ALONE IN A CROWD
Don't hang up!
Those cell phones we see everywhere are no more or less than a desperate
attempt to keep from being alone with ourselves in a vast, uncaring universe
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St Xavier University
By Louis Rene Beres. Louis Rene Beres is a professor in the political
science department at Purdue University who cannot be reached by cell phone
June 12, 2005
I belong. Therefore I am.
This is the unheroic credo expressed by cell-phone addiction, a
not-so-stirring manifesto that social acceptance is vital to survival and
that real happiness is solely the privilege of mediocrity.
This largely undiagnosed techno-condition represents much more than a
reasonable need to remain connected. After all, when one looks closely at
these communications a clear message is delivered: Talking on a cell phone
makes the caller feel more important, more valuable, less alone, less
lonely.
At a time when "rugged individualism" has become a nostalgic myth in
America, being witnessed in conversation with another--any other--is
presumed to be absolutely vital. Certainly, the nature or urgency of the
particular phone conversation is mostly irrelevant. In many readily
observable cases the exchange consists of meaningless blather punctuated by
monosyllabic grunts. There is no vital content here; certainly nothing to
resemble a serious reflex of thought or feeling.
All that really matters is that the caller be seen talking with another
human being and that the conversation push away emptiness and anxiety.
How sad. The known universe is now said to be about 68 billion light-years
"across," and yet here, in the present-day United States, being seen on the
phone--preferably while walking briskly with rapt inattention to one's
immediate surroundings, including life-threatening car traffic or heavy
rain--is a desperate cry to every other passerby: "I am here; I have human
connections; I count for something; I am not unpopular; I am not alone."
The cell phone, of course, has not caused people to display such feelings.
Rather, it is merely an instrument that lets us see what might otherwise lie
dormant in a society of dreadful conformance and passionless automatism.
Ringingly, it reveals that we have become a lonely crowd driven by fear and
trembling.
There exists, as Freud understood, a universal wish to remain unaware of
oneself, and this wish generally leads individuals away from personhood and
toward mass society. Hiding what might express an incapacity to belong,
trying to be a good "member," the anxious American soon learns that
authenticity goes unrewarded and that true affirmations of self will likely
be unpardonable.
Humans often fear ostracism and exclusion more acutely even than death, a
personal calculus that is largely responsible for war, terrorism and
genocide. It is small wonder, then, that something as harmless as a cell
phone should now have become a proud shiny badge of group standing.
The inner fear of loneliness expressed by cell-phone addiction gives rise to
a very serious and far-reaching social problem. Nothing important, in
science or industry or art or music or literature or medicine or philosophy
can ever take place without some loneliness.
To be able to exist apart from the mass--from what Freud called the
reconstituted "primal horde" or Nietzsche the "herd" or Kierkegaard the
"crowd"--is notably indispensable to intellectual development and creative
inquiry. Indeed, to achieve any sense of spirituality in life, one must also
be willing to endure being alone.
All of the great religious leaders and founders sought essential meanings
"inside," in seclusion, deep within themselves.
But personal sadness in America seems to grow more intense wherever
communication is difficult and wherever fears are incommunicable. In one
sense, cell-phone addiction is less an illness than an imagined therapy.
Ultimately, in a society filled with devotees of a pretended happiness, it
is presumptively an electronic link to redemption.
But the presumption is all wrong.
Trying to fill some vacancy within themselves, the compulsive cell-phone
users should now remind us of a revealing image from T.S. Eliot: They are
the "hollow men," they are the "stuffed men," leaning together as they
experience painful feelings of powerlessness. More than anything else, they
fear finding themselves alone, and so they cannot find themselves at all.
The noisy and shallow material world has infested our solitude; upon all of
us the predictable traces of herd life have now become indelible. Facing an
indecent alloy of banality and apocalypse, we Americans seek both meaning
and ecstasy in techno-connections.
But we discover instead that the way is cruelly blocked by an insipid
mimicry and endless apprehension. Do we dare to disturb the universe, or
must we continue to die slowly, prudently, always in responsible increments,
without ever taking the chance of becoming fully born?
One conveniently forgets that life is always death's prisoner.
Yet, once we can come to grips with this liberating idea we can begin to
take our numbered moments with more intense pleasure and with true
confidence in ourselves as unique. For now only our self-doubt seems
inexhaustible, but this is because we routinely look to others to define who
we are and because we despair when we do not measure up to these
manufactured definitions.
In a sense, the attraction of the cell-phone machine is derivative from our
own machine-like existence, a push-button metaphysics wherein every decision
and every passion follows a standardized and uniformly common pathway.
We believe that we are the creators of all machines, and strictly speaking,
of course, this is correct. But there is also an unrecognized reciprocity
here between creator and creation, an elaborate pantomime between user and
used.
Increasingly our constructions are making a machine out of man. In an
unforgivable inversion of Genesis, it now even appears that we have been
created in the image of the machine.
Cell-phone addiction is merely the very visible symptom of a pervasive
pathology. The underlying disease is a social order built upon nonsense, a
literally mindless network of jingles, advertised meanings and ready-made
ideas that deplores individuality and celebrates slogans.
Our American society has lost all sense of awe in the world.
Cell phones in hand, we talk on and on because we would rather not think,
and we would rather not think because there is no apparent emotional or
material payoff for serious thought.
Holding fast to our cell phones, our fondest wish is that we should soon
become interchangeable. We should be careful what we wish for.
Note to cellular providers: It's time to build GPS capabilities into camera phones. As I've gotten deeper into the research for my next big Technology Review feature--a story slated for October on "GIS and you"--it's become clear that there is an unmet need for Internet-capable phones that take decent pictures and have geopositioning abilities (so that they can tag photos or blog entries with latitude and longitude data, for example). A GPS camera phone is the missing link that could tie together several burgeoning geography-related trends in mobile social computing, including moblogging and photoblogging, 
