El rincon de Mamá

Our XXI Century refutes anything that cannot be proved, or touched or measured… yet in the midst of this “I do not believe anything that can’t be seen or measured” we live with mobile phones, television, microwave ovens.. things that work with the invisible energy of waves that were only discovered and harnessed because people in the last century BELIEVED in them.

Just think… what triggered the Curie’s work in radioactivity?. What led to the radio? How can an unseen planet be discovered just because the orbit of the known one is not the expected one? What are expectations if not the tendrils of faith? Who imagined bouncing TV signals off satellites orbiting the earth? Who imagined man-made satellites circling the earth in the first place?

All of the new inventions and discoveries are the product of someone’s dream, intuition, or endeavor. The product of mathematical calculations, you might say, and you would be right. Yet, how can we strike off the initial spark, the conviction that led their work?

That initial spark is faith. Faith in its secular sense which is, of course, trust, confidence and hope. We live in a lay world. We have tried to erase all that seemed tinged by religion, belief; all that is meaningful in values, especially because this modern world of ours panics at the thought of being tainted by sects, religions and other groups that are not “progressive”.

However, no matter how progressive we are, the covenant of society is still trust, confidence: faith. We cannot function as a society without trust. We need to trust the bank, the utilities company, the baker, the butcher… and trust is faith.

We speak constantly of confidence, even of self-confidence. We speak of reliability, we speak of support… and all of these are facets of the same diamond: faith.

Like it or not, our civilization is based on faith. Faith and law, which is, in effect, the “hard copy” of faith. It is the written version of what keeps our world ticking and running. The rules by which we rule ourselves and the agreements which we reach and accept.

The law, my father said, was man’s greatest accomplishment. Law was what made the difference between a pack and a society. Law, equal for all, the same for everyone, and the same in every occasion. My father was a lawyer, but more than that, he believed in law and in the people who trusted the law, who had faith in the workings of society as set down in the laws.

How does this affect our lay society…the one that refuses to even mention faith? It makes us orphans, bereft of the guidance law, convention and tradition might contribute. How are we to function without faith, without trust, without confidence? Is this the crisis of our time… that of seeking what faith contributes while denying faith itself? We are wishing, willing to abhor customs and traditions, beliefs and conventions, but we have nothing with which to replace them. What will fill that void?

It was Napoleon who said “for every priest I cast out, I need to employ ten policemen”. Is this why we are living in a world that seeks to rule and regulate everything, from the contents of a jar of sandwich spread to the use of the Internet? Are we seeking to substitute faith and trust by rules and regulations – which are another facet of the same faith?

Our society of creature comforts earned in hours of work, has not brought solace to the worst blight: loneliness. In this day of collective work (“team” is a more politically correct term), why do we feel alone? What kinks our minds make “social networks”, dating organizations, and chats necessary to seek company? Why can’t we relate to the people next door? Often, we don’t even know the people next door although we chat amicably with someone living in Japan.

Our work is often sedentary and solitary although performed in rooms full of people. When the workday is over should we not be presumably tired and in need of rest and solitude? What makes us dash out to the gym or ikebana class? Why do we take up ceramics or basket weaving? And why are we seeking new activities, and nearly always collective ones?

Today most of us work doing just a fraction almost anything, be it an assembly line, engineering drawings, or even booking flights or hotel accommodations. We work in teams, these are not “company”. They merely define the group involved on a single finished product. The members of the team are easily replaceable in their functions, which accentuates the bereft feeling of the human component, no matter how well worded the company policy might be.

These teams might be physically separated, and the work carried on in different locations, even in different cities or countries, and I think this only makes us feel lonelier since we lack the sense of accomplishment, the pride of seeing our finished work.

There is a clear difference between a friend and the person next to you in the trenches. Workmates, war buddies or fellow girl scouts need not be kindred spirits. When people are thrown together, either because the company seated them next to each other, or a flash flood caught them in the same ravine, find a manner to work together. Some even end up being best friends, others will be forever someone they shared an experience with, and nothing more.

Perhaps we seek other activities because we need a time to be with the people we choose. Unless we are of the lucky few working on what would otherwise be a hobby, we might just want to talk about something that is not work with someone we, and not the company, choose. Still, for this, we join groups and become part of another cell.

What is missing in our lives, in our society, when we do not listen to who is sitting next to us because we are calling someone in another town? What is missing, or what are we losing, in our lives when we are trying to race time arranging the future by phone while awaiting the train? Where are we when we walk down the street with our mind and attention on whatever is coming out of the phone? What compels us to take pictures practically of places we will not even see until we down-load them into our computer.

Have we lost the here and now? Is that what makes us forever walk the edge between the individual “I” and collective “we”? Is it all because we cannot decide, or have not the courage to make a stance and choose willingly and face the consequences of our choice? Is it because we don’t want to lose other opportunities and never seem to be able to let go of whatever we have in hand? Is it that we refuse to take the responsibility for our choices and our lives? Is this why we choose to live collectively while developing such concepts as “personal space”in order to insure we remain utterly alone?

We have walked into a trap of our own making. We live in a contradiction: a society of loners, and of unwilling and unhappy ones at that.