines that its soldiers on the front line have difficulty hunting and exterminating the enemy because they look too much like them, they invent new technology that when implanted into their soldiers makes the enemy appear as vile, horrific mutants called “roaches”.

This episode raises the concern about how technology could be misused over time to perfect state-sponsored murder, strip people deemed “undesirables” of their humanity and turn soldiers into remorseless killing machines.

Hated in the Nation – The collapse of the bee colonies forces the government to create hundreds of thousands of mechanical bee drones whose purpose is to help pollinate the country’s crops. Unknown to the populace, the military includes cameras in the bee drones so they can be used secretly to help the national security agencies spy on suspected criminals. A hacker manages to gain control of the bee army and turns them into killing machines that first target hated public figures – before revealing that the ultimate target is all the people spouting hate speech on the Internet and thinking they can hide behind online anonymity.

This episode shows one scenario where the technology that is designed to protect us instead turns against us and how the pressure of hate speech from anonymous online forums can have bad consequences.

Collectively these stories paint a grim picture of technology running amok and bringing out the worst in human nature. It’s a perspective that technology is a trap and is going to change us all for the worse. After all, we are the race that built the atomic bomb and Albert Einstein, the man whose genius helped to make it a reality, expressed his own concern when he wrote:

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”

But I do not see technology as the enemy. I spent my entire adult career in the high technology field, inventing technologies that manufacturers could use to test their circuit board electronics and ensure that they were defect free and reliable. I was on the front lines during the birth of the personal computer, the world wide web, cell phones and smart phones, cloud-based computing and self-driving vehicles. I have witnessed up close the positive impacts these technologies have had on our society.

Technology is not inherently evil, but just like anything else it can be misused and abused if we are not careful to regulate how it can be used in a way that protects people from getting hurt. Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance captured this sentiment when he wrote:

“What’s wrong with technology is that it’s not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things. Humans are needed to put the brakes on it”.

So, I encourage you all to watch the Black Mirror shows and then go out and do you own part to help put the brakes on technology use that crosses the line.