Where have we gone wrong, as a society?
In a world where we can board a plane in one city, and travel across the world in a day, where we can cheaply and effectively communicate globally, by video, we are becoming less and less connected. We are losing our humanity and our societal bonds that have defined us for generations. We are becoming technological hermits, faces glued to smart phones and computer screens while life moves around us. We travel in the bubble of our headphones, and wander blindly past one another, seeing each other as simple barriers to movement.
There are still places in the world where you can strike up a conversation with a stranger over a shared experience, but more and more people feel ill at ease when someone randomly starts speaking to them. We are growing more paranoid and isolated in our self-imposed exiles from society. And the disconnection of our world is starting to have its effects.
Our children bully others to the point of self-destructive depression. They seek attention in all the wrong methods. They use one another like toys, disregarding the damage to the feelings and psyche of the object of the game. They revel in the dramatic, the traumatic, and the violent. And it is not due to desensitization or media saturation. No, this goes much deeper.
Instead, the reasons why are simple: We have forgotten we are the family of man. We have disregarded humanity. We have stopped taking responsibility for our actions and blaming anything and everything outside of ourselves. We have, ourselves, become disconnected from the society we have built.We view society through a protective film, trying to block ourselves from feeling something about what we see. There are too many issues. Too many problems. What can we do? It's just how the world is, right?
I am all for progress. I know the Internet represents the single greatest achievement in the last hundred years. Yes, it has been built on the backs of several others, but to accumulate the sum of the world's knowledge, allow for instant communication globally, collaboration with anyone, anywhere. It has the power for great social change. But it has also allowed the spread of ideals that should have no place in our modern society.
Of course, this started before the Internet. The Internet simply let it spread faster. No, the start of this madness was to embrace mediocrity. To promote equal treatment for all. No winner, no losers. No child held back a grade for failure. No small disorder without a name beyond bad behavior.
We have let slip that there needs to be leaders and followers, winners and losers, consequences and personal responsibility. We need to realize that the fragile skin of protection, that shell we wrap around ourselves when we slip in our earbuds, live through our PCs and phones, is actually slowly suffocating our ability to do what we were meant to.
We are not islands. We are not individuals existing alone in the universe. We are a great communal mass that needs to seek out contact once more. We need to reach out across the gulfs we are creating. We need to do what we seem to fear most.
Reconnect.
