The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
I’m writing this in mid-March, 2021. You’d be able to tell that by the publish date, of course, but its timing is relevant to the subject so I want to make it clear from the onset. For some of you, this will feel about two-and-a-half months late. For others, it will seem years overdue. Others still, right on time. In any case, I hope it imparts something you can take with you. We sure as hell need to hear it.
“You don’t know me.” As someone raised mostly in the 90s, this was the go-to line for any and all overwrought drama, be it in a Saturday morning cartoon, a family comedy, or teen-focused movie. It was almost a rallying cry for the age. I didn’t fully understand it until lately.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been an old man since I was eight. I didn’t have a teenage rebel phase, I didn’t have the “expected” college experiences. I’m a boring nerd who spent most of his time in games or books. I was friends with a close-knit set of a few people – we’d hang out whenever we could and we knew each other well because of it. The idea of being fundamentally misunderstood was foreign.
That last bit is the thing. Within our groups, we were understood. We were challenged. Our intricacies, our flaws, our drives. The things that defined us. Made us human. Before I go any further, I want to stress this point. This is still true today. There are people in my life I would do anything for because they are a part of my group. For all the faults in that idea, it’s true, and it’s good. It’s a good way to be.
But then society stopped communicating.
We are social creatures. The need for acceptance and belonging is powerful, almost too powerful – a gravitational force for which few have found an escape. In the past, that force allowed us to look past some flaws in others in order to find a group. We had to, there was nowhere else to go. And then, suddenly, there was.
The internet is a miracle. It is, possibly, the greatest tool mankind has created. Actually, let me walk back that qualifier. It is the greatest tool mankind has created. In the blink of civilization’s eye, a disparate and disjointed world snapped together and sent a shockwave across the globe. We’re still trying to understand the fallout from that wave, and we seem intent to lean on our greatest flaw: pride. We believe we have adapted well, overnight, to a concept and status previously unknown to any generation.
We’re wrong. Look around, that much should be obvious.
When was the last time you had an actual talk with a friend? One that was meant to challenge an opinion or belief? Those are difficult things to do, but I remember them. I remember people coming after what I held dear, and on a few occasions I remember their arguments changing my beliefs. We were close. We shared things, and that forced us to meet somewhere along the way.
Now? Now we shout into the void at the people who already agree with us. We have access to more than seven billion nameless opinions and can filter them out for precisely what we need to feel validated. To feel understood. Who was it that agreed? Who knows, and really, who cares? That validation means we belong somewhere. It’s a group now. A nameless, faceless group that makes us feel we belong to something.
Our groups have become amorphous and ever-shifting, centered around individual concepts rather than the human person. This account agrees with my stance on Issue X, good. This other account agrees on Issue Y. Do they agree on anything else? It doesn’t matter. We can construct a person from these ideas and agreements, some amalgam of a man that is our idealized counterpart and we belong with that – that internet-creature which exists in our sad, bondless utopia.
This chimera provides us safety, a place to retreat from difficult things. Human beings loathe embarrassment, and acceptance that one may be wrong, particularly in some public manner, supplies that embarrassment in spades. So, we leap behind the chimera and ask it to console us, to turn away everything that might challenge.
It didn’t take long for this chimera-war to come to a head. There is no more political discussion, only straw-man bonfires that we huddle around for warmth. What does the other side believe? Why, have you seen their chimera? They believe in the Very Bad Thing, there can be no discussion. We must destroy them.
No relationship can survive without conversation. When a marriage sours, I’ve found it’s easy to trace the roots of that downturn to a lack of communication. When we talk – and, importantly, when we listen – we learn. We begin to understand. We see the person behind the issues and, if we can accept that fault lies on both side, that imperfection is embedded fundamentally into the fabric of human nature, we will forge a stronger Group.
America is little more than an enormous nuptial test, and anyone can see we’ve exposed those vile roots of divorce. How far back the schism goes is hard to say, but until we accept that each of us is at fault, it’s going to be difficult to find a way out. We need to talk. We must. We have to see each other not as these hateful chimeras but as we are. Flawed and often wrong, but capable of glorious things. Human.
When someone says, “You don’t know me,” maybe it’s time we shut the hell up and listen.
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