“Attention
is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” – Simone Weil
Sunday is one of my favourite days of the week; it is
totally acceptable to spend a good proportion of your day in bed, new
PostSecret secrets are up and I can guilt-free indulge in geeky reading of all
my favourite websites. The New York Times Sunday Review Opinion page is one of
those. To my delight this week one of my favourite authors had contributed his
thoughts about human connections in the digital age.
Jonathan Safran Foer is an American author best known
for his novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (now
a major motion picture with Tom Hanks, in case you
were interested). He is somewhat critically acclaimed, attracting both
passionate praise and criticism among contemporary critics and academics. If
you haven’t read anything by him I would strongly you encourage to hit Amazon
or your nearest bookshop and get yourself one of his books ASAP. Caution though
– you might lose a day of your life finding yourself unable to put the book
down. I read all 600 pages of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in
a day and Eating
Animals turned me into a vegetarian for a very long time!
In How Not to Be Alone Foer talks about how
technology creates distance, despite having been invented to helps us remain
close to our loved ones despite distance.
“Most
of our communication technologies began as a diminished substitute for an
impossible activity. We couldn’t always see one another face to face, so the
telephone made it possible to keep in touch at a distance. One is not always at
home, so the answering machine made a kind of interaction possible without the
person being near his phone.”
Living quite far away from my family and being in a
long-distance relationship means that I fully embrace every aspect of modern
day communications; iMessage, WhatsApp, FaceTime and Skype play a vital part in
keeping in touch with my loved ones. A Sunday without a quick Skype with the
family and the boy (if not home that weekend) are as much part of my Sunday
routine as PostSecret and Monday Lunch prep.
Given the circumstances, I would be keen to argue that
technology can create closeness where there is distance. It means I can talk to
my family and boyfriend no matter where I am in the world – given that I have Wi-Fi
signal or a good enough 3G connection! I cherish that security and while it
does not mean that I am not excited about spending time with them in person,
talking to them face to face, getting a hug. But it feels safe to know that
they are just a phone call or a text message away shall I need them. There are
still moments I wish I could just have them there as a real life person rather
than as a virtual entity, and there are still moments when living far away from
some of the people you love the most can make you feel lonely.
Using technology to stay close to the people we love is
something that has become so much the norm that anyone who doesn’t use the full
spectrum might get an odd look from others. But what about strangers?
“It
is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do
either than to retreat into the scrolling names of one’s contact list, or
whatever one’s favourite iDistraction happens to be. Technology celebrates
connectedness, but encourages retreat. The phone didn’t make me avoid the human
connection, but it did make ignoring her easier in that moment, and more
likely, by comfortably encouraging me to forget my choice to do so,” writes
Foer.
While we used to hide behind newspapers and magazines,
you often see people hiding behind their phones these days. How many times have
you found yourself staring at your phone, playing Candy Crush or checking
Facebook simply because you didn’t want to acknowledge the world around you?
Maybe ignored someone crying on public transport because it is easier to look
away than to ask what is wrong? Broken up with someone via text message because
it was easier than talking to them in person?
“THE
problem with accepting – with preferring – diminished substitutes,” aka texts, answering machines, emails, so
Foer, “is that over time, we too, become
diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to
feeling little.”
If we are becoming used to feeling little, then what
does that mean for our human relationships and interactions overall? Only time
will tell. His essay is a great ode to appreciating and valuing the attention and love we extend to the people around us; both to those we call our friends, family, lovers and those who are strangers.
In the mean time, read Foer’s complete essay below or here and let him tell you the story in his
own words. He is much better at that than I could ever be.
And while you do that I will re-read my favourite
paragraph from his essay not only because it is beautifully worded but also
because it is an amazing reminder to channel the things that make us human:
love, compassion, pain. Without all those we become empty beings, incapable of
emotions that allow us to make sense of the world around us.
“We
live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory
more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of
others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be
messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we
give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die. “
How Not to Be Alone
By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
A
COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn’s
Fort Greene neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at
the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside,
scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on
the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, “I know, I know,
I know” over and over.
What did she know? Had
she done something wrong? Was she being comforted? And then she said, “Mama, I
know,” and the tears came harder.
What was her mother
telling her? Never to stay out all night again? That everybody fails? Is it
possible that no one was on the other end of the call, and that the girl was
merely rehearsing a difficult conversation?
“Mama, I know,” she said,
and hung up, placing her phone on her lap.
I was faced with a
choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the
boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be
inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some
straightforward logistical way. An affluent neighborhood at the beginning of
the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and
not someone else. There was a lot of human computing to be done.
It is harder to intervene
than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to retreat
into the scrolling names of one’s contact list, or whatever one’s favorite
iDistraction happens to be. Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages
retreat. The phone didn’t make me avoid the human connection, but it did make
ignoring her easier in that moment, and more likely, by comfortably encouraging
me to forget my choice to do so. My daily use of technological communication
has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The flow of
water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too,
by the flow of our habits.
Psychologists who study
empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous
responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the
psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we
become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the
less likely and able we are to care.
Everyone wants his
parent’s, or friend’s, or partner’s undivided attention — even if many of us,
especially children, are getting used to far less. Simone Weil wrote,
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” By this definition,
our relationships to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves, are
becoming increasingly miserly.
Most of our communication
technologies began as diminished substitutes for an impossible activity. We
couldn’t always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible
to keep in touch at a distance. One is not always home, so the answering
machine made a kind of interaction possible without the person being near his
phone. Online communication originated as a substitute for telephonic
communication, which was considered, for whatever reasons, too burdensome or
inconvenient. And then texting, which facilitated yet faster, and more mobile,
messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements upon
face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished,
substitutes for it.
But then a funny thing
happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It’s easier to make a
phone call than to schlep to see someone in person. Leaving a message on
someone’s machine is easier than having a phone conversation — you can say what
you need to say without a response; hard news is easier to leave; it’s easier
to check in without becoming entangled. So we began calling when we knew no one
would pick up.
Shooting off an e-mail is
easier, still, because one can hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and
of course there’s no chance of accidentally catching someone. And texting is
even easier, as the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and
another shell is offered to hide in. Each step “forward” has made it easier,
just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey
information rather than humanity.
THE problem with
accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we,
too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little
become used to feeling little.
With each generation, it
becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. My grandparents
hoped I would have a better life than they did: free of war and hunger,
comfortably situated in a place that felt like home. But what futures would I
dismiss out of hand for my grandchildren? That their clothes will be fabricated
every morning on 3-D printers? That they will communicate without speaking or
moving?
Only those with no
imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they
will live forever. It’s possible that many reading these words will never die.
Let’s assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world
with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence
allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our
answers.
We often use technology
to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it,
or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the
closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.
It’s not an either/or — being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more
foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology” — but a question of balance
that our lives hang upon.
Most of the time, most
people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something
that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep
empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.
There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of
them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional
computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing
of the only animal who risks “getting it wrong” and whose dreams provide
shelters and vaccines and words to crying strangers.
We live in a world made
up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of
love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the
point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and
almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get
in exchange for having to die.
Jonathan
Safran Foer is a novelist who delivered the 2013 commencement address at
Middlebury College, from which this essay is adapted.