What does it mean to be lonely? And how are we to understand colloquialisms to the effect that loneliness is rampant in our time? Are we saying the same thing when we diagnose the malaise of the information age as a sickness of meaninglessness?
When trying to understand a topic that is convoluted, I find it useful to start by capturing my intuitions with working definitions, so here goes. Loneliness is the feeling of unmet connection, of transmitting “I am here” signals that return with nothing to show for it. Connections, for their part, are signals that return to us, indicating life. Our “I am here” messages are met with “I have heard you. I am here.” They suggest life beyond, yet within us. Finally, meaning provides our connections with a road map. Meaning hints at what each connection is and what to do with it.
The quieting of body and imagination
Modern technology is astoundingly versatile in its delivery of information. A lot has been made of how stimulating our artificial environment has become, but I think it is worse than we can readily appreciate. Yes, technology overstimulates our sense of sight and hearing. That is because it relies heavily on our visual and auditory systems. When we divert an unusual amount of time and energy to these faculties, however, others will suffer.
For example, imagine yourself sitting at your desk and working away on your computer. Without considering what is on your screen, notice that your body is minimally engaged. Your physical movements are restricted to the dancing of your fingers on the computer keys, the moving of your dominant hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back, and the occasional shifting of your body to momentarily relieve discomfort.
Now, shift your attention to your screen. Your home screen is filled with icons, shortcuts, folders and documents. Some stand out to you and signify something; others are hardly used. Take a moment to reflect upon the symbolic complexity nested within these emblems.
In the 20th century, many philosophers concentrated on understanding the way the world appeared, as opposed to the way it is from a scientific/reductionist standpoint. Phenomenology, or the study of the structures of first-person experience, saw everyday objects as more than the outcome of physical structures and laws.
When I was a child, my grandparents gifted me a giant photo of a Bengal tiger that hung on the bedroom wall of my family home for some two decades. I look at it today and receive glimpses of the world my younger self lived in. A world where I thought I was bound to see a tiger in the wild someday. Where I didn’t understand how anyone could be frightened by the photo, because I had no concept of what it would really be like to come face-to-face with such a cool-looking feline. Where I innocently thought my grandfather knew someone who had captured the photo in person.
That same poster has come to mean different things as the world and I have changed together. Now, I think of Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ place. Of playing with my sister and cousins as we grew up, and how lucky I am to have had my childhood. The aspect of phenomenology I am making salient here is that meaning attaches itself to everyday objects and situations, and those meanings carry a host of interpretations and feelings. Put another way, we tell ourselves stories about the world and the things we do.
Returning to your computer screen; there are bound to be emblems with real (for instance, personal) stories. A PDF document of a cover letter that put you on the professional path you’re currently walking. A folder with photos of your vacation in Italy with friends or family. A paper you wrote in school or a project that made you feel proud. Stories attach themselves seamlessly to these. We lived them. We remember how we felt, and those feelings and memories have evolved with us.
Representation masquerading as reality
The icons for internet browsers, however, are anomalies to our organic storytelling faculties. The content online captures our attention automatically; it uses visual or auditory cues to pull us in.
One could argue that this is exactly what happens in more natural settings, and that counterpoint has some merit. Notice, though, that within settings like our personal computers or our bedrooms, the stories behind the things are personal and fleshed out. The contents of website feeds are somewhat arbitrary, and even those contents that hold meaning to us lack roots; they have meaning shells.
Much of what we experience online does not seem to reach very far down into the psyche, unless it touches upon something intensely personal.
They resonate with our representations of ourselves and our world, but our bodies and brains couldn’t care less about them, if they do so merely as representation. We had nothing, directly, to do with the existence of the content. We don’t personally know the authors, what they are like, what life experiences brought them to make the content, or the things that lie in the shadows of these conscious endeavours. Their words give us only an approximation of life.
Life is what speaks to our bodies and our imaginations. They only go for embodied connection between living things. The information age and the technologies that support it, on the other hand, rely heavily on representation and simile. The keyboard and mouse, the characters and the cursor, are stand-ins for our bodies and for bodily action. They are like the movements of our hands and the power of spoken words.
The profiles of people whom we do not know online that express sentiments we feel a lot, something, or nothing for are approximations of people with things to say. That may sound bleak, bordering on cruel, so I need to stress that this is only one (especially dark) perspective on online life. But it is a perspective that seems to hold water for our bodies and our unconscious minds. Much of what we experience online does not seem to reach very far down into the psyche, unless it touches upon something intensely personal.
It is no wonder, then, that we can experience regular loneliness when we are by ourselves. The information age causes the hypertrophy of our representational faculties, resulting in an attachment of meaning to representation over embodiment. Conversely, embodiment atrophies and can become trivialized within our representations. We stop seeing our bodies as things with needs of their own, outside of our conscious machinations. Our imaginations are subverted by constant exposure to approximations of reality.
There is something online for everyone, and the internet has thought of everything. Nonetheless, our bodies and our unconscious minds know that reality and representation are not the same. There are representations of what it is to be human, what it is to be alive, but they are completely unlike what it is like to be human and to be alive. Information-age loneliness comes from systematically being trained not to tap into our bodies and minds. It is representation masquerading as reality, and our conscious minds are infatuated.
I would like to conclude on a positive note. All of the tools to counteract these effects of the information age are in your hands. You already possess them. Find one thing that sparks your imagination and makes you feel more yourself, and you’re on your way. Reading does that for me. What brings you peace?
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image 1 💖MORE ON 👉 https://melovess.com 💖 from Pixabay 2 image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
