Sad, isn’t it? Americans grow more and more disengaged at a time when our world needs more and more engagement.
Sure, we have Facebook, Twitter, twaddle, trivia and other technologies designed to create the illusion of conversation, but the time approaches when one can easily make it through the day without face-to-face contact with another human being.
You can order food from home. You can go to school from home. You can earn a college degree from home. You can visit the library from home. You can vote from home. You can go to the movies from home. You can do your Christmas shopping and delivery from home. You can Skype to Grandma’s kitchen from home. You can work from home. You can probably go to church from home. You can have a doctor look at your itch from home. (No doubt you soon will be able to have a robot come by to perform your appendectomy at home.) You can find a spouse from home. You can buy clothes — and everything else — from home, even if all you really need is a pair of pajamas.
You can go through the day without seeing, reading or hearing anyone or anything that does not look like you, act like you or think like you.
When I enter the elevator, no one says hello. They’re all staring at their electronic binkies. Smartphones are a dumb excuse to avoid social contact.
It sounds convenient and tempting. But it’s also incredibly selfish, incredibly anti-human and incredibly destructive of one’s neighborhood, city, state and nation.
We are becoming isolated introverts when the nation desperately needs involved extroverts. Isolation is reflected in rising suicide rates, increasing addiction and growing violence.
Aristotle said: “Man is by nature a social animal. … Society is something that precedes the individual.”
He meant that we need social interaction before we can become truly human. We need to interact with one another if society is to succeed. And society needs citizens who talk among themselves, not on purpose via phone or internet, but casually, accidentally, without planning. We need to stand in line at the voting booth. We need to say hello to strangers at the grocery store. We need to listen to co-workers at lunch. We need verbal exchanges with fellow students — those who come from all points on the bell curve, intellectually, socially, politically and spiritually. We need to confront in person those who agree with us and those who disagree with us — not to debate them but to learn from them.
It isn’t enough to exchange pleasantries with like-minded individuals. That’s what gets us racism, sexism and all those other destructive “isms.” That’s what got us an antisocial president and his ilk. It is much more difficult to hate, insult or ridicule an entire group when one has regular contact with someone from within that group. Personal comfort zones are not compatible with social development.
One of the more important things I have learned during this long journey is that no one succeeds in life on his or her own. We need friends — many of them — along the way. (And it doesn’t hurt to have a few enemies, too.) A wise observer once said that when someone tells you he or she is self-made, he or she will lie about other things, too.
Modern technology is marvelous — even miraculous — but it won’t change reality. It won’t change the eternal truth offered by Aristotle. Use technology, by all means, but don’t let technology use you. And don’t let your technological comfort zone insulate you from the vast panorama of daily interactions with others who might add vital dimensions to your experience of living.
Don Gale.
Don Gale thanks the many friends, family members and enemies who make life meaningful.