The New Ennui
Our grandparents feared an ennui that would saturate culture; that would defy culture; that would stagnate culture. Today, I fear the New Ennui: a fundamental boredom with humanity.
The irony of all new forms of interactive entertainment is that none of them is truly interactive. Despite the increasing abilities of games to let us hunt each other down; despite the ready availability of e-mail and instant messaging; despite the ubiquity of cell phones and their ilk, people have ceased to truly interact. Sure, we may instantly message a friend halfway ‘round the country, but the real interactivity of genuine human contact has been lost, whittled down to a few cryptic abbreviations on a two-by-two screen, IMHO. Perhaps we can see the words of others, but where is the soul or complexity?
We have crippled ourselves. This New Ennui is no longer just a feeling of boredom with life, but a disconnection with the most fundamental aspect of humanity—social interaction. Is it so surprising we are so easily bored when removed—however briefly—from the devices that pretend to connect us?
We are indeed connected, but to the devices themselves, not to one another.
The average cell phone, in addition to its basic telephony function, allows a bored teenager to play primitive—but improving—games for hours. On any given night, it is depressingly uncommon to drive beside any current model minivan and not see the unearthly glow of an LCD screen in the back, flickering images of transformers or Snow White into children. Or we see school children in the schoolyard, barely able to read, but restlessly playing video games on their Game Boys. This is the root of the New Ennui: the very devices that pump massive amounts of information into our lives are the selfsame devices that trap us, isolate us, diminish us.
And we are still so bored.
My generation is the first to have the availability of almost endless entertainment while sitting on our butts in the comfort of our own homes. In our living rooms, we can watch televisions that offer 100-plus channels or DVDs with almost theater-quality sound and picture. From our computers with broadband connections, we can surf the web, looking for “interactive” Flash games; or we can play Counter-Strike; or we can download the latest music and movies; or we can, heaven forbid, read electronic books. While it may be true that all these devices offer nearly limitless access to information, the technology also offers us almost limitless opportunity to isolate ourselves from other people—yet allow us to pretend otherwise: we’re IM-ing our friends, aren’t we? When we can download, legally or not, the latest releases from 50 Cent or Englebert Humperdink, how much genuine interaction are we having with others: clerks, friends, fans of the same artist?
We are alone like never before. The New Ennui damns us to lives that are punctuated by human contact, not lives richly steeped in a social existence.
Rob Zombie, ever the oracle of contemporary living, yowls,
radio talk show try to project
everything you need when you gotta connect
. . . . . . . . . . . .
I feel so bad
I feel so numb
And we are numb: we are numb to the dangers of the course we are following; we are numb to the political processes that will direct our futures; we are numb to each other and numb to ourselves. This is the New Ennui: numbness. And we love it.
Inherent in this technological age we have built for ourselves is a passing of the magic of humanity. We have constructed a digital golem and then “marveled at our own magnificence.” The Matrix exists, and we ourselves have built it.
But it is time to free our minds; to insist that the technology devouring humanity is merely a tool to achieve our destiny, not our destiny itself; to discipline ourselves and our families so that we do not lose the magic of humanity; to fight the New Ennui.
I am not demanding we destroy our technology and return to a Neolithic existence. I am not suggesting that we boycott technology. I do not promote a Luddite existence. But I am demanding responsibility: responsibility to use technology as means to an end; responsibility to chart the implications of our dependence on these tools; and, most importantly, a responsibility to preserve human interaction and human contact and obliterate the New Ennui.
