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A world culture of alienation has developed over the past few decades, and it now holds humanity in its grip. Like a fish in water, you may barely notice it, but whether you know it or not, it is victimizing you and the people you love.
I saw this coming twenty years ago. I was alarmed by the emphasis of psychology, the personal growth movement, and popular spirituality on personal power skills; self-help; individual and spiritual autonomy; creating one's own path. Guess what? Everything I predicted back then came true. This article is a wake-up call about where those trends have led us.
The creation of official fears that victimize you
Because of the beliefs that captured the popular mind twenty years ago, the current generation has been brought up valuing independence and self-protection to an unhealthy extreme. Now, as a consequence, everyone is afraid of relationship. (Not officially, mind you. What we say is, we're afraid of losing our c enter; becoming dependent on others; being overly influenced by someone else's thoughts or feelings; being exploited or depleted; etc. But in close relationship, desire naturally arises, and our boundaries start to blur -- and that triggers all the official fears.)
When people get afraid, they do things that hurt other people -- a lot. People who are fearful are liable to lash out or run away quite easily. Lashing out obviously hurts, but so does running away. Even though they may run away to prevent themselves and you from being hurt, if they are running away from you, then you would experience that as rejection and abandonment. That hurts!
Thus, the cycle of victimization continues. Culture's victims are afraid. Fearful people victimize each other. Their victims' response is to retreat. So they pull inward and then leave the relationship -- or they go into hiding within relationship. They don't know how else to protect themselves.
Scared people hurt other people
At the bottom line, scared (or hurt) people relate in ways that scare (and hurt) themselves and others. So, relationship is generally painful. And love is rarely good. Typically, in close relationship, scared people fight, and break up, or agree to disagree, and clam up. Break up or clam up. Either way, the question becomes, why go there? Why take that risk? No wonder the majority of people now avoid relationship altogether, or minimize close relationship, or minimize closeness in relationship.
What's happening? The "me" centered, empowerment-oriented culture has created much alienation and fear. Alienation and fear, in turn, have created a lot of dysfunction -- and malfunction -- in relationship. And needless to say, dysfunction and malfunction have created a lot of conflict, a lot of painful relating, and painful break-ups. So, relationship has become a scary, unstable, unreliable thing.
Our painfu l experiences, and the painful relationships we see everywhere, have convinced us that it's a good idea to live at a safe distance from our associates, whether we live together or not. (Physical proximity is less important than emotional proximity; people can be emotionally close while physically apart, but when we're emotionally distant, we're alienated no matter how close we (physically) are.)
The avoidance of relationship as standard operating procedure
Our culture has evolved many adaptations based on social fear -- and its underlying presumptions that social relations are dangerous, and social fulfillment is out of the question. These patterns are so commonplace, we no longer see anything wrong with them. The avoidance of relationship is what people do; what people expect; and what people accept. And in fact, this is what people have become accustomed to; what they insist on; what they create in their own lives.
In this social climate, relationsh ips are not very wordy. Or, if they remain wordy, the wordy parts are ritualized. We go over and over the same ground, but we don't dig into the meat of the relationship, or of one another. We talk less and less through to our significant others. Instead, we develop a bunch of systematic agreements about what to say, and what to avoid. These unspoken agreements become our ground rules. The result is communication-lite (which may be the subject of a future blog).
With social networking, a new crop of modern social-lites
Of course, if I say, "Relationships are going the way of the dinosaur," many people will strenuously object. "What do you mean? I've got a whole database full of my good buddies! I've got buddies in Tampa, Baton Rouge, Uruguay -- and I've got a buddy in Phoenix. How can you say that I, of all people, don't have any friends, or that I am avoiding relationship?
"And I'm not an exception: Look at the all the social networking on the web. People m eet new friends on web social networking every day. Relationships are on the upswing, dude -- haven't you noticed? Virtual relationships, that is! It's a virtual love revival!"
Absolutely! I've noticed that trend. I call it "social-lite": a social life that's less filling, less nutritive, so even though it's not more enjoyable, at least you can enjoy more of it -- at a fraction of the price. In fact, social-lite costs you practically nothing. It's not real good for you, and maybe that's the bad news, but here's the good news: it's definitely not bad for you -- at least not bad for you in any way your ego will fear.
I don't see relationships thriving. What's happening is legions of people living by the unwritten rules of social-lite. For example, most web buddies are "social-lites."
Qualifying for social-lite
When you meet a good prospect for a social-lite relationship, you can tell. You recognize them by all th e platitudes, the warm fuzzy intros. You can also tell by how loving they are ("loving" as defined by the social-lite standards of love, luv-lite). Another qualifying feature is, they're easy going. They have an all-allowing approach to virtual relationship. They have the spirit of huge allowing -- the kind that gives others infinite space, that supports everyone in staying on their own track, etc. In such people you can sense a promising opportunity for relationship without expectations or implications.
It's not just an empty promise -- it's an empty reality
The promise of infinite space is not just an empty promise, it's an empty reality. Social-lites really do give one another infinite space. For example, one may disappear for four months, and then pop up again. "Yo! I got busy." And the other person says, "Yeah, me too. We all get busy, don't worry about it. ;-)" All social-lite perfect: no guilt tripping, no expectations, no recriminatio ns -- no nothing. Distance and instability, it's all pre-approved, pre-accepted. That's infinite space -- and the allowing of it. Infinite space, infinite allowing, infinite independence, infinite "you go your way, and I'll go mine." That allows for infinite relationships, cause there's never any reason to say good-bye. (Actually, social-lites virtually rarely do say good-bye -- they just stop writing to you. Very clean, neat, and trouble free.)
