Surviving The Fall, 12

We need to rediscover not only friendship, but community. Not online community. We all spend way too much time with our phones and in front of screens already. We need to engage, in person, with one another. This is what we are designed to be. We are not destined to evolve into cyborgs. This is science fiction seizing hold of the popular scientific imagination and fiction becoming dreadfully confused with fact. We are not machines, but flesh, blood and bone. We are not above nature, nor apart from nature. We are part of nature. We are born through sexual conception, carried inside our mother's wombs for nine months, then emerge as helpless, crying little infants into a world where we will only survive with the care of our parents. Even as we go through the stages of life, through childhood and adolescence into young adulthood, and acquire spouses and have children while participating in this world and while living on this earth we are part of, we are part of nature. We need human contact, touch, to hear human voices, to smell one another (though sometimes it would be better not to!) And we don't have to go as far as dogs, even if we ourselves happen to be animals. There will never be a protocol for sniffing each other's bums (thank God for that), but we really need to start pushing against technology, at least when it comes to honouring and validating our primal human need to connect with one another, in person. Yes, social media and emails can do wonders for helping us connect, but we still have to do the actual work of putting down our phones or getting away from our precious screens and actually going out to meet one another, or invite one another into our homes. This is something that is never going to change because this is part of the essential human. We are tribal, we are communal, social, tactile and sensual. All those need to be factored in for a healthy and sustainable form of human interaction that forms community and is formed and sustained by community. But now comes the elephant in the room. How can healthy community be made possible in a society and an economy that is so anti-community, which is to say consumer-capitalist, idolizing the individual, the self, and the right to buy, acquire and consume and downgrading all human interactions as consumerist transactions completely void of love, respect, caring and nurturing. We do have our work cut out for us. This is why I greet and talk with strangers, and why I try to employ humour wherever possible, and as sensitively as possible when I`m out among others. It doesn`t always work, and I sometimes completely lose my sense of humour while coping with all the dumbass self-absorbed narcissists surrounding me, and this too is going to be inevitable given how alienated this consumer-capitalist ethos has made us. I have no magic bullet to provide or suggest, simply that we keep getting out there. How do I do it? I make a virtue out of necessity. I can't afford a smart phone, so I have to pay attention to the people around me. I can't afford a car, and even if I could, I probably still wouldn't own one. This means that I have to be out among strangers on the bus when I have to ride it (I would rather walk!), but it keeps me in contact with people I wouldn't ordinarily be in contact with. And I say hi to strangers on my walks, not always, but as it feels appropriate. I also have friends, and make an effort to nurture my friendships, even if some of my friends are self-absorbed doofuses who need to be reminded two or three times a year that I haven't died yet. It is about caring, and actively caring. And I have every reason to believe that I am also positively influencing others. This is inevitable. We all have on one another this kind of impact. So, Gentle Reader, get your head out of your ass, get yourself outside and out of your comfort zone and start interacting. I'm sure you're not that pathetic.