Losing Our Humanity — Saving Humanity: Part 3

How We Are Disconnecting from Ourselves, Others, and the World in Which We Live

Part 3 — Five Contexts of Disconnection

by Jeff Bloom

In part 3 of this series, I’d like to move into the ground level and start examining some of the types of “things” that create wedges between us and other people and our environments, and that disconnect ourselves from our own humanity. What follows is a discussion of a small slice of five contexts of human patterns of activity that affect all of us.

As I began to make a list of everything I could think of that could disconnect, I soon realized how overwhelmingly massive this task was. So, I’m just going to get the ball rolling and you can add to the list. In order to make this list a bit more manageable, the list of specific things fell into a much smaller number of categories, which I will list and discuss shortly. What I do want to highlight here is that for almost all of the specific things in each category, they hold the potential to both connect and disconnect. It all depends on how we use, relate to, and/or think about these things, as well as in what contexts we use or relate to these things. So, this list is not a list of evil things. It’s a list of things that can be beneficial or can be harmful to how we connect or disconnect to ourselves and our worlds.

Although there is no particular order to the items on this list, I do want to place two categories at the top. The first of these is “addiction,” which weaves its way through all the other categories. The second is “fast time,”[1] which in a way contains all of the other categories. But, in reality, all of the categories intertwine with one another in various ways depending upon the individual and the contexts. So, here is the list of categories, which is just a small slice of a much bigger set of contexts.

• Addiction
• Fast Time
• Technology
• Capitalism, Money, Corporatization, Power, & Control
• Language & Communication

These categories have been suggested as a matter of convenience for getting a handle on the complexity, but they are not of the same type of “thing,” or in more academic terms, they are not at the same level of abstraction or logical type.[2] For instance, “addiction” is not like any of the other category names. “Addiction” is a term we use to describe a complex knot of behavior, cognition, and relationships to some other thing, while technology is descriptive of a wide assortment of objects serving various functions that have been created by humans in this particular usage. Some animals have been found to use technology, but we’re not discussing that particular context here.

Addiction

I don’t want to go into great detail here, but I do want to clarify this widely misunderstood and highly charged concept. Like it or not, all of us are probably addicted to something. Basically, addiction is the result of our learning how to relate to some aspect of our lives. Fortunately, most addictions are not particularly harmful, at least in any immediate or near future way. Addiction always involves some object, which can be a behavior, an idea or belief, a substance we ingest, a physical object we use, and so forth. It also involves one or more contexts, and it’s almost always more than one context. These contexts can be some health condition, an occupational context, a local social context, a larger societal context, a financial context, a relationship context, and so forth. The third essential component is some personal cognition—emotional rationale or justification, which doesn’t necessarily make sense to anyone else, but does for the individual.[3] Once upon a time, I was addicted to cigarettes. I’m probably addicted to coffee. I have chronic mostly daily migraines/headaches, and take medications for them. But, I don’t think I’m technically addicted to them. Every once in a while I stop taking medications to see what happens and take a brake. I suffer for a few weeks, but manage. However, I’m probably no fun at all to be around.

The range of addiction is pretty wide. People are addicted to social media and their smartphones. You just have to check to see if someone “liked” your post. It’s a slick approach to marketing, just like cigarettes and alcohol were and still are. You can be addicted to certain ways of acting in certain situations. I had a middle student many years ago who was the class clown and was always disruptive. At one point, I had an extended conversation with him about his disruptiveness. He said, “everyone expects me to be funny, so I have to do it.” The behavior context, the social context, the justification context were all there. And, there were probably other contexts, as well. Teachers are often addicted to a particular way of manifesting in the classroom. They may be addicted to being in control at all times and not allow students to veer from a strict code of behavior and activity. And, they can defend their actions with all sorts of theoretical rationales.[5] There’s the behavior context, the social context, and the justification context.

Basically, addiction at the level of “coffee” is rather minor. It can have ill effects on health, but not necessarily. It depends on other personal physiological contexts. And, going out to a coffee shop may offer opportunities to meet and connect with other people. The teacher addicted to control may very well be disconnecting students from a much wider range of learning opportunities, including learning how to share in the control of the classroom, of veering off on an avenue presented by their curiosity, or engaging in arguments and conversations about the things they are studying.

