The Seeds of Our Own Destruction

There are moments when society colludes to make you feel old.  It happens in an amalgamation of statements, occurrences and overt acts.  Those that commit the injustice really don’t even know that they are doing it, it just happens.  I am sure when I was younger I did the same.  

The Atlantic magazine recently published a story about a couple attempting to live without WiFi, internet and cellular telephones.  They permitted the use of a land line.   The New York Times published an article about the anomaly of a quiet zone in West Virginia where because of proximity to a radio telescope, there is no cellular service and the consequential impact this has on life. I seem to recall some TV show where people had to live as they did in the 1800s.  Honestly I don’t understand this concept, if they wanted that they should have just gone and filmed the Amish.  Incidentally I don’t think the show lasted that long.  I suppose it was just not that exciting.

The point is that from the perspective of someone my age or older, this was how we once lived our lives.  There was nothing unique or inconvenient about this.  It was just how it was.  Whatever life is we adjust to it but I think there is a solid argument to be made that the result is often a mixed bag.  While these tools are essential in the view of most living today there is a different perspective that wonders if perhaps they are laying the grounds for our own destruction.  

How wonderful it once was to tell someone you would call them when you could get to a phone.  There was no expectation beyond that.  To not live with a device that you are constantly checking in on that becomes a center point for our lives.  There is no argument that we live in a far more convenient world but in exchange for this we have sacrificed time and interpersonal relationships.  There are times when even I can’t remember how things were.  I wonder how in the hell we coordinated things.  We thought it was an amazing revelation when the answering machine was invented for our fixed telephones.  How wonderful to be able to leave your thought or question for someone else to hear.  Of course for me, an introvert, it also meant that I tended to call people when I knew they would not be at home and able to answer.  

When you phoned your girlfriend to chat often she would not answer.  This then entailed humbly requesting the ability to speak with her likely with a father who suspected and interrogated you, a mother who was both protective and jealous of you or sibling that really didn’t give a damn.  

When I made a date with a girl for the first time there was no Tinder swipe involved.  No text message swap.   It was in person and came with the possibility of in person rejection.  Today texts fly back and forth in an almost anonymous fashion.  We are as real as computer generated letters or emojis allow us to be.

When we left our jobs there was no expectation that the work would continue.  There was no computer to send us emails or phones to demand our interaction.  Today our connection to our work never ends.  Bosses often expect our availability 24 hours a day.  

There was a beautiful simplicity in watching the same channels that everyone else watched.  Seeing the same news every night that would start our conversations the next day.  This made political discussions so much more simple because we all started from the same set of facts.  In the entertainment world we shared the same experiences and watched the same shows that colored our lives.  

For a person my age or older, our access to the technology of today can arguably be incredibly dangerous.  We often don’t know how to use it or value it in our lives.  We make mistakes and misinterpretations of others that can often be damaging or destructive to interpersonal relationships.  We fail to comprehend the sources of information that is widely spread choosing to interpret as we once did when it came from select trusted sources.  In many ways it is like a toddler holding a gun.  For the toddler it is something that the big people use.  For everyone else it is terrifying.  The intelligent among us have chosen to step back and minimize the use.  To disconnect from social networking as much as possible and look for ways to reintegrate ourselves into the fragments of society that remain.

I do recognize there are benefits of this information available world now.  Things are possible that were incredibly difficult in the early portion of my life.  The answer to a question is at my fingertips.  Research once involved hours in a library scanning microfiche, a kind of plastic film,  for periodicals and records or requesting books through inter library loan programs.  These days in a moment I can find images of things I might never see in the course of my normal life.  In an instant I can communicate with friends on the other side of the world.  Still along with that instant gratification the sacrifice is time, meaning and thought.  We once sat and composed letters and then waited weeks or months for an answer if one ever came.  When I was a student in Europe I seldom spoke with my parents as the cost of an international call was half my monthly food budget.  All this said, when the letter came or the call was received it meant so much more.  A letter meant someone had given you their time.  They had committed their mind to you for a period of time as they thought and composed questions, feelings and emotions.  It is disturbing to think that this is likely becoming a lost art.  Perhaps one day people will turn the process into a fixation or hobby to boast about.  Like buying a record player and listening to an LP.  How quaint and pure.  

It is technology and the way that we live our lives that dates us.  It is what makes our life unique in the linear compendium of time.  It is the window of time and experience that we as humans witnessed.  Each era longs for the perception and simplicity of the last.  When I was a child it was the seeming perfection of the post war period.  The 50’s when life was perfect and America was at its zenith.  Today those alive will age and look back and likely long for this time.    A time when technology took over our lives and became the vehicle that we road through life.  

On the other hand, is it possible we have jumped the shark and in our inventive nature developed a world where convenience and anonymity in truth have laid the seeds for our own destruction. Ironically as I ponder this, this is my 200th post to my blog.  A name and format of communication that once upon a time, never existed.