I’m not sure exactly when, but sometime in the past couple of years western society took the well-worn quasi-zen credo of ‘Be here now’ and turned it completely on its head. The contemporary mantra is surely: be elsewhere, always.
You’ll see it in any pocket of western society: everyone is consumed by ‘that hopeless little screen.’* And lest I be accused of old persons’ bias, it’s not just the kids – a lot of my contemporaries are just as addicted to their phones. Apple’s holiday commercial tried to skew the phenomenon into a warm fuzzy feeling – all that time, the disconnected distracted teen was actually creating a heart tugging video of the family celebrations to share with everyone, awwww – but as critics have pointed out, nice try, but doesn’t pass the reality check.
Late last year, the syndrome tossed up a new high-watermark of irony when a woman literally walked off a pier and fell into the ocean while checking her facebook page. A non-swimmer, the woman was rescued and borne back to dry land, still clutching her device. Hers is only the latest of a series of such misadventures.
Stories like this trivialise the consequences of this behaviour. Which is unfortunate, because it can have some very serious, often lethal consequences.
The lesser of these is the erosion of simple, everyday social intercourse. I lament that meetings, parties, coffee conversations – any kind of real, face to face human interaction – are now so routinely hijacked by the demands of the phone.
Much more serious is the damage that this behaviour is causing in society at large. Watch this. And be warned: it ain’t pretty.
Conclusion: be elsewhere at times, if you must. But when you must, when needs be, please be here now. Lives may depend upon it. Even yours.
*Not the one Leonard Cohen was referring to in Everybody Knows, but an even more hopeless and addictive one ….