Fast Time

The notion of “fast time” is explored in depth by Thomas Hylland Eriksen in his book from 2001, The Tyranny of the Moment. It’s even a more astounding book to read now, over two decades later. Things have accelerated even more by now than when he wrote the book. And, fast time seems to affect almost everything we do, as well as affecting what may have been possible long ago, but is no longer possible. We no longer seem to have time to just sit and ponder, and to reflect on our lives — a big disconnect. We no longer have time to take a walk in a forest, meadow, beach, or desert, and then just sit and watch, feel, smell, listen to, and be part of our natural environment — another big disconnect. We’re so busy running around shopping, taking kids to their appointments, scheduling even more appointments, doing our chores around the house, and, my least favorite, but increasing in frequency, fighting with businesses and government agencies about errors in billing, warranty issues, insurance coverages, etc. Even though I’m officially retired from my academic career, I seem to have less time than I did when I was working. I squeeze in little bits of time to write this essay and others, as well as to tend to my websites and read an accelerating pile of papers and books. I long for the days, not even that long ago, when I could disappear into the forest alone or with my dog, and have 2 or 3 hours in nature. Now, I no longer live near a forest, but the desert is only blocks away, and I am only able to go on hikes there rarely. There is always too much to do.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, we knew everyone on our block, and quite a few beyond our block. When I’d return home from school, I’d gobble down a snack and run back outside to play with other kids on the block. It wasn’t unusual for neighborhood kids to knock on the door and ask if I could come out and play, and sometimes even invite themselves in for lunch. The only times we made appointments to play were when a friend from school, who didn’t live nearby, arranged to go to one of our homes after school. It was a rare day that I didn’t play with friends.

When my children were growing up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, they had to make appointments to play. No one ever dropped by and knocked on the door. And, play dates weren’t even everyday. I don’t remember any times when they played with friends everyday over an extended period of time. Since my wife and I both worked, we enrolled them in after school programs, but none of the relationships they made with other kids in these programs ever rolled over into play dates on weekends or other times. Their only friends were from school or from families within our network of friends. And, because, like so many families today, friends within the extended family were non-existent. I don’t even know some members of my extended family. I just met two of my adult great nephews and a great niece for the first time less than a year ago. And, they’re closer in age to my children. This is a classic disconnected family, which was a rarity 100 years ago, but is fairly common now. My brother, sister, and I all scattered around the country as adults. A couple of my cousins, who I knew well also moved far from their home territories of youth.

Along with this dispersion and disconnection, children’s free times (when not in school) are filled with other activities — music lessons, sports teams, and whatever else parents determined their kids should do. Everyone, from parents to kids, are scheduled with very little free time. It has become a life of fast time. Along with this piece of fast time, everything else has been accelerating and piling up on stacks. The rate at which new information is published in one form or another has increased exponentially. No one, no matter how specialized one is in a particular field, can keep up with the new information being produced in that field. Social changes have been accelerating, as well.

We barely notice how our social systems and our own lives are getting squeezed, fragmented, and torn apart all at the same time. There’s very little time to pay attention to our relationships with our own immediate families, pets included; our friends; our neighbors; our extended families; and other people with whom we interact somewhat regularly. Our connectedness is continually being stretched thinner and thinner. And, then the connection snaps.

Technology

Technology is a classic example of accelerating fast time. In my lifetime, we have gone from large black and white TV’s, rotary phones, the very first jet airliner, cars without seatbelts, electronic equipment without printed circuits, no human-made satellites orbiting Earth, and computers the size of a large room that were much, much less powerful than the smartphones in our pockets now. But, technology has been changing human relationships and cultures for millennia. We’ve gone from early stone tools to robotic manufacturing of goods, from the invention of the wheel to trains, cars, and passenger jets and now the beginning of commercial flights into space. Every technological innovation brought widespread change to cultures. And, with each innovation there was little or no thought as to the breadth of consequences that such innovations could bring about. From the abacus to the computer, little thought has gone into the possibilities brought about by unexpected consequences. When we walk to get places, we brush shoulders with others, maybe say “hi” or “excuse me.” We acknowledge each others presence, and maybe even strike up a conversation. In our steel fortress on wheels, we can curse and scream at other drivers. We can cut them off and give them the finger. While cars allowed us to widen the distance we could travel to connect with other people, it also has increased our disconnection to others. In the U.S., some people even pull guns out and shoot other drivers. And, now we are about to dive head first into AI, which very well could bring about the penultimate disconnection from our humanity.

