“If the
only way one makes a contribution to the community’s good is through
specialized application of a professional skill, one gets lonely. The company
of family and friends remains important. While mobile professionals in the
United States do indeed engage themselves in complicated networks of intimate
relationships, these networks are often not tied to a particular place. One may
maintain close friendships with a host of people scattered all across the
country.”
In the
above quote from Bellah’s Habits of the Heart, Bellah’s seen
reflecting on the mobile lifestyle of humans today in which small town
lifestyle enclaves have transformed into finding virtue and acceptance by
obtaining different values and styles of life as friends. When taking Bellah’s
perspective into consideration and reflecting upon Facebook, one can see
directly the social changes of our modern world via technology, directly
influencing the world in which we live. The
art of solitude and relationship building amongst the common social good has
unswervingly altered as a result of Facebook and other modern technological
networks and devices from Twitter to the iphone.
Sherry
Turkle’s, “Connected but Alone” video portrays how living a Facebook life, or a life behind a
screen, has changed the social mentalities and tendencies amongst many human
beings today as seen within the clip below.
As
human beings, she pointed out one of the key things we need consists of a
feeling of a sense of control over where we focus our attention. But often
times one has a hard time with this, because he or she only wants to pay
attention to the things that interest them and that they can maintain. This often
times affects one’s ability to communicate with another person face to face.
Facebook allows the average human being to surf the web, search for a new
friend they danced with at a party last night, and then proceed to discover
where that person is from, what their religion preference is, find out whether
or not they are single, and to potentially even obtain their phone number if he
or she has it listed and readily available before they even have a physical
conversation. Why talk to one of the people below face to face, when you could be a click away from knowing anything you might have ever needed to discover about them?
Today,
the art of relationship building has been especially lost as people do not know
how to have a direct conversation with one another. Our capacity for self-reflection
is being destroyed as today humans would rather text versus talk to each other
face to face. Why has the world become so lonely and afraid of intimacy with
each other?
Humans
use mobile devices to send a text or an inbox message because they feel the
need to have complete control over what they can say, versus the possibility of
saying something they might regret or can’t take back when someone is there in
the flesh, face to face right in front of them. Humans seek the attention of people
to be there to listen to them or show empathy towards them as they lose
confidence believing they are alone when no one is paying attention to their
life.
Surfing
the web and perusing the Facebooks of others allows one to experience the lives
of their so called friends, who are seen to provide the empathy and support fort
he or she is looking for as a whole. These
items of technology like Facebook and other social networks or even the iPhone,
destruct the art of solitude which helps a person reflect upon who they are as an
individual, disallowing them to learn from his or her mistakes, and above all to
know how to think for themselves. Facebook connects one to the outside world
virtually, leading one to believe they are physically never alone. It takes
away one’s anxiety,
and causes them to believe they are connected with those around them without
even leaving the room.
However this does not solve the walls and
barriers human beings are creating all around themselves on Facebook and in
daily life. By continually sharing how we feel and what our constant thoughts
are we grow to need to have the empathy and attention of others around us to
prove that we are indeed not alone. This is awful because today, humans are
finding virtue and acceptance via online comments and conversations they have
with another person. Satisfaction is coming from having a talk with someone over
the internet in short remarks that eventually accumulate into a rather large
chat versus from an actual face to face conversation of speaking to one
another. Ten minutes after a Facebook chat, two people could be in the same
room and fail to speak one word to each other as the social, physical barrier
has not yet been broken between them although they might know each other’s life
story and interests by the glance over of a page.
I find
it rather ridiculous and pathetic that a child these days may grow up without
the ability to have the necessary communication and personable skills needed to
talk to a human being face to face because they rely on having the professional
skills and overarching control of technology to utilize the ability to hide
behind a screen with editing possibility to make sure each conversation states
exactly what they want to say; versus, potentially saying something that they
could be judged upon or that could be taken the wrong way. As humans if we hide
behind a screen or take value in a conversation not face to face with another
person, we lose the possibility of permanent happiness with the physical real
life relationship with another human; rather we take comfort in the short term
satisfaction granted from text messages and conversations online that merely
show another person might be thinking about you or checked out your Facebook
page.
Although life feelings and emotions have the potential to be
controlled from behind a computer screen, these social networks will never
build the personal satisfaction that a real life physical relationship could
from the small town lifestyle enclaves humans used to have in the past.
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