FROM THE EDITOR: Connected, and Missing Connections
It's easy to blame technology for the breakdown of civil society and our increasing social isolation. A breakdown by the roadside suggests we might be missing something more important: trust.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Driving west along Interstate 64 is an adventure in natural beauty. Though the roadway stands as a sign of our ability to shape geography to our needs, walk a hundred yards in either direction and there is forest that hasn’t significantly changed since Virginia was settled.
There are few drives in America as ruggedly appealing.
Its frontier-like beauty, however, makes it a bad place to have a breakdown.
But a breakdown we had. Miles from anything resembling civilization, one quickly appreciates the power of modern cellular technology.
One call to Geico, and a tow truck was on the way — though it took an hour to get to us, because it had to come from Roanoke. A second call and we had a Hyundai dealership lined up to receive our car and diagnose what’s wrong. Though that process will take a week.
A third call and we had a rental car lined up so that we could continue our journey to Kentucky where we were traveling to celebrate a family member completing summer camp at Fort Knox.
Forty-five minutes into the wait for the tow truck, as the temperature pushed toward 90, my wife noticed something unusual.
“We’ve been here all this time, and no one has stopped to help.”
I hadn’t even really thought about it. But she was correct. And in rural parts of America, that’s not what one expects. Country people, we like to believe, look out for one another.
Thank God for Technology
I don’t suppose I’ve ever been more grateful to live in the modern age than I was on Tuesday. Having been in cars that broke down — a much-more common thing in the 1960s and ‘70s — on family vacations growing up, I remember my parents’ struggles navigating everything we did on Monday with just three phone calls.
But I also remember people stopping to help. Some even stayed in contact with our family after we parted.
Which led me to wonder, why didn’t people stop? Would I?
I’d like to say I would, but truth be told, I’m not sure. I’ve stopped in the past to offer assistance to people stuck in similar situations. But I’ve also dialed #77 to inform state police of breakdowns and just kept motoring.
Sometimes because my own schedule didn’t allow me to stop; sometimes because something in my gut said this situation doesn’t look right — let the authorities handle it.
Whether people are less likely to stop and help stranded people now is an unknown. What is known, however, is that people are far less connected than we once were. And technology, while part of the problem, is not the only reason.
Robert Putnam’s 2000 classic Bowling Alone revealed that since at the least the 1970s Americans have been drawing more within themselves and becoming less likely to interact with others. The consequences of these actions are severe.
But whether technology is accelerating those issues remains an open question.
As Putnam wrote in the 2020 revised version of Bowling Alone, “the consequences of the Internet will be determined by the ways in which we use it.”
So technology and the internet by themselves can’t necessarily be blamed for what’s happening to our society, which to many appears less tolerant, more hateful, and decidedly more fearful. These issues, as Putnam showed, appeared long before the internet was little more than a curiosity.
Fear, or Lack of Trust?
Watching car after car, and truck after truck, roll by, it was the question of fear — and less so that of technology — that had me pondering why people weren’t stopping.
The fear of the drivers, to be sure. After all, they don’t know who I am, or what I might be doing there. And my own fear. While the vast majority of people who stop will do so to help, highway robberies — though rare — aren’t unheard of.
In other words, both those in cars that are working and those of us sitting by the side of the road are somewhat crippled by our own fears.
Is this more true now than 50 years ago in my youth? That question is probably unanswerable.
But that we are mutually fearful of one another is something I suspect many would agree with.
This type of mutual fear abounds in politics. The distrust is so bad that nationally the two sides reach for vitriol and condemnation before a handshake and a chance to sit down and hear one another out.
It’s also present in schools. Parents fear what will happen to their children; school leaders and teachers often fear (or at least dread) having to deal with parents uninterested in hearing what they have to say.
The list could go on, but the point is made. So why is mutual fear so prominent?
I would suggest the lack of trust we feel for one another.
Consider the irony. We’re too afraid to stop and help, or we’re afraid of who might stop to help. But we think little of trusting an app to send a tow truck to a spot that has been geo-located. And we trust that the app will send someone there to take care of the problem who isn’t going to harm us.
In our case, the apps worked.
The tow truck driver who found his way to us thanks to geolocation was a former Marine, and on the hour-plus drive back to Roanoke we had what could be described as a lovely conversation.
The odds are good that I would have otherwise never met this gentleman. We move in entirely different circles, have very different perspectives on life and politics, but in a moment of need we were able to connect, if but for an hour. And we each trusted an app to make that happen.
That meeting, and many others like it, have allowed me over the years to move beyond some of the knee-jerk fears and criticisms I had of people I fundamentally disagreed with politically.
If we can trust technology to help us overcome our fears in times of need and vulnerability, then we should be willing to take the next step and try to build trust with the people who finally arrive.
