(C)2012
Pizzaonian National Flag, courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator
As alienation becomes the norm in Worldonian societies, the applications to portalize to Pizzaonia also increase. There seems to be a relationship between the two events.
The advent of digital technology, combined with the marketing genius and compulsion of the United States in particular, has produced a very masked but real alienation between people. As our technology becomes more pervasive, clearly our human evolution is unable to keep up. We no longer need to interact with each other on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, we still emotionally need direct contact with people even though the amount of significant human interactions is exponentially decreasing. What makes this event less obvious is that digital communications seem to increase human interaction and indeed, in a different way it does. Unfortunately, it is virtual interaction and not really person-to-person interaction.
This apparent contradiction makes the situation difficult to come to grips with in a human and material way. For one, it is very easy to be in digital contact with several people each day without actually coming into direct contact with a single human being.
Everything from ordering the things we need to sustain ourselves, as well as what we need to entertain us, is completely available digitally. Exasperating the situation even more, today many people earn a good living without having to make daily, direct human contact. This lack of personal contact with each other effects in a serious way the quality of human interaction still necessary for our emotional stability.
In our pre digital world, we needed to interact with people many times a day simply to make things work. We learned very quickly we had to have the most basic social skills to function effectively. This need created a way of learning from each other necessary communal survival skills in a completely human and natural way.
It also created a leaving effect on the human ego by teaching us we needed each other simply to live normal lives. From this, the concept of community evolved. Our everyday human interactions with each other built a common bond that allowed us to exist as communities. On a very large scale, this old world is disappearing and unfortunately, the new world that will be created from our new digital environment has not fully arrived.
This creates a vacuum and an alienation that creates division and unrest. As we remove the need for real, direct social interaction, we begin to lose our ability to empathize with each other. As a result, people of different persuasions no longer trust each other. Hate and suspicion begin to fester. However, in our bliss, we live happily ever after communicating through social media. How many followers or friends we have on our Facebook page become our standard for judging our social success.
Very little can be done to counter this rapid evolution - nor should we. It is part of the dynamic evolving society we all need to embrace. It now has a life of its own, both economic and personally. The question is not how do we go back to the way it was because we cannot; the question is how can we retain the necessary social values with our new way of digitally interacting?
This is more than a question left to the social scientists; this is a question that should engage all of us now.
Sister Veronica, commenting for “The Pizzaonian” from the United States
"The Pizzaonian" also recommends http://giovanniandfranco.com
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