I’m typing this sentence while sitting in a train carriage, waiting to leave the station.
The passengers around me have all deliberately positioned themselves apart from one another, separated as if by some invisible repulsive force. Nobody is talking. Everybody is on their phones. Even young children, chatting and laughing excitedly along the platform, quickly fall silent upon boarding.
I’m a big fan of the idea that long-term success is built on smaller, shorter-term victories. We become stronger by lifting weights consistently, happier by acting with gratitude consistently, and more disciplined by making the hard choice consistently. Unfortunately, implicit in this idea is the fact that the inverse also applies: when we consistently fail at something, we move toward negative outcomes with increasing speed.
The more time I spend in heavily populated areas, the more I begin to realise just how little people are actually talking to each other. Places that were previously characterised by talking and laughter now seem eerily silent, punctuated by the occasional cough or phone notification. As I sit in this train carriage, I wonder about the implications of this silence on us all, both in terms of individuals and society as a whole.
Filling the Gaps (and Making New Ones)
When we think back to many of the most horrific recorded occurrences throughout history, we see that many of them started with the limiting of the exchange of information throughout the population. Think of the burning of books in Nazi Germany, or the control of education in the Chilean Military Dictatorship; these were not accidents.
When a population can easily be told what to think, they can indirectly be told how to live. Some people may resist such direction, but this typically only sparks conflict within the population itself. As with many things in life, this becomes a distraction from the root cause of our issues: in the midst of their arguing, very few people stop to think about why they’re arguing. There is nothing less dangerous than a man who devotes all his effort to an entirely meaningless pursuit, and yet here we stand.
The point I’m trying to make is that—the more disconnected we become from one another (both physically and figuratively)—the more opportunity there is for something or someone to fill these social gaps with whatever information they choose. At a very logical level, this quickly becomes worrying.
Finger on the Volts
In the modern age, it’s easy to be misinformed about what those around you are thinking and doing. People publish the parts of their lives online that meet their standards, but—oftentimes—it seems they have no idea why their standards came to be. It’s as if technology has distilled social interaction into a hyperfiltrate of unknown composition; without exact knowledge of the filter, it’s almost impossible to correctly interpret the things we’re exposed to.
If we continue down this path of limited face-to-face interaction, then we increase our reliance on digital avenues of information exchange. This not only makes us much more predictable and controllable, but can dampen many of the relationships that would otherwise enrich our lives.
It’s easy to feel frustrated by the inconveniences of face-to-face interaction, and there is certainly a case to be made for the benefits of digital communication. There comes a time, however, when we must all realise that—the further down the path of digitisation we go—the less likely we are to ever return.
Never stop thinking.
- Will