El rincon de Mamá

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 12:54 and is filed under Stray thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.