Capitalism, Money, Corporatization, Power, & Control

Capitalism is heavily rooted in the notion of continual economic growth. Ultimately, such a pattern of conducting “business” will deplete the resources we have available on Earth. And, we’re moving ever closer to that point of depleted resources. As we move closer, and it won’t be long, there will be an economic collapse, followed by homelessness, starvation, and unimaginable chaos. But, even before this happens our ways of doing business have been move increasingly towards massive disconnection between corporations and the people who consume their products. Sixty or seventy years ago, the phrase “the customer is always right” was the guiding framework for how to conduct business and relate to customers. This framework no longer exists. The newest version is to train people who interact with customers to always agree with the customer and to reinforce that you understand the customers’ concerns. But, the whole process is geared to pacify the customer and do nothing to resolve the issue. It’s basically a screw you with a smile approach. Apple has made it an art form, as have many other big corporations. But, even within corporations, competition between employees to climb the hierarchy and the power exerted by those higher in the hierarchy onto lower level employees promote extreme interpersonal disconnects.

And, the whole relationship we have to money is fundamentally toxic. If one has a lot of money, it changes people dramatically. Greed and striving to maintain one’s wealth and power and control of “their” worlds increases throughout one’s lifetime. Defending one’s empire disconnects one from one’s own humanity, to others, and to our environment. If we have very little money, we either become slaves to lending companies and go deep into debt or we struggle to put food on our tables and live in reasonably decent housing. Either way, the toxicity of money takes its toll on our psyches.

Language & Communication

Our communication with language is one of the major modes of connecting with other people, as well as our pets. But, our language and communication also can be used to disconnect with others. Hate speech, speech that objectifies others, speech that demeans, and other forms of negative speech has huge effects on disconnecting from ourselves and from others. And, it also has the tendency to spread like a highly contagious pathogen. Over the past decade, we’ve been seeing the effects of such disconnecting speech on vast numbers of people in the United States and other countries.

But, the same toxic effects can occur within our families, circle of friends, classrooms, places of religious worship, and places of other types of spiritual practice. The toxic effects can lead to major disconnects in the lives of others.

These five general contexts of patterns of human activity are pervasive. We all live within these five contexts, unless we live the life of an isolated, off-the-grid hermit, in which case you won’t be reading this any way. The pressure of disconnection is ever-present. It’s all too easy to succumb. The big questions for all of us, if we are at all interested in maintaining and expanding our connections to ourselves, others, and the environment, include:

• What can we do to connect and re-connect, as well as to prevent further disconnection?
• How do we maintain an emphasis on connecting and re-connecting?
• What can we do to change the direction of our societies’ movement towards further disconnection?
• How can we help our children connect to self, others, and our environments?

Please share your thoughts in the Comments below or in the Members’ Forum.

NOTES

[1] Fast time is discussed at length by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2001) in his book, Tyranny of the Moment.

[2] The term “logical type” was coined by Alfred Lord Whitehead and Bertram Russell (1910). This notion was further elaborated upon by Alfred Korzybsky (1948) as levels of abstraction.

[3] To clarify a bit, addiction is as is described in this section. However, it needs to be contrasted to dependency and tolerance. A person may be dependent upon a particular medication, but that does not mean that person is addicted. That individual may not even want to take that medication, but intense chronic pain prevents having a semblance of quality of life. In contrast, the addict may be suffering from other psychological discomforts and uses a similar medication to, according to the addict, maintain sanity or function in society, or whatever justification makes sense at to that person. In a similar way, tolerance to substances generally increases with continued use, but may not be an indication of addiction. However, the looming danger is flipping from dependence to addiction, which does seem to occur far too frequently. SEE discussions of addiction in Gregory Bateson’s work (1972/2000, 1991).

[4] This artwork was done by a freshman university student taking my “Ecology of Mind” freshman seminar course in 2011. This was part of her project on double binds, a term coined by Gregory Bateson (1972/2000, 1991). And, double binds are major disconnecting situations.

[5] I have an extended discussion of addiction in education. SEE: Bloom (2017). Please contact me if you would like a PDF copy.

REFERENCES

Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Bateson, G. (1991). Sacred unity: Further steps to an ecology of mind (R. E. Donaldson, Ed.). New York: A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book/Harper Collins.

Bloom, J. W. (2017). Addiction, education, and beyond: Pathological patterns and contexts. In N. Bateson & M. Witkowska-Jaworska (Eds.), Towards an ecology of mind: Batesonian legacy continued. (pp. 27–45). Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland: Scientific Publishing, University of Dabrowa Gornicza.

Eriksen, T. H. (2001). Tyranny of the moment: Fast and slow time in the information age. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

© 2024 Jeffrey W Bloom

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