Post by nathanjohnson on Jul 30, 2011 14:15:14 GMT -5
William Dereseiwicz’s “The End of Solitude” poses many moral and sociological arguments about technology in the modern era, and how this “connectivity” which technology offers us can affect our ability to handle solitude. However, the article poses mostly logical and philosophical arguments, and fails to back itself up with hard facts about how exactly this technology affects our youth. For example, Derseiwicz discusses suburbs, by saying “Suburbs, sprawling ever farther, became exurbs. Families grew smaller or splintered apart, mothers left the home to work. The electronic hearth became the television in every room.” Yet this suburbanization, and subsequent “connectivity” boom, was not the result of technology, nor did it necessarily lend itself to the loss of solitude. The massive suburbanization of America came during a time of fear, a time when “being alone” was believed to present danger. During the Cold War every piece of information became important in determining the success of Democracy vs. Communism. Technology itself did not change our culture – rather, our culture invented technology to adapt to a change in thought process. The children of the Cold War were the ones become Microsoft Millionaires and Silicone Valley Billionaires. These new technologies were created only to feed the fear of loneliness brought about by a propaganda campaign in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Does this mean that Technology is not at all to blame? No. But the rise in social media, text-messaging and smartphones cannot be to the sole cause of our lack of solitude. Furthermore, we need to look at the author’s definition of “connectivity.” Deresiwicz discusses the teenager that sends 3,000 messages a month, or is constantly on MySpace. But we need to ask ourselves – is this truly “being connected.” When the author cites Transcendentalist authors such as Thoreau and Emerson, he is taking their works out of the original context of solitude. Solitude was not being alone; solitude was introspection. Emerson and Thoreau just happened to isolate themselves because it was easier to look inwardly without having connections. Solitude can still be achieved through modern technology. We have not lost solitude, we have just redefined it. The connections we need to make are not the ones that can be captured in a text message or Tweet. These technologies only offer shallow, non-real “connection.” We need to define connection as a true face-to-face interpersonal connection. Finally, the author does not actually pose what is bad about his so-called “loss” of solitude. He certainly tells us what is lost, by saying “First, the propensity for introspection, that examination of the self that the Puritans, and the Romantics, and the modernists (and Socrates, for that matter) placed at the center of spiritual life — of wisdom, of conduct.” But what is actually lost if we no longer have the ability to look inward? Are societies collapsing? Are we seeing mass suicides, famines, wars, disease or any other unthinkable apocalypse occur because we are making constant, shallow connections? No. The loss of Deresiewicz’s solitude is not a tragedy. Rather, the loss of face-to-face connection is something to be worried about.