Commuters and cellmongers repent!

I hate the way Sunday has become official morality day.

I say this not in criticism of organized religion or morality in general, but because I don't like trickery, and I don't like the way Sundays have become the official day for media to play preacher and promote morality -- especially the newly manufactured morality which appeals to the non-churchgoers with unacknowledged spiritual needs.

In today's Inquirer, "our" car culture and our cell phone culture are been subjected to good sound scoldings. So, after the poor sinful readers spend their weekdays indulging their decadent lifestyles by commuting to work in their greenhouse-gas-emitting cars and facilitating their needless and wasteful lives by using culturally-destructive cell phones, they need to be shamed on Sunday.

If it weren't so predictable and so tired, this would call for a long essay.

But I have to go out and commit sins -- of the automotive and telephonic variety -- so I don't have time for a long essay.

Forget about atonement. As it is, I never had time to atone for my more pleasurable sins.

Atoning for driving and communicating is impossible.

(In a way, I don't envy today's preachers, so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on them. It is easier to induce guilt over pleasurable things like recreational sex and drugs. Scolding people who have to do things like commute and communicate simply to make a living must be an uphill battle, as well as a thankless task.)