Lite workers spreading their luv-lite in the world
Now there's even a bunch of people who consider it their mission to go around and spread lite and luv everywhere. You can love as much and as fast as you can cut and paste happy faces, warm fuzzies, and (((hugs))) -- all without ever meeting anyone in the flesh.
There's nothing wrong with luv-lite. That's why it's so popular. The only thing is, infinite luv-lite does not add up to soul-satisfying love. It's got plenty of empty calories, but not enough sound nutrit ion.
Honestly, it's not a "heart-healthy" diet, either. The human heart wants quality, not just quantity. The human heart needs depth. It's an attack on the heart when people try to substitute shallow relationships, in any quantity, for deep relationships. Relationships can be deep. Love can be deep. Deep, loving relationships are a big part of what the human experience is meant to be. Everyone can have them!
Who gets the best of your love?
There was a popular song that said,
Oh, sweet darlin, you get the best of my love.
It's truly tragic that no one gets the best of anyone in relationship-lite. Indeed, the real person can't be given, and won't be received, in that context. And, because of that, we (and others) never get to see how great we truly are -- or how great our associates are.
But that's not the real tragedy -- the real tragedy is that when a person is social ly dysfunctional, the best of someone's love might actually be luv-lite. The best of their love might really be smiley faces, and virtual huggies. That would be true if all they can do in real-life intimacy is unacceptably toxic. (We only hurt the one we love, right? We keep it superficial so we can be good to one another, right?)
Luv-lite brings a whole new meaninglessness to life
Luv-lite brings a whole new meaninglessness to the idea of luv. Friendship-lite brings a new meaninglessness to friendship. People with a million lite-friends are bound to wake up and realize they have no real friends. We certainly hope they'll wake up, at least!
Until then, luv-lite means heavy delusion. In friendship-lite, we're going to call people our close personal friends when in fact they are not. They are so far from being close it is ridiculous. They are at such a distance, and there is so much distance and p rotection built into that relationship, it's tragic. (Or, we could say, that much distance would be tragic if it were not desired. We could say that, but the truth is, it's tragic anyway.)
What we're really looking at here is dysfunction -- the sad result of our years of being victimized by propaganda against vulnerability, interdependence, deep sharing, personal service, and all of our human needs that run contrary to hip new age values. Dysfunction means you can't have what you want. It means that you can't have what you need. In such a dysfunctional world, the things human beings want and need are actually not things that they are going to able to have. They're simply not in that position. That's the implication of a dysfunctional world.
How does a new age social-lite save the world?
In this kind of world, one lacking in deep intimacy and deep communication due to fear of relationship, how do you make a positive difference?
We know that love is the true healer. Everyone knows that. But if relationship is off limits, how does love function? The great healing functions of love work through relationship, closeness, intimacy, support, validation, understanding, steering, feedback, guidance. If those functions are unusable because relationship itself is out of the question, how exactly can we help and heal humanity?
You could offer people blogs to read, to try to talk them out of some of their fear. Or you could offer them the concept of the direct relationship to God, hoping that they wouldn't be too afraid of God and the relationship with God. Make everyone into little yogi's, and have that be their path. A good concept.... but God is love. And love is relationship, essentially, isn't it?
I don't have a too much confidence in the beam-me-up path, because I don't think it's that easy to create a direct relationship with God that's truly functional, when y ou're afraid of people. There's a level of healing that's practically essential for people before they're going to be hot-shot yogis, grand ascending mystics.
Human beings are, in fact, all God's manifestations. And human beings are, in fact, the channels through which, most of the time, God works to heal human beings. So if we say have a relationship with God, but do not have close human relationships, God has been deprived of many of the functions that God has always used for helping you, for healing you, for instructing you, and even for guiding you.
If we take away human relationships, we force God to communicate in the purely psychic realm with people whose relationship dysfunction has made them insensitive, thick, guarded. In that case, what have you got? We've got God calling on a broken phone line. We've got people guessing what they heard and making it their "personal truth." How effective is that?
The line is broken when psychic awareness is insufficient to allow for a very effective dialogue with God. That doesn't mean God and the angels can't somehow heal us in our sleep, and be a companion to us, and do a lot of things that are helpful. But our human needs are considerable -- and they're not going to be taken care of by just meditation. We need more specific guidance, more handholding -- we need lots things that are almost impossible to effectively transmit through a broken phone line on the psychic level.
If we declared a revolution, would anybody come?
Friends, you have been victimized by this culture of separation -- this history of fear and dysfunction. But you can escape that trap if you will rebel against social dysfunction, and take responsibility. Do not run! Do not hide! Do not break off communication! Hang in there!
Make your mistakes, and then make a sincere effort to heal them, and do better next time. Feel your effects on others, and don't be discouraged -- improve! Don't withdraw -- because that hurts you and them more than all the social clumsiness and lack of skill in the world. Keep your heart alive. Remember what's important and make it your priority. Create real relationship functionality; heal yourself; heal the world!
I don't dare hope that we can change this trend in the world at large. But I hope you will rebel against it, and change it in yourself.
P.S. I know these few tips are not all you need to throw off the chains of social dysfunction. Here's some additional reading for those who want more:
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