How We Became Human Walls.
We’re a mixture of compressed ideas and impressions, held together by social media glue.
“Shallow communities are relatively easy to build.” Malcolm Gladwell
I define modern culture as particle board. Very few people see it, or care that it’s particle board, just as very few people really see — or care to see — us.
We get by with what we know, whether it’s politics or our dishwasher. Knowing what really exists behind our walls doesn’t matter, just as knowledge doesn’t matter. Nobody’s real cares what we know, only that we’re on time. Being on time is important.
The materials we use today reflect who we are. One writer, Barry Darvet, wrote about finding a cedar subfloor under cheap tiles when he renovated his house. “My contractor couldn’t believe the cedar was in such pristine condition,” he said. He was thrilled and, I guess, the contractor was, too. Such a find isn’t common these days. Normally we scratch the surface of things — or people — and find, well, particle board.
We care more about square footage than quality workmanship — that’s just who we are.
If our houses are made of cheap, compressed materials, we have only ourselves to blame. We don’t expect more, so builders don’t give us more. If we suddenly rioted over particle board, it would disappear. We won’t because we’re more interested in first impressions. The building looks good, it has three washrooms, a big living room — a dishwasher. We care more about square footage than quality workmanship — that’s just who we are.
“Shallow communities are relatively easy to build,” Malcolm Gladwell said, believing, as many developers do, that our needs are relatively simple. We need room because room expands the proximity we have with each other. To be close, confined, touching feels like poverty. We hate poverty.
I had a neighbour who raised four children in a two-bedroom bungalow. When his mother (who actually owned the house) decided to add another floor, an interesting thing happened. The family continued living — even sleeping — in the rec room.
“Two of the bedrooms upstairs aren’t even used,” he told me. When I asked why, he said: “We’re just used to jamming ourselves on the sectional.”
The greatest complaint my neighbour had during the house’s construction was particle board. “I hate that stuff,” he told me.
Crazy as it sounds, they’re a healthy family. They don’t need space as much as they need community. Being “jammed” on that couch is about the sharing of warmth. To separate and go to distant corners of the house is unthinkable — or at least unthinkable in their world.
The greatest complaint my neighbour had during the house’s construction was particle board. “I hate that stuff,” he told me. Being a stone mason, he believed in longevity so he demanded half-inch plywood throughout. Not many people care because you don’t see it. He cared because he felt it.
When we buy things in places like Walmart, the price motivates us more than the item. My memory sucks so I figure I need lots of memory sticks. Quality never enters my mind. If I can’t remember my birthday, what do I care about quality? It’s a memory stick.
“I’ve seen movie sets better constructed than some houses,” a director once told me. If that’s the case, pretty soon we’ll be buying facades with expensive sinks.
People complain about sound traveling through their walls. Developers use aluminum studs instead of wooden ones. Aluminum is a sound conductor. We hear things and figure society is getting terribly loud.
“I’ve seen movie sets better constructed than some houses,” a director once told me. If that’s the case, we’ll eventually be buying facades with expensive sinks.
Dry wall and aluminum studs have taken away our privacy much like the Internet. Passwords and firewalls mean nothing in our modern world. Every day, search engines provide data mining to millions of companies. We can’t sneeze without Kimberly-Clark sending us free samples.
Again, we don’t care, since we like being connected, sharing photos, being able to text any little thing. Does it matter that every text, every email, every video chat is vacuumed up by security agencies, all in the hopes of catching the next “Underwear Bomber”?
In other words, the next “Underwear Bomber” doesn’t have much to worry about — other than clean underwear — which all of us face, anyway.
Statistically we have very few terrorist attacks. By contrast, we have an enormous amount of credit card fraud. Catching these fraudsters is next to impossible because credit card companies are drowning in data. So are all homeland security agencies. Experts at the Department of Defense admit “there’s simply no known way to effectively anticipate terrorist threats.”
In other words, the next “Underwear Bomber” doesn’t have much to worry about — other than clean underwear — which all of us face daily.
If data is overwhelming, it might be we are as well. We judge busy people by the hardware they carry, be it iPhones, iPads or iPods. A coffee shop posted this on their outside wall: “I saw this guy today at Starbucks. No iPhone, no tablet, no laptop. He just sat there drinking coffee. Like a psychopath.”
In our world of compressed ideas and impressions, we think we can spot a psychopath a mile away. As someone said on Quora, “I think we see someone and think of a movie character they resemble. If we like the movie character, they stand a chance. If we don’t, it’s Gonesville.”
Michael Thornton, an analyst, responded with, “I doubt a shallow person would be asking themselves this question.”
Many HR departments judge applicants this way. They have a corporate impression they follow. Companies say, “We want people who fit our organization.” Fitting can be as simple as looking like the CEO. Take a look around Apple some time. The number of Steve Jobs clones is remarkable.
It’s hard to say if this is shallowness or typecasting. When asked to define shallow people, one person on Quora wrote: “A shallow person talks about things, not feelings.” Michael Thornton, an analyst, responded with, “I doubt a shallow person would be asking themselves this question.”
So are we really compressed ideas and impressions held together by social media glue? Are we particle board? And are our thoughts, expressed on social media, with some promise of security, just the hollowness of poorly insulated thoughts? Or are we talking terribly loudly?
For all we know, our evolution was supposed to lead us where we are now, more interested in things than feelings.
It’s hard to know, given how we’re monitored and data mined. Maybe it’s not shallowness as much as transparency. We’re not surprised at all when Kimberly-Clark sends us free samples of Kleenex. We like free stuff.
For all we know, evolution has reached the point where we’re more interested in things than feelings. Most of our conversations are texts anyway. Once we stop talking altogether, it’ll be a lot easier texting about things.
Besides, we’ve got emojis for feelings.
Robert Cormack is a novelist, journalist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores (now in paperback). Check out Yucca Publishing or Skyhorse Press for more details.
