Why has individualism taken off so much in our culture? Especially in a time when I firmly believe we are more connected than ever. Perhaps as a way to escape that connection? I think it is good and healthy to have a positive view of the individual self: your body, soul, talents, weaknesses. But that needs to be balanced with the knowledge that your actions and decisions now have the ability to affect more people than even you dream of. And that is the thought I'm having.
1914. A hundred years ago. Phones, telegraph, snail mail. That's what you had, and the lag was incredible.
"Yes, I'll hold."
Home phones began to spring up in the late 1800s with service from the Bell Telephone Company. But they were not the commonplace things they are now. And their reach was still very limited. The idea of someone being immediately reachable through a personal phone in his or her back pocket was incredible.
About a hundred years ago the people in charge could use radios to talk in immediate ways, but the average person did not have the ability to communicate quickly with his or her loved one fighting in Germany.
With the advent of the internet, personal cell phones, cell phone towers, smart phones, and social media, all of a sudden we are able to have personal relationships and even daily interactions with people outside our town, and even across the globe.
Heck, humans are even capable of talking to each other in space, or communicating with our robots on an entirely other planet.
Curiosity, taking a selfie on Mars...
for you to see on your computer screen at home.
I'm not saying all this connection is necessarily always profitable. You can more easily come in contact with dangerous people, or morally ugly things. Sometimes ugly things are painful, but good for us to see and recognize--such as injustices happening to others in another country (or even our own).
I think the benefits of connection outweigh the negatives, though.
Luddites argue that relationships on social media cannot be real relationships because you aren't meeting face-to-face. But by that argument, the woman writing letters to her sweetheart in 1945 did not have a real relationship. Her relationship was in suspended animation until he returned (or didn't return).
By that argument, my husband and I dating "long distance" when I was in PA and he was in NM was not a real relationship.
There are difficult things about having a relationship over distance. . . but at least you can still have that relationship.
Case in point, when I was five and lived in CA I had a best friend.. Mostly I think our relationship consisted of both of our tiny brains being fully occupied with visions of unicorns all the time, and tiny, tearful arguments over whatever issues five year olds have to argue about. They were probably about to our various personal horse-related toy collections and a normal five year old's unwillingness to share them.
Well, if not for social media, I would never have really talked to that friend again. Instead, we found one another on social media and discovered our characters, having matured almost 10 years, were still compatible. Our relationship now has vastly improved over what it was since it now involves fewer tearful fights. Now we can share fun things with one another we find online, and because of this new connection we have we can share parts of our personal lives with one another--her pregnancy and a new baby, and my job with horses--you see we've still not quite gotten over that old obsession.
That relationship definitely enriches my life.
Because of technology,
I now know she would still appreciate this picture as much as I do.
These are all good things. Are they perfect? No.
But they are still good.
This brings me back to my original point--whether you think it mostly good, or mostly bad, we are all very closely connected right now. I haven't done much on this blog recently, so my traffic is low. But the country (other than the United states) that has been reading my blog the most, recently? Ukraine.
I've never been to Ukraine. I don't even know anybody from Ukraine.
I am friends with one person who lived in Ukraine for a year and sometimes follows me and my blog on social media. I have that aforementioned friend living in Russia who I know reads my blog and probably knows people from Ukraine. But that shows just how connected we are. I know somebody currently living here in Pittsburgh who once lived in Ukraine, and I know one person in Russia who might share something I've written with somebody he knows. And that is all it takes for me, not knowing anyone native to Ukraine, to have people in the Ukraine finding and reading my blog.
"Americans are so odd."
So with this idea that we are all closely connected, we need to get rid of the idea that our actions and decisions affect only us. It is selfish to believe that, and, quite plainly, incorrect.
Example? Somebody decided that not getting vaccinated for measles would only affect him or herself. That person's home base is normally Pittsburgh, apparently only a couple blocks from my home. Because of the incredible connections we now have, that person went to visit people in New York. And, because we are naturally drawn to people with similar life experiences, at least one of those people happened to also believe he or she didn't need to get vaccinated (or else they both had parents who believed this, and the individuals in question never bothered to remedy the issue) because it wouldn't affect anyone else. So guess what? the person from Pittsburgh came back from New York, with the measles, and then rode a public bus a few blocks from my house and exposed countless numbers of people to the measles. You know who rides public trasit? A lot of families with very young children. Pregnant women. People with compromised immune systems because of illness or medication. That's who. Now there is the possibility someone is going to have a miscarriage, someone will get sick, and someone else will die... because a couple people in two different parts of our country did not realize how very connected we all are.
Someone far away makes the decision to leave his wife. I know the wife. I am affected by his decision.
I feel sympathy for the wife, and then am taken by a spirit of fear that the same will happen to me. My husband, who did not give me any reason to fear, is perplexed by my anxiety and feels somehow guilty lest he's caused any of it. My husband feels pain because a person he does not know who lives thousands of miles away caused pain to another person my husband does not know. I am the only connection between the two.
This connection we all have can be the source of great good--healing friendships, new, healthy romantic relationships, comfort through finding others like ourselves with similar interests ("what?" says C.S. Lewis of the nature of friendship, "you too? I thought I was the only one!").
But it can also magnify evil, or spread disinformation and harm. We must be careful.
Ultimately it's up to us whether an online relationship is healthy or not. It's up to us to recognize our decisions do not affect only us.
We have to realize things we say to one person may end up reaching someone else entirely. A foolish decision one person makes might cause harm to a hundred others.
Technology is neutral; humans using it are not.
Both are powerful.
And because that was so heavy a post, and I can't stay heavy for long, here is a picture of a hedgehog with marshmallows on it:
