Can't Connect With You

I can't make you love me if you don't.

~Bonnie Raitt

Can I be real with you all for a second?  Thanks.

I hear all the time that all of us have, either suddenly or slowly over time, lost the ability to "connect" properly with each other.  People no longer have "meaningful relationships" and they no longer "care about each other".

I'm not necessarily going to disagree.  But I have questions:

First, what exactly is a "meaningful relationship"?  Whenever I've asked people about that, they usually come back with, "Well, you know, it's like sharing personal stuff with people who are close to you."

What do you mean by personal stuff?

"Well, I don't know.  But you know… personal stuff."

Like the Facebook friend of mine who posted a message to her friends with a video of her kid taking first steps?

"Well, that's, like, not what I meant."

How about a discussion with someone about the finer points of their personally held faith or beliefs posted on an article about something relevant to them?

"As an example, yes!  People just debating online about stuff is so impersonal!"

So, if I'm drinking a coffee with someone in a coffee shop or in my living room, and my kid is taking their first steps or we're having a discussion about faith, does that count?

"Well, yeah!"

But Facebook doesn't?

"Right!"

Even if it's about the exact same "personal stuff"?

"Exactly!"

Why?

"Because it's so impersonal through social media!"

And that's how we talk. 

I've also heard the arguments about people sitting right beside each other in a restaurant "ignoring each other" on their phones, texting or on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, What's App, Reddit, or whatever Bazinga Bazoonga social network they happen to use.  Put the phones away and talk to each other, people!

Okaaaaaaaay...

How's the weather outside?

Have you seen the new 2018 Chevy Zigger Zagger with heated leather seats, all-wheel-drive, automatic parallel parking, thirty-seven cupholders for no damn reason, built-in back scratcher, a gourmet chef, and a foot masseuse in the glove box?

Hey, I saw the game of hopscotch on the sports network last night, the Florida Patters beat the Wyoming Pitters 2,345,231 to 1,512,213.  It was an awesome game!

Let me submit two ideas.  First, "real connections" have always been few and far between.  A small, close circle of friends or family develops a bond of trust over time.  The masses we interact with through social media haven't replaced those close bonds.

Second, I don't think the people griping about this problem have a clue what exactly a "real connection" is.  They only know what it isn't.  Hence the griping about what they see, and no encouragement for what should be.  That's why it isn't "do this"; it's "stop doing that".

But why do connections seem so much more distant and meaningless?  In the absence of full-blown agoraphobia, most people still have that small circle that they trust and feel close to, so what is it?

I have two ideas, and neither one of them takes the easy way out of blaming social media.

First, the world is smaller.  A lot smaller.  Fifty years ago, the home telephone was only just starting to become a universal part of everyone's home (and there were those who would make the same complaint about these things preventing meaningful relationships).  Thus our opportunity for "surface interactions" is significantly higher, since our outer circle of friends isn't the 25 people we went to high school with; it's the 175 people we've added on social media.  But these "shallow connections" don't mean that the "real connections" don't exist.

Second, we have been trained by society to care less about others, but anyone who blames social media for that gets a free kick in the face.  You don't lose the skills of empathy and compassion by having a Facebook account.

Now when I blame "society", that's pretty vague.  Let me break it down for you:

In the last ten years, there's been an increasing amount of public demand for compassion based on the wrong things.  In bygone times, the only reason why you were worthy of the human rights you have is because you were – well – human.  Today, we still verbally acknowledge that, of course, but with government sponsorship we've shifted the focus away from your human rights in favor of granting you rights based on what group of humans you fall into.  It was well-intentioned, because typically, discrimination is done against certain groups of people.

Unfortunately, this has led to a gazillion protests over the last couple of decades. It was so much simpler to ask for compassion because we're human.  Now, instead, we want compassion because we're black, or female, or LGBTQ, or Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish, or some other faith, and the list goes on and on.

You see, demands for rights based on what group we're in instead of based on our simple humanity lead first of all to people who don't necessarily fit into the right group, and therefore are passed over for special treatment, but more to the main point, it leads to the general population simply burning out on the whole compassion thing.

Oh, you feel like a victim of micro-aggression because you are part of an underrepresented group of people identified by your fascination with the color purple?  Sorry, I ran out of shits to give quite some time ago.  No, I will not call it indigo and I don't care if you're offended by that.  It's purple.  Fuck off.

Now you take all this and accelerate it on a massive scale because of how quickly information spreads (yes, on social media), and we care less – a lot less – about the people around us.

The solution, then, is not to cut back on social media, because despite all the railing we hear against it, that is not – and never has been – the cause of the problem.

We need to give a damn again.  But in order to give a damn again, we need to stop whining.  If you're discriminated against, I don't care why.  That's not OK.  The reason it's not OK is because you, like me, are a human being.  Even if the discrimination is explicitly racist or homophobic, I still don't care why, because it's not relevant why.

You see?  Now I'm showing compassion.  Your "Black Lives Matter" movement only makes me sigh and crack open my phone to look at a cat being startled by a cucumber, because there are so many groups you expect me to defend now that I'm just burnt out.  I don't care anymore.  I can't.

So, I get accused of having no meaningful connections.  I don't agree, but I will concede that my interactions with my outer circle have become perhaps less about quality and more about quantity.  But I never did care much for my outer circle.  That's why they were my outer circle.  So I'm not worried about that.

As for society as a whole (which, by the way, is where I believe the complaint about meaningful connections actually is lodged – though the complainers don't know that), I agree that we care less, and don't meaningfully interact with our community.  But again: that's not because I have a smartphone in my pocket, nor because I have a smartphone in front of my face.  If you want to get up in face and tell me that I don't love my wife or my kids because I use social media, then may I respectfully request that you ingest a handful of thumbtacks.