The Cult of Limitlessness

“I need – no – I have the right to be unlimited.” 

Those are the closing words in the newest TV commercial for the Sprint iPhone 5.  Sure, it’s typical commercial hyperbole.  Still, I find it jarring that we have entered an age when such breathtaking hubris is acceptable, even as an effective advertising slogan.

Sprint is referring to the ability to download and upload an unlimited amount of data on the smart-phone that goes everywhere with you.  That our electronic devices are becoming extensions of our bodies, and in the process adversely affecting mental health, is disturbing enough.  But the sheer volume of words and images now instantly available to us has also created an expectation of unlimited access to everything we are the least bit interested in.  We become addicted to the unlimited flow of information.  Then we believe we have a need for it.  And, as the Sprint commercial illustrates well, the perceived need becomes a perceived right.  You don’t have to be a Luddite to believe, as I do, that the belief in one’s right to be unlimited is unhealthy.

In fact, a person claiming this right would normally be diagnosed as suffering a schizophrenic episode. 

It’s not just mentally unhealthy, though.  “The right to be unlimited” concerns more than access to information.  It cannot be mere coincidence that the craving for unlimited data is concurrent with the myth of unlimited natural resources available for our unlimited consumption.  The cult of limitlessness is simply not sustainable, either on this planet or in our own minds.  For this reason, it is also completely incompatible with the teaching of every major spiritual tradition. 

Obviously, the monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have no room for the claim that human beings are unlimited in any way.  We all live within the fixed boundaries of creation under the reign of a Creator God.  Any attempt to violate those boundaries and claim power that does not belong to us is at best self-delusion, and at worst idolatry.  But even Eastern traditions that do not worship one all-embracing Creator God would regard the claim of limitlessness as a dangerous illusion that can only lead to destructive behavior.  True liberation, according to those traditions, is possible only by giving up all attachments.  The cult of limitlessness actually asserts the “right” to attach ourselves to whatever we desire.

“I have the right to be unlimited.”  You might protest that nobody actually believes this Madison Avenue propaganda.  I’m not so sure.  Isn’t more money spent on advertising campaigns than on public education because people do believe them?  In the Sprint commercial, as the spoken narration crescendos to this statement, three words fade into an all-yellow background: “I am unlimited.”  For now, anyway, it’s too offensive to say, “I am God.”  But what’s the difference?  And how much longer will it be until commercial hyperbole includes the bald claim that technology allows humans to become divine?  When we start to believe that, we have arrogated to ourselves the power to bring about our own apocalypse.

The digital world is amazing.  Rightly used, we can make global connections and accomplish great things that previously seemed impossible.  On the other hand, this same technology has the capacity to distort our self-image, leading us to discard millennia-worth of accumulated spiritual wisdom, and with it, the resources necessary for sustainable human community.

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson