Opinion/Editorial
THE GREAT WITHDRAWAL FROM HUMANITY
With the modern age has come a host of new devices to usher in more speed of interaction, more intensity and volume of communication, more blanketing information, and more doubt about whether these ‘advances’ have any meaning at all to our human condition. There is a social response to all of this electronic inventiveness and genius. And it is a general response of quiet but increasing mental and physical withdrawal. These new tools and devices are being bought, sold, and used like never before, in a seemingly endless upward spiral of advancing civilization. In truth, this massive response in purchasing and usage has turned chimerical and deceptive. People are using these devices; cell phones, smart phones, laptops, tablets, pads, and electronic books more and more while allowing these same devices less participation in their mythological construct of being. Young people everywhere in every culture are so tied into the electronic construct of their own existence that much of what was once considered as necessary social interaction and response to such interaction is being denied them. Denied by their own nearly hopeless conduct.
Who could argue that the cell phone has changed going to the airport to pick someone up from a frightening task of hide and seek to a smooth transitional coming together of comfortable circumstance? Who can question that computers have made it much easier to tell fact from fiction and truths from lies in normal discourse. Google is not just a search engine anymore; it holds a respectable place in our lexicon and vocabulary for its qualities as a verb. But, in looking at the overall totality of effects, who can argue that these devices, one and all, have caused us to grow closer while adding much more distance between us? Has everyone begun to note that people communicate much colder and harsher in emails and texts than they do on the phone or in person?
The result of this new effect is a quiet, nearly invisible, withdrawal in mental participation, and physical contact. We use these devices more and more, even to include text abbreviations into our language and definitive changes to our social rules, laws, and mores. But people are watching television less than ever before, although adding more and better television sets to their homes and lives. People are buying the very latest smart phones at record paces but using the ‘smart’ features less and less. The birth rate is consequently falling. Without the warmth of human contact between the sexes the urge to reproduce is diminished. The birth rates of all western countries are falling perilously and continuously.
This nearly invisible social change, this very stealthy withdrawal, has not been noticed much by academics, scholars or writers who might normally jump right on board in predicting consequences for everyone because of the rather obvious results of this movement. The likely reason for that is because the movement is only noticeable from its effects. Along with a psychological withdrawal from these advances has come withdrawal from the sciences (study and results), the arts (appreciation and performance), reading, writing and attendance at cultural events and more. Along with the leftover reactions to the pandemic this movement is pushing the American culture, unknowingly, ever deeper into reality television, faked sporting events, and a newfound appreciation for bizarre public and private behavior. Even the war in Ukraine is faked by gamers and hackers of all kinds, showing effects of weapons that don’t exist.
The American Space program has all but disappeared or gone retrospective trying to recreate what was accomplished way back in the sixties. The population as a whole simply doesn’t care. The speed of light may have been found to be incorrect and change all physics as we know it, but the public remains unaware and uncaring. Symphonies and playhouses around the nation are failing and there is no outcry or rallying of support. Museum attendance is lower than before WWII and yet the country’s population has doubled. Music is not played in homes anymore. The examples of our oversupply and forced entry into a world of electronic identity are nearly endless once it becomes apparent as to what has happened and.
The most unfortunate aspect of thinking about and considering what has happened? The fact that it appears to be a totally unstoppable force. It may not be possible to withdraw from our withdrawal from life as we once knew it and our involuntary entry into a life we have little or almost no clue about.