The problem, of course, is that there is no app that can teach us to trust one another.
That starts by sitting down and talking to people unlike yourself.
Technology can help us make such connections happen — whether by happenstance when you break down by the side of the road, or intentionally as when we use dating apps or apps designed to bring people face-to-face — but it’s up to us to learn to trust the people we’re connected with.
And we’ve been failing at that for almost half a century.
Hope Abounds
In spite of it all, the signs are all around us that we can rebuild trust.
Ask people nationwide if they believe in public schools, and you’ll receive a decidedly negative response. Ironically, ask people if they have faith in their local public school, and a decidedly more-positive tone emerges. This quirk in polling has been persistent for the quarter century that I’ve been writing about education.
A similar trend occurs when one talks about immigration. Ask people how they feel about undocumented immigrants in the country writ large and there is a swell of support for stricter enforcement of immigration laws. Trump rode that sentiment back to the White House last year.
But the country as a whole is not pleased with the brutality that this president is using to force people out of the country. And the surge of support Trump rode to the White House has now made a U-turn. From the Brookings Institute:
a majority disapproves of [Trump’s] record on immigration, and overall attitudes about immigration have made a U-turn. Support for decreasing immigration has fallen by nearly half, to just 30%, and a record-high 79% now consider immigration to be good for the country. This has happened despite broad support for the president’s actions to close the southern border—and for cooperation between federal and local officials to enforce immigration laws, which Democrats often resist.
These two examples share a common thread. Talk about problems in the abstract, and we tend to bring our own fears to the table. It’s why we’re easily swayed when people talk “tough” or offer overly simplistic answers to enormously complicated questions.
Talk about problems in the local community with the people you know, and our humanity shines through.
While there are always the extremists, for the most part Americans still believe in giving people the opportunity to follow their dreams, and they still generally respect people who work hard to get ahead.
What we don’t trust are the institutions that makes those opportunities possible.
This is what Putnam has chronicled in Bowling Alone, and it’s what the polling about education and immigration reveal.
Which brings us back to Putnam’s observation about technology. The effect it has on us as a society ultimately comes down to how we use it.
Do we allow it to further tribalize and mistrust one another — as is the case with social media very often — or does it help us connect to and understand those we might not otherwise have a chance to meet, as happened to me on Tuesday.
As ever, whether we choose to tap into what strengthens us as Americans — belief in freedom of thought, the merits of hard work, and respect for people with opposing views — or what divides us rests with each individual.
Perhaps the question we each need to ask ourselves is this. Do we wish to live with our fears? Or do we wish to live with trust?
The lesson reinforced sitting on I64 this week? When breakdowns occur, trust is the only way forward.
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Or, hear me out - maybe sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And how you look at it says more about you than the object itself. To keep the cliches rolling, to a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail.
Myself, I'll stop or call something in if I see a need, but a car broke down on the road, particularly an interstate, in this day and age isn't the crisis that it was even 25 years ago, much less 50.
As you mention, you had at least one cell phone in the car, and probably more. I doubt there are many places along I64 without coverage in this state.
Talk does have value, but only if it is grounded in principle and not merely for its own sake.
One cannot help but wonder if there's ever anything the writer and like minded folk would actually stand and fight for, rather than talk.
If so, it's well hidden. A nation, a society, a culture is a living, breathing thing. In ways, no different than a person. If a man is drowning in a river, and you spend an hour, a month, a year, the rest of your life discussing what a shame it is he fell in; before you decide to do anything about it, you might find its a bit too late.
Republicans are drowning this nation in a torrent of hate, ignorance, greed, and dishonor - as they have as a group signed away their freewill to a tyrant. Why are we not holding the individual members of that cult to account? Especially when they want our vote?
There might be a 25% tax on maple syrup tomorrow, it might be 50%. The Canucks hurt Donnie's feelings it seems.
Maybe the Marines are sent to Fredericksburg tomorrow, maybe they go back to Los Angeles.
Republican judges lift the blindfold before making a ruling on a shadow docket, disaster help depends more on your political affiliation than your need. American citizens deported to other countries, or threatened with loss of citizenship - again - based upon the whims of a morally corrupt felon.
With secret police becoming the norm. Revered colleges are shaken down for millions, knowledge is suppressed or ignored, morally questionable lawyers are rewarded with powerful lifetime judgeships with little investigation of the allegations against them.
Oh, and lest we forget, as we gut funding for charity, encourage the criminalization of poverty and illness, and provide welfare to billionaires on a credit card.
And none of this matters as much as how cheerful Tara Durant was at the last barbecue, where y'all had a real nice conversation?
Yeaaaah....I'm just not seeing it. not at all. Right is right, wrong is wrong. Always was, always will be. Pretending otherwise helps no one.