2022
June
13
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 13, 2022
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

You’ve probably seen a family seated at a restaurant, phones out and eyes down. You’ve been in creeping traffic and caught a driver glancing up from a handheld just in time to mash the brakes. Maybe you’ve checked the time on a bedside phone and started scrolling.

The cost of such actions to human relationships is concerning enough to have inspired a wave of digital detox helpers – from imposed restraints such as stash boxes and Wi-Fi blockers to apps or device settings that regularly shut off connectivity and make you deliberately log back in.

The smartphone’s grip has even prompted nostalgia for pay phones, those “stationary monotaskers.” 

What would the Amish do? That might sound like a rhetorical setup with an easy answer: Let your tech toys die, then bury them in a drawer like so many obsidian bricks.

But within Amish culture are levels of acceptance of purpose-serving tech tools, reports Lindsay Ems in a Wired magazine story adapted from a book just published by MIT Press. It’s a deeply considered embrace, with deference to community customs.

“Getting to know … Amish businessmen showed me that even the most advanced and savvy adopters of new digital technologies believed strongly that they should use technologies in ways that reflected Amish values and lifestyle choices,” writes Dr. Ems, a Butler University professor. 

In this approach, using a smartphone demands attention to how the behavior affects others, her story suggests. Wielding a cellphone should be a judicious act; “it is considered impolite to do so ostentatiously.” Fundamentally, it’s about respect, about modesty and self-control.

“Informal social constraints seem more powerful in regulating behavior and protecting cultural autonomy,” Dr. Ems writes, “than the church’s communally ratified rules.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon on May 5, 2022, after a news report indicated U.S. intelligence was involved in the killing of Russian generals by Ukrainian forces. “We do not provide intelligence on the location of senior [Russian] military leaders on the battlefield, or participate in the targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military,” Mr. Kirby said.

What’s the responsible way to use military intelligence in aid of an ally? The sharing of U.S.-gathered secrets has already helped Ukraine in important ways, but officials also have reasons to be cautious.

How can the United Nations, and others, engage with China on human rights while maintaining their integrity? A recent trip by U.N. High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet underscores the challenges in pushing for change.

Graphic

For Ukrainian economy, westward tilt has grown since 2005 revolution

The backdrop for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is partly economic: A people long tethered to Russia have been increasingly looking toward the European Union for business and trade opportunities.

SOURCE:

Harvard Growth Lab, Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Institute for the Study of War, American Enterprise Institute, 2001 Ukraine Census

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Laurent Belsie and Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Commentary

Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters/File
The coffin of Rep. John Lewis arrives at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama, July 25, 2020. The building has played a pivotal role in civil rights activism, even functioning as a makeshift hospital where Mr. Lewis and others were cared for after being attacked during a voting rights march in 1965.

For our contributor, this nearly 115-year-old church in Selma, Alabama, is far more than a historical marker. It’s an ongoing call for justice and a promise of progress.

Taylor Luck
Mufleh prepares a garland at the back of his roadside flower van in Al Dayer, southern Saudi Arabia, May 25, 2022. Regarding local menswear, the vendor says, "You got to have the flowers."

Do beauty and bravery go together? As values they’re not opposite, though perhaps incongruous for some. But in the remote southwest corner of Saudi Arabia, their pairing makes perfect sense.


The Monitor's View

AP
Leader of the United Arab List Mansour Abbas speaks during a Knesset session in Jerusalem June 13, 2021.

In its historic role as a template for democracy for the Middle East, Israel celebrated a milestone Monday. Over the past year, it has been governed by a once-unimaginable constellation of parties. The eight-party partnership includes not only right- and left-wing Jewish parties but also the first Arab party to be an active member of a ruling coalition.

This melding of political identities for a greater cause – democracy as an equalizer in a diverse society – has not always been easy. Israeli politics are famously raucous. Threatened defections of a few of the coalition’s members almost brought it down. But by hitting the one-year mark, this political “experiment” now shows how a democracy can work.

“The point is to listen to each other, hear different perspectives and sometimes find compromises,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Agence France-Presse.

The coalition’s steadfast inclusion of the party known as the United Arab List – representing one-fifth of Israeli citizens who are Arab – has set a precedent in putting the value of equality into practice. An Israeli government is finally focused on accommodating the interests of its poorest and most neglected ethnic minority, one that has suffered discrimination in part for not being Jewish.

“The discourse now is very respectful and there is less talk and more action, with good intentions,” Dr. Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, told The Media Line news agency.

A more significant precedent is that Israel is demonstrating that a democracy can survive by finding a political center, one that provides both stability and a measure of results for many. For Israeli Arabs, two results have been fewer murders in their community over the past year and more government spending targeted at their local interests.

“Every country, let alone Israel, is formed from big contradictions: state vs religion, Judaism vs democracy, free market vs compassion, and security vs civil rights,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told The Jerusalem Post. “The business of the government is to balance those. This is why we need the center ... to rule and arrange everything for people to be able to live.”

For Israel, that center has meant the emergence of a shared civic identity between Arabs and Jews as well as among Jews. After a remarkable year of trying, the coalition has shown what is possible.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

When we start from the basis of God as our infinitely good creator, we’re better equipped to see inharmony and limitations replaced by healing and solutions.


A message of love

David Swanson/Reuters
Firefighters aim to control a new wildfire, the Fish Fire, in Duarte, California, June 12, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for beginning your week with us. Come back tomorrow for part two of our series on U.S. public education and democracy. We’ll look at what it means to be an American – as defined by the two different history curricula at the center of the culture wars.

More issues

2022
June
13
Monday

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