Every time we pick up our mobile phone…
A couple caught my eye at a restaurant we went to the other day, they were sitting at a table covered with roses, which I thought was for a marriage proposal. This couple was either wandering around the restaurant taking photos constantly or sitting and doing something with their cell phones, and these lines from May came to my mind:
“This world is a world where true individual communication is extremely difficult and rare among the advanced communication tools that surround us from every side.” it is the world…our current destiny as humans is to live in a world where communication between individuals has been almost eliminated…we spend our lives talking into a voice recorder; As the number of radio, television and telephone cables in our homes increases, our existence becomes lonelier."
In the same book, May also mentions that "the schizoid man is a product of technological man" who exists in the world he lives in, which he defines as schizoid.
When May wrote these lines in 1969, the mobile phone had entered people's lives in America only 5 years ago and had 1.5 million users. According to 2013 data, the number of mobile phone users in the world is 6.8 billion people. I wonder what May would say if she heard that 55% of young people today spend more than 4 hours a day on their mobile phones?
I can't exactly say "schizoid"; Because now we all know that we have two lives: 1) Our real life 2) Our life in the virtual world. We have two lives, but we only have one. This situation requires a choice: You will either be there or you will be here. I think this loneliness that May mentioned begins when we prefer the virtual world to the person next to us. The distance between us in real life begins when we start talking to people in the virtual world rather than to the people next to us. That's when the silence begins... Then begins being together but far away... That's when this lack of communication that May mentioned begins.
So perhaps what is needed today, when it is impossible to ignore the virtual world, is to establish a balance. Balance is not forgetting our loved one while existing in the virtual world... not missing that moment when we can live with them... making eye contact with the person we love because we will exist there... a sip we drink. Maybe it's not forgetting the pleasure of the tea and the cool wind touching our face... Maybe balance means turning our back to the virtual world for a while while enjoying these things... Maybe it's not preferring them to our virtual world when we can actually enjoy the moment.
The truth we should forget is maybe the mobile phone. Every time we pick it up, even if randomly, we are the ones who cannot balance it and miss the moment... who walks away from the one they love... who misses out on life... it will be us again!
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