Both Oars In Individuality: a Mountain in a Flat World

Oct 15, 2010

First, I have to give a little shout-out to Thomas Friedman who wrote the excellent book, The World is Flat. Thanks to the ubiquity of satellite supported communication, the world has become flatter in the way he suggests. The accuracy of his statement is made clear when you see a young person living in a chaotic and poor country who has very limited access to clean water, electricity, and education whip out a cell phone. The point is made even more poignant when the phone has internet connectivity. In this sense, the world is much more connected for us than it was for Columbus.

The world may be more connected, but are we?  I mean as people, one to another.

With each technological advance in communication, we fortunately break down more and more of the boundaries that separate us economically and geographically. Yet, has the advancement in technology really lessened our personal isolation? Are we any more connected to one another than before the cell phone? Do we understand each other more on account of the net? Has a decrease in privacy really delivered an increase in authentic intimacy? I do not think so.

Changes in technology have very little real impact on the closeness of our relationship with one another, because what really keeps us apart is not external, it is internal. It is psychological, not physical. It is our individuality. This cannot be bridged by faster wireless or increased band width. Even the amazing mass connectivity provided by Facebook has not been able to remove the inherent isolation resulting from our individuality.

Ironically, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s inventor, seems to be proof of this to the extreme.  If the recently released film about his life is at all accurate, it would appear that he remains a very solitary being despite his fame, fortune and half-billion member network.  The movie ends with the apparently perennially sophomoric genius who turned “friend” into a verb in hopes of making one or two, sitting by himself tapping a keyboard, hoping to connect. Not a scene for the faint of heart.  

While it was the shock of sitting through the Facebook movie’s unexpectedly horrific romp through bizarre human relationships that forced me to ponder the real basis for this human divide again, work as a missionary has often given me reason to reflect on the topic. These reflections have slowly erased most of what I learned in college about the basis of human connections.

Having worked for a long time in circumstance where I am a foreigner and having made many close local friends in the process, I have come to discover that two individuals are already a mile apart due to their individuality, and being different races and/or ethnicities only adds about another ten feet or so. Yet, we talk as if the opposite were the case.  

The impact of our individuality, a result of the uniqueness of every human being, is underplayed in our society. In our overly politicized world, we tend to put more importance on race, ethnicity, political affiliation and culture than on individuality as sources of division.  That is because we tend to listen to politicians more than philosophers and poets. Yet, what really separates one individual from another is that we are indeed individuals. Sounds simple, but that difference is much more profound than the difference emphasized by the race and class oriented divisive ranting of characters like Al Sharpton.

With all due respect to Mr. Friedman, the journey required to connect meaningfully with another human being remains as difficult today as it was before the world became flat.  Technology has certainly lessened the physical distance between each one of us, and air travel and the net have made it as possible for us to undertake the monumental task of connecting authentically with a person across the globe as to do so with our next door neighbor.  Nevertheless, the last mile still remains.

This distance represents the real challenge of the journey. It requires us to travel outside of ourselves. We must seek to enter the world of the other person and put aside our own.  In this technologically flat world, the only mountains left lie within ourselves, and they are most certainly high enough to keep us apart, should we allow it.

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