Arta started a whole train of thought this morning when she talked about 'needing people'. At first I only wanted to leave a comment on her blog, but it turned into a few paragraphs and I wisely decided to spare her the embarrassment of leaving a letter as a comment.
Most people need other people to confirm that they exist, and to provide a reason for living. Society needs people to depend on people, to provide for people, to stay with people, to interact with people, to fit in with other people. Safety in numbers, survival of the species, security, familiarity; all things that are associated with groups.
Technology changed this picture for most people. For most people it provides a constant sense of 'belonging'. Even when completely alone, they are still connected and part of a few groups via facebook, twitter, email and cellphone calls. They can interact with people on a moment's notice, ask help or provide it, feel the satisfaction of connecting and influencing another human's life for the better, without a lot of physical effort. Most people even seem to prefer this type of interaction over the old-fashioned way of physically interacting with other people.
Maybe it is because you can physically stop a person from leaving when you ignore him for a few seconds, but if the person on the other end of the screen or phone is bored, you may never hear from him/her again. That person may be impossible to find again, so you try to strengthen the link between you, knowing that the person physically with you is easier to pacify.
Others use this same technology to interact even less with other people, using the information others share without any interaction at all. Millions of people never develop the social skills most take for granted, because they no longer have the need to acquire them. Technology is a tool, and you make use of it in a way that suits you, even when it does not make any sense at all to another user of the same technology.
What does all this have to do with the need for other people? Quite a lot. People always need other people, if only to look down on them. Technology enable people to have a bit more choice in the type and quality of interaction they have with others. People needing to interact with other people with most of their senses use technology to find the correct person and time to do this. This enable them to interact for longer periods in the correct environment.
The same happens with people that only need to hear others, or to share ideas with a like-minded group of people. Why spend most of the time trying to find the correct environment to be yourself if you can just use technology to do this search much faster? Even better is when you widen your horizons and find new and interesting ways to enhance your life, to change your perception, to enjoy life.
Most people forget that life is all about experiencing life. We compare our experiences with the lives of celebrities that are set as a goal to reach; we scrutinize the lives of people that we then try to emulate because they appear happier than we are. We spend most of our time and effort trying to become somebody and something else. Unfortunately technology is the culprit here, because it allow us to take a closer look at the way other people live, without showing us all the sacrifices they make to achieve it. It shows us the end-result without all the hard work that went into it, creating unrealistic expectations.
Most people forget that we need other people to share experiences with. We do not need to emulate them, we do not need confirmation or approval or directives or wisdom or information from them, we need them to share a moment. They need us for the same reason, and it is much easier to remember this when you are not bombarded with all kinds of different information and ideas and viewpoints and emotions and tricks to provide somebody else with some kind of satisfaction.
Everything is about me. The fact that I sometimes experience great satisfaction in helping somebody else does not mean that I am a good person, it just means that I am more inclined to do this type of thing more often. The fact that I experience even more satisfaction when achieving something that only satisfies me, does not mean I am a bad person, it just means that I am more inclined to act that way. Even getting satisfaction from the suffering of others does not mean I am a bad person, it just means that I do not have empathy with that person in that situation.
Other people. We share this reality with them, and interact with a few chosen ones for a limited time. Make yours as interesting as you need, and remember that others are inclined to treat you the way you treat them, but it is an observation, not something that can be enforced. Life is not fair, life is not logical, life is not easy, life is not something you can learn from somebody else. Life is just something to do in this reality, and nobody else will ever do it better, or worse, than you. Do it your way, and if that is the same way as billions of other humans, make it unique by enjoying it your way.
