Soul Stories
The Lost Art of Conversation
Has social media short-changed us?
All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare eloquently describes the human condition in a famous passage from his play, As You Like It. We are all too often guilty of passing through life, as if we were players merely entering and exiting when it suits us. There is no escaping the unquestionable truth that human relationships are messy, demanding and seemingly fruitless. Ultimately though, they are rich, deeply intricate and most importantly, intimate.
At this stage, it’s crucial to identify what intimacy is, and its significance in modern day society. It used to be so simple. We’d ask out the girl next door and be happily married with 2.5 children.
Marriage was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love — Stephanie Coontz: Marriage, A History.
Now however, we marry for something more than mere companionship. We marry, because we’re seeking a soulmate. We marry, because we’re seeking our one true love — cue wedding bells, blue skies and eternal bliss! Well, let me burst that bubble for a second. Finding your soulmate in the age of instant connectivity is not easy. Writing in Modern Romance: An Investigation, the comedian Aziz Ansari seeks the counsel of psychotherapist Esther Perel, who tells him:
Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide:
Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.
That’s a lot to ask from one person isn’t it? Coupled with that, are the contradictory sentiments that we live by today. We live with a deep ambivalence about other people: we should not let them hold us back, and yet love is the only law. Reconciling those two attitudes is not straightforward. In his books, The Happiness Paradox and Intimacy, psychologist Ziyad Marar beautifully espouses this modern day phenomenon:
Modern consciousness is torn by contradictory demands: on the one hand to escape from others who may have too much power over our lives, our potent audiences (to be authentic and free), and on the other to embrace them (to belong, to feel justified, to be valued). We want to connect with others without losing or autonomy and to express our freedom without being isolated. The relationship between these needs is paradoxical because the expression of one conjures up the need for its counterpart. As we turn our backs on those who would shape our lives we risk alienation or narcissism and must face them again, and as we face them risk submergence and neediness, and so must be prepared to turn away; we are in perpetual oscillation when it comes to other people. We want to be with them and influenced by them, yet at the same time we need space to be ourselves and to pursue our own goals unhampered by their expectations and ambitions for us.
So, what’s the answer to this seemingly unanswerable conundrum? Your phone. The unstoppable growth of social media, has ensured that human relationships can now be developed purely through digital means. Online dating, Tinder, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, WeChat, WhatsApp, Messenger … all these digital communication tools let us present the self, as we want it to be. We can essentially delete and clean up the parts of ourselves, which we deem unworthy or unsuitable, when presenting the self.
Sherry Turkle, the American internet pioneer, recently spoke at TedX. At the event, she spoke about how social media is mutating the human condition. Real time conversations she stated, are being substituted by online conversations:
We expect more from technology and less from each other and we are vulnerable because technology is replacing intimacy.
When was the last time you struck up conversation, with a perfect stranger? Undiluted, honest and open to vulnerability, the emotional bonds that are formed in those one-off intimate conversations, however small, are what make us human. Social media and digital devices however, are numbing our brain’s emotional receptors. These highly complex and complicated emotional receptors are being short changed.
Friendships are now so short term and finely tuned, that the intimate bonds of friendship are now just that … mere connections. Digital dopamine has replaced those long bursts of euphoria, which occur when meeting someone new. All we are left with are short, sharp, bursts of emotion which we care very little about. Turkle says:
Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked lives allow us to hide from each other even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.
Digital devices and technology address the deep insecurity that lies deep within us; the fear of being alone. Technology gives us a means with which to feel constantly connected to our friends, without the demands of friendship. However, as technology replaces intimacy, the feeling of loneliness increases. Loneliness however, should not be confused with being alone, or solitude. Solitude is important to the human condition, as it allows us time to reflect and find ourselves. Finding yourself doesn’t always have to equate to talking. Talk too much and conversation becomes meaningless. If we are not able to find solitude, then we will feel even more lonely.
Turkle makes a fundamental observation:
If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they’re only going to know how to be lonely.
When you observe kids, teenagers and young adults, the vast majority tend to be silent and staring at their phones, even though they are surrounded by their friends or potential lovers. The intimate bonds of friendship and potential intimacy remain, but have been replaced by a binary code, rather than real-time conversation. It is a sad reminder of the power that social media holds, over the generations of today.
How do we then ensure that the art of conversation is not lost to us or to the next generation? We can make technology work for us, rather than being a slave to technology. Turkle says:
Technology is making a bid to redefine human connection — how we care for each other, how we care for ourselves — but it’s also giving us the opportunity to affirm our values and our direction.
What we can focus on, is how technology can lead us back to the real world, our real lives, our own communities and our own friends and lovers. They need us and without them, we would not be human.
Without them and all the truly magical wonders that love and friendship bring, the art of conversation will truly be lost, forever.
