ALONE IN A CROWD

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 Advertisement 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.