Our modern society has wrapped itself around technology, we are engulfed in it, and I truly am not sure we know how to live without it. Essentially, we are addicted. We live in a fast-paced world where if it isn’t instant, we don’t want it. In a world where technology is everything, it isn’t farfetched to say it is affecting every part of our lives, inside and out. My question is, how can we become so obsessed with a way of living, when clearly it is tearing a healthy lifestyle and our relationships apart right in front of us? We are bombarded with standards through our socialization and connection to this world on most every matter, whether we realize it or not. Although we may not blame technology directly for all of our societal issues, it definitely plays a part in our ability to recollect our thoughts, respond and react to situations in our lives.
Take marriage for instance, the changes in standards behind what marriage stands for and how one thinks about it can be seen generationally. Marriage is hard work, and older generations were very accepting of this. Marriage used to be widely recognized as uniting two lives together and these two lives would remain as one forever. I don’t think people went into marriage thinking this is going to be really easy and fun all of the time, but they made a commitment to each other for life. The idea was that no matter how long or hard one had to work at issues to reconcile with the other, it would be done because two people loved one another. Marriage is still a very big deal and will have a phenomenal impact on a person’s life. I don’t believe marriage itself has changed at all, but the ideas and standards around it have certainly been shaped by newer generations of society. Today our divorce rates in the United States are reaching upward of 40%. Let me repeat, marriage is hard work, and it’s work that takes time. Time is one thing that younger generations of today do not have excess of. The unfortunate standard idea of today that marriage has become is that it’s okay if this isn’t the right person, or if it doesn’t work out because I can always get a divorce. It’s not uncommon and its hardly looked down upon anymore, so why would a person think they had to work hard at something if once again, there is a quick fix, an easy way out that won’t interfere with the rapid lifestyle of today.
This lifestyle and the technology that allows it keeps us constantly moving, yet constantly connected to one another through a variety of social media. I believe this distanced and impersonal interaction is directly related to the emotional detachment almost half of all marriages are experiencing. Marriages may end for a variety of reasons, but our society seems to be lacking what it takes to deal with the problem that resulted in the divorce in the first place, and it also lacks the standard that they should have even had to try to solve it. Every marriage is going to endure hardships that will take emotional commitment, communication and time to heal. Technology has detached us from even recognizing when and how to deal with these deep relational situations because the majority of our interactions exist on the surface level or through a technological device. Why would we take the time to deal with something hard when we are so used to finding shortcuts?
I don’t believe we will be backing away from the use of technology in our rationalized social world anytime soon, but I do think as human beings we need to take a step back and be aware. Even being aware is hard in our world because we are so used to repetition and going through the motions, but unless we want to become the technology ourselves we need to stop running like machines. We are human beings with feelings and emotions and no matter how far we detach ourselves from the real and personal world, we must realize that the remnants of these quick fix solutions can be found deep in our psyches, in our wounded relationships and in our society as a whole.
The reference made to the growing divorce rate is appropriate when talking about the general pattern over many decades as this blog does and it reminded me of how divorce rates during a recession drop because the couple could not survive economically without each other. Thinking of women, or men, staying in relationships that are no longer happy or even worse are unsafe makes me glad that divorce is an option and has become socially acceptable. That doesn’t negate the points made in this blog but rather broadens the view a bit.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to add to the blogs argument that divorce is relied on to much as an easy way out by elaborating on how “the ideas and standards around [divorce] have certainly been shaped by newer generations of society.” This generation has been shaped by the rise of television in our culture to an almost iconic status. In an attempt to entertain, the TV also shapes how we see each other, ourselves and the world around us and more importantly, it shapes our behavior and values. Values like having fun, making the most of your youth, sowing some wild oats… you see where I am going with this? Perhaps, TV sitcoms encourage us to want to be single by glorifying the single life and making the married life look like death by boredom, disengaged spouses and uncontrollable children. The question becomes is art imitating life or the other way around?