What we really need for Christmas
What we really need for Christmas
Holidays are a time of family friends and....high rates of suicide. At some point during the holiday season, someone comes out with the statistic that suicides are up around this time of year because many people feel an acute sense of loneliness or detachment holidays. They see others celebrating with their loved ones and feel left out. The fact that while we may be more aware of it at the moment, our culture has produced an interesting paradox. With cell phones and Internet we have the ability to communicate with each other like never before yet never before have we, as individuals, been so isolated and detached from one another. Families no longer stay close and even the ones that live in the same house barely see one another. We find it difficult to see friends or even our significant other more than a few times a month because everyone is so busy. We may text or even call but a few moments on the phone are no substitute for a few hours in the living room.
In my previous entry I discussed our vanishing privacy. The paradox of our culture is that although very little we do is outside the public domain, we are more isolated than ever. We are rarely alone yet so many people feel an acute loneliness. We have a lot of acquaintances yet few, if any, friends. I referenced George Orwell’s 1984 in my last entry and will do so here because it is relevant for Winston felt this paradox as well. In London he was rarely alone nor did the party desire for people to be alone. After all, everyone is part of the collective. Yet he had no friends and the system made is nearly impossible to have any for there was no one he could trust. In fact, the party discouraged intimate relationships because it viewed them as competition. We have a similar situation today. We once relied on family, community and charity for needs that were beyond our ability to meet as individuals. When a society consists of assertive and capable individuals who meet their own needs and voluntary associations to meet any others, there is little need for the state. The objective of the state, then, is to replace self reliance with reliance on the state and voluntary associations with party and government bureaucracy. The state needs to make the individual helpless and dependant and replace the voluntary associations of community and family with itself. It is the state that provides sustenance, not the individual. It is the state that provides direction and meaning, not religion and it’s attendant associations. It is the state that provides education and guidance for the next generation, not the family. All our meaningful interactions are with the state and not with each other. The dislocation people felt during the industrial revolution provided the perfect opportunity for the state to step in and it was precisely in the mid to late nineteenth century when collectivism and totalitarianism first became valued ideals.
Today, paradoxically, the technological and communication revolution have made total isolation possible. Certainly a cell phone with unlimited minutes is a teen-ager’s dream but by making us accessible 24/7 and thinking we need to be so has helped eliminate our privacy and isolated us from one another. If ninety percent of communication is non verbal, by relying on cell phones we have eliminated true, intimate contact. Take it a step further to e-mail and we have eliminated real contact entirely. We no longer communicate through the intimacy that results from proximity but through digital reproductions of ourselves. The world comes to us through a satellite feed and too often we interact with it as though it’s reality. Is it any wonder that we can sit in our sterile, artificial environments and interact with a world that only comes at us through the manipulated filter of digital reproduction every waking moment and yet feel empty and alone? Deep within every human heart is the desire for meaning and intimacy. If we allow ourselves to be isolated and emasculated by our own technology the state will find it very easy to step in and provide those things for us.
What is missing is this. Within each of us is a spark of the Divine and there are two major components of that spark-creativity and relationship. In order for us to feel fulfilled we need to create and accomplish and we need to cultivate intimate relationships. Most of us work in jobs that are not creative in the least and then we come home and immerse ourselves in the artificial realty sent to us by Hollywood. We all want to do meaningful things yet our culture begs us to work hard to have things and then substitutes television so we can live vicariously through the staged adventures reproduced on our expensive plasma screens. We have little time to go and see our friends and families so we send digital reproductions of ourselves and those that sell us the means to send these reproductions try to convince us that they are worthy substitutes for face to face intimacy. We need more houses with guest rooms and people willing to make the time to use them. We need fewer things and more living. We need to downsize our lifestyle to raise our standard of living. As the new year approaches, perhaps this is a resolution we can make. It may not be great for the economy but in the long run it will be wonderful for us.
Holidays are a time of family friends and....high rates of suicide. At some point during the holiday season, someone comes out with the statistic that suicides are up around this time of year because many people feel an acute sense of loneliness or detachment holidays. They see others celebrating with their loved ones and feel left out. The fact that while we may be more aware of it at the moment, our culture has produced an interesting paradox. With cell phones and Internet we have the ability to communicate with each other like never before yet never before have we, as individuals, been so isolated and detached from one another. Families no longer stay close and even the ones that live in the same house barely see one another. We find it difficult to see friends or even our significant other more than a few times a month because everyone is so busy. We may text or even call but a few moments on the phone are no substitute for a few hours in the living room.
In my previous entry I discussed our vanishing privacy. The paradox of our culture is that although very little we do is outside the public domain, we are more isolated than ever. We are rarely alone yet so many people feel an acute loneliness. We have a lot of acquaintances yet few, if any, friends. I referenced George Orwell’s 1984 in my last entry and will do so here because it is relevant for Winston felt this paradox as well. In London he was rarely alone nor did the party desire for people to be alone. After all, everyone is part of the collective. Yet he had no friends and the system made is nearly impossible to have any for there was no one he could trust. In fact, the party discouraged intimate relationships because it viewed them as competition. We have a similar situation today. We once relied on family, community and charity for needs that were beyond our ability to meet as individuals. When a society consists of assertive and capable individuals who meet their own needs and voluntary associations to meet any others, there is little need for the state. The objective of the state, then, is to replace self reliance with reliance on the state and voluntary associations with party and government bureaucracy. The state needs to make the individual helpless and dependant and replace the voluntary associations of community and family with itself. It is the state that provides sustenance, not the individual. It is the state that provides direction and meaning, not religion and it’s attendant associations. It is the state that provides education and guidance for the next generation, not the family. All our meaningful interactions are with the state and not with each other. The dislocation people felt during the industrial revolution provided the perfect opportunity for the state to step in and it was precisely in the mid to late nineteenth century when collectivism and totalitarianism first became valued ideals.
Today, paradoxically, the technological and communication revolution have made total isolation possible. Certainly a cell phone with unlimited minutes is a teen-ager’s dream but by making us accessible 24/7 and thinking we need to be so has helped eliminate our privacy and isolated us from one another. If ninety percent of communication is non verbal, by relying on cell phones we have eliminated true, intimate contact. Take it a step further to e-mail and we have eliminated real contact entirely. We no longer communicate through the intimacy that results from proximity but through digital reproductions of ourselves. The world comes to us through a satellite feed and too often we interact with it as though it’s reality. Is it any wonder that we can sit in our sterile, artificial environments and interact with a world that only comes at us through the manipulated filter of digital reproduction every waking moment and yet feel empty and alone? Deep within every human heart is the desire for meaning and intimacy. If we allow ourselves to be isolated and emasculated by our own technology the state will find it very easy to step in and provide those things for us.
What is missing is this. Within each of us is a spark of the Divine and there are two major components of that spark-creativity and relationship. In order for us to feel fulfilled we need to create and accomplish and we need to cultivate intimate relationships. Most of us work in jobs that are not creative in the least and then we come home and immerse ourselves in the artificial realty sent to us by Hollywood. We all want to do meaningful things yet our culture begs us to work hard to have things and then substitutes television so we can live vicariously through the staged adventures reproduced on our expensive plasma screens. We have little time to go and see our friends and families so we send digital reproductions of ourselves and those that sell us the means to send these reproductions try to convince us that they are worthy substitutes for face to face intimacy. We need more houses with guest rooms and people willing to make the time to use them. We need fewer things and more living. We need to downsize our lifestyle to raise our standard of living. As the new year approaches, perhaps this is a resolution we can make. It may not be great for the economy but in the long run it will be wonderful for us.
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