It’s not so difficult to see the benefits of technologies which serve direct goals in telecommunication and transportation. To go somewhere and talk to someone. When we lived in simpler times, living in the world meant navigating predictable forces of family, partnership, community, and ceremony.
Then came power. Peaceful villages burned, millions slaughtered. The old social values which were quite obvious, to keep with one’s lot and carry on, became grim shattered memories, grotesquely distant overnight. In order to survive, must one find employment in a central power regime?
There is a cacophony of activity in the world today splintered and integrated. One finds oneself at odds with oneself in a plight to navigate.
A major tenet of these globalized economies is finding customers and suppliers from around the world. One location isn’t enough, one collaborator isn’t enough, one customer isn’t enough, one supplier isn’t enough. The traversal of space allows the technology giants to manufacture for pennies in China or Malaysia, circumventing worker protections, unions, and minimum wages while flying in the most competitive and ardent students from around the world to be paid fortunes in their corporate offices.
The human mind in the age of the internet finds itself constantly at odds with itself, questioning all relationships knowing all human beings are connected. This is a great illusion and yet it is true. One can, through submitting oneself to a given vision of the future or submitting to the process of application for employment, find oneself with a new lot in a matter of weeks.
Doing Anything and going Anywhere yields in many fortunate cases to doing some specific action in the world. In even more fortunate instances, this specific action will break through the thick wool fabric covering all the world and find light, sun, and a sustaining life.
The desire to succeed is not so different from the desire to live. Often I think about Victor Frankyl’s observations of the other prisoners in Auschwitz. When they first arrived at the camp, they had everyone stand in a line to be evaluated as to whether they should live a while or die immediately. Frankyl says he feels that he tried to look smart and strong. It worked and he wasn’t burned right away. Then he saw after months of starvation his fellow people one by one giving up on life itself, simply lying down to die. He talked of the difficulties of living without nutrition, soft bedding, or stimulants like caffeine and nicotine.
But he simply pushed through.
This willingness to endure and to put on a brave face at any checkpoint of evaluation can mean the difference between life and death in a world of cold distant calculation. One must resolve in oneself to be strong and to fight for the life that makes sense for them, even if that means fighting for tenure in a desirable position which many will hope for but be denied.
And then again, we live in a time of relative peace in this country, despite the globalized competitive landscape which squeezes away all wealth from ordinary people who hope to have a car and a phone and the ability to go Anywhere and do Anything.
If you give up Anywhere and Anything, and you find a way to subsist on a scrap of land, can you then carry on in peace apart from the great many mature regimes?
Of course there are many options in this direction.
And that poses another problem. Many options means no options at all. A few options might mean one. One means one.
One person talking to one person may seem lonely at times, and it can be. But this fundamental dyadic pair is core to the human mind. By communicating with someone at length and in earnest, we commit to navigating with the help of an other, one specific person who has a concrete state of being.
This process is the one and only root of human communication. Two people create a child, the mother nourishes the child and communicates with it every day, the child forges ahead into preschool, forms relationships with the teacher and each student as a product of the environment proffered by the mother, and finds an emotional tenor along the way.
Deep communication can go as far as to bring insight and perspective into one’s circumstances at birth which changes how we naviagte the world around. Deep communication can happen in therapy where there are limits to the relationship and one can simply stand up and leave before one’s fifty minutes have elapsed.
And yet, deep communication happens both unrecognized and recognized on any given day, often by accident. When we’re working with something, or playing a game together, the logical terrified regime-joining parts of our minds are occupied while the vulnerabilities and quagmires can percolate safely.
The activity is agreed upon and engaging, and both parties can find some air in that structure. One might even talk about what’s been on one’s mind.
Posted by charlie.