Disconnected

While travelling on public transport, especially on the train, it has always struck me how people use technology to dislocate themselves from their surrounds. On every trip I take, I am sure to see at least one person plugged into their ipod (or, in former years, a discman or walkman), even if they're doing something else, like reading a book. I recently saw a young man on the train both plugged into a walkman and playing a portable computer game.

I have often wondered about this phenomenon, about the apparent unwillingness of people to undertake a journey without somehow removing themselves from their environment. Sure, technology isn't the only way we can do this - immersing yourself in a book or a magazine or newspaper is just as effective a method as any - but there seems to me to be something particularly pervasive about the need for distance through technology. Reading a book can be just a way of passing the time on what might be an otherwise dull journey spent doing nothing more than staring listlessly out the window or over the shoulder of the person sitting opposite you. But there seems to be something about technology that enables us to not only escape our locale, but also ourselves.

This is a phenomenon I've observed in other contexts, as well. People frequently talk about getting bored easily, about needing to do something in order to feel as though their lives are being spent in meaningful activity. People speak of the need to constantly occupy themselves, as though being unoccupied might imply some sort of non-existence, some refutation to the proposition that they actually are. Descartes asserted: I think, therefore I am. But it seems to me that many people would argue: I do, I act, I behave, I experience, therefore I am.

Why should this be? At the very basic level, plugging into the ipod while sitting in a train carriage is just a particular means of getting through a tedious chore. Likewise, there are some people who are simply constitutionally disposed toward activity, whether whittling a stick or building a house. But what about the people who listen to their ipods while reading or playing a computer game? Is this just a portable analogue of listening to some pleasant background music while curled up on the couch with a good book? Or is there some deeper issue?

Take, for example, the man I saw on my recent trip to the wonderful Yarran Dheran sanctuary. There he was, striding along the walking path on a beautiful Autumn morning, surrounded by picturesque scenery - and yet he was plugged into headphones, from which I could hear tinny music blaring. Was this just a means through which he could add an extra dimension to his experience of walking through the bushland - or was he actually incapable of having that experience on its own terms? Did he need some form of technological accompaniment to mediate the sensory input of his surrounds? Or was there something much deeper, more profound at work?

I have become convinced that there is indeed something quite powerful at work in this phenomenon of self-removal. At one level, the need to be pre-occupied arises, I think, from the related fears of death and meaninglessness. The desire to be doing something meaningful - ie: the desire to avoid doing nothing - is a symptom of our inability to come to terms with our mortality. We are conscious that we only have a finite amount of time in which we will exist, and we greatly desire to ensure that it is not "wasted". We don't necessarily want to be famous or to make our mark - although, in our celebrity-driven society, in which fame (or notoriety) are increasingly articulated as the the only measures of worth, this is becoming ever more the case. Rather, we want to know that our life has not been "idle", that we have somehow been "productive" or "useful". Because we don't know what - if anything - lies beyond death, we want others to say of us that we did not "waste" our time.

Which feeds into the issue of meaninglessness. It seems to me that unless someone has "something to show" for their life, be it the conventional markers of "success" such as house, family, career or business, or more abstract indicators such as fame, reputation, status and so forth, we consider them to have lead a largely meaningless life. A person has to "make something of themselves" or "do something" with their life in order to be regarded (by others) as having "made a contribution" to the sum total of human meaningfulness. Not that I'm suggesting that complete and total idleness is a virtue; rather, that what we do is frequently driven by our fears, and these fears shape the criteria by which we assess meaning and value.

But beyond all these, I think there is a very simple malaise at work in the human psyche. The desire to dislocate ourselves from our environment, to use technology to escape from our surrounds, is, in fact, an attempt to escape from ourselves. It seems to me that so often we plug into our ipods and computers and televisions because we can't bear the thought of being alone inside our own minds for even the shortest period of time. Because if we were, we would have to think; and if we started thinking, we might start dwelling on our fears; and if we allow our fears to stir, all the insecurities and anxieties about our lives burst to the forefront of our consciousness. In other words, the desire to disconnect is the desire to avoid the fears by which we are so often driven.

I think the antidote is not necessarily to switch off all the gadgets - although I do think that perhaps less time spent plugged in, and more time spent in the dual processes of contemplation and engagement, would be both more useful and healthier, existentially speaking. More importantly, however, we need to reassess the values by which we create meaning and interpret value. To begin, we need not be afraid of thought, because it is only through thought that we can confront our anxieties. Deep reflection may be frightening, but simply running away from our fears doesn't solve the problem; our fears remain, for all that we may ignore them or pretend they don't exist. But confronting our fears also involves challenging the basis of their existence; do they actually articulate a recurring issue in our lives, or are we just allowing ourselves to be swept up in a tide of neurosis and insecurity? If the former, how do we address that issue; if the latter, how do we create a new, more healthy basis for being?

Quite often the problem is not that we have to confront our demons, but that doing so requires that we take action in response. All too often, we grow comfortable with our fears; they become like a kind of callous on the soul, familiar in their irritation. Equally as often, we allow others to tell us what we should think, or where the answers to our particular problems lie; a fact that has enabled the hugely destructive self-help industry to generate enormous amounts of money peddling easy answers and simplistic platitudes to the existentially destitute. In the former, we stay locked within the bounds of our despair; in the latter, we substitute one addiction for another.

So it's not easy, nor is it simply a matter of recognising the symptoms and responding. It is a life-long process, an ongoing experience of lived reality. But it is a reality in which we must engage, and upon which we must reflect and meditate. Nor is there a single, hard and fast way; often, the path we have to tread is solitary and difficult. But it seems to me that this is what life truly lived is all about: embracing ambiguity, engaging with uncertainty, and walking in the darkness with openness, humility, generosity and humour. For me, my twin guides are Stoic moral philosophy and Christian faith; for others, the guides will be completely different. What matters is not which particular road we walk, but whether we are prepared to undertake the journey; anything else is simply denial, and ultimately destructive.

Talk to you soon,

BB

All men desire to be elevated; but all men fail to understand that they have within themselves that which is already elevated. (Mencius)