Everything in Life Is a Tradeoff
The effects of Hurricane Ian in September created havoc with our television, an incredibly insignificant problem when compared to the property damage and loss of life inflicted on people in other parts of the state, but still, we wanted to get it fixed. My wife and I were out of town at the time, but houseguests, who were staying in our home and dog-sitting our terrier mix, alerted us by text to the problem. When we returned home we tried to fix the issue by rebooting the TV, something which had worked many times before, but this time no dice.
We fooled around with various cables in the back of the set and pushed all kinds of buttons on the remote control, but finally, when there were no more buttons to push, we were forced to call the company. My wife dialed the number and an electronic voice answered. The programmed recording informed my wife that the company would reboot our TV, but since we had already tried that my wife quickly responded, “No.”
After a pause the mechanical voice replied, “Did you say ‘No’?” My wife then answered “Yes,” to which the automated voice said, “Okay, you said ‘Yes.’ We will now reboot your TV.”
She tried several times to clarify what she meant but failed each time. Eventually the machine realized something was amiss and gave my wife several other options, none of which was the one she wanted. When she pushed the default for customer service, the automated voice curtly replied, “We’re sorry. You have selected an invalid option.”
With that my normally patient wife hung up and shouted, “I wish I could speak to a human being!”
Of course cable companies aren’t the only enterprises where it is hard to speak with a real person. I called my doctor’s office recently and an automated response gave me a series of numbers for a particular office. I pushed one of the numbers and listened as another electronic recording gave me a list of other options. The computer generated voice reminded me that if this was an emergency, I could dial 911. It wasn’t an emergency, I just wanted to talk to someone about a prescription change.
We live in a world where the personal touch is increasingly being lost. We can buy groceries on the internet, call restaurants for home delivery, bank on-line, shop for almost anything via internet and even consult with our doctor by Zoom. We can virtually fulfill every need without ever coming into personal contact with another human being.
While there are certainly advantages to these kinds of technological conveniences, there are also disadvantages. And because everything in life is a trade-off, it’s important to weigh what we have gained with what we are losing.
Many people, especially the younger generation, seem to have no problem with this impersonal style of transaction in the modern world. It makes life easier with less hassle and, besides, people can sometimes be an annoyance. I get that. I totally understand. Life is complicated enough and if there are ways to simplify life, I’m all for it. But what concerns me is what we might be losing in the process—the ability and skill required to interact with other human beings on a personal level.
Engaging in personal relationships with other human beings presupposes work, skill and patience—learning to relate to other people is an art. If we normalize technological conveniences that avoid personal interaction, I fear that we will gradually lose our ability to meaningfully dialogue with each other. After all, a healthy marriage relationship or building a close connection with a friend or even civility with our hair stylist or grocer necessitates a certain amount of practice and competence. It doesn’t just automatically happen. And as wonderful as text messaging, e-mails and other electronic devices are, there is no substitute for in person flesh-and-blood interactions. If we learned nothing else from the pandemic, we learned that technology cannot satisfy our need to be with other people.
Maybe one of the reasons why so many people suffer from loneliness and depression is that they have lost a sense of community. When we bypass contact with others and cease to personally engage with others to form community, an important quality that makes us human is lost. And we feel that absence. Without personal engagement with others our lives become emptier, and we are drained of energy and purpose and become emotionally and spiritually more fragile. Interpersonal relationships are what make us human beings created in the image of God, for without others we are not even a self. After Scott Kelly spent months in space, he was asked by Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News what he missed most about earth. He replied without hesitation, “Human contact.”
There is something sacred about human togetherness. As complicated and sometimes frustrating as human relationships are, we cannot live fulfilled lives without them. One of the worst forms of punishment is solitary confinement because it removes us from the companionship of others, and without others we lose our humanity.
The modern world has made our lives better in so many ways but in some important ways we are worse off. I miss getting to know the teller at the bank, the waiter at my favorite restaurant or the receptionist when I call my doctor’s office. I miss talking to the salesperson when I look on-line to buy a new computer. When I buy my clothes on-line, I wonder what the sales clerk would say about my selections. Yes, I know that I can still go into a store and do these things, but I am finding that the technological conveniences allow me to skip over the human element to get most anything I want, except, of course, the one thing I need most—human contact. And, consequently, my world has become more impoverished.
I realize what I am saying sounds terribly old-fashioned and certainly dates me. But, then again, not everything that came before the 21st century is antiquated—human beings will always need each other.
We’re not going back in time and I wouldn’t want to. But maybe we can be more attentive, more open, warmer and more intentional in our contact with others. By focusing on creating islands of interpersonal relationships as often as we can, maybe we won’t lose touch with each other and our humanity. Maybe, if we make an effort, we can soften the blows of our increasingly impersonal world.
