Disconnection In Modern Life

One often hears stories or reminiscences of 'the good old days' and this no doubt has an element of inflated and exaggerated sentiment to it, yet in some respects it is apparent that aspects of modern living compare unfavourably with those of the not too distant past. While mobility and opportunity whether it be economic, social, geographical or cultural has expanded exponentially in the more 'developed' nations of the world, some of the benefits of a more patient, humble and connected time have been lost, particularly in terms of connection between persons in their day to day lives. By connection I'm referring chiefly to those bonds of acquaintance, friendship, and community formerly experienced by most people in society. While in the past these connections came freely and easily in the more communal settings of village or small town living, today's experience of modern living is decidedly different.

In the pre-modern, pre-urban, rural condition of living, people had low geographic mobility. They would be born, live and die in the same village without having travelled much at all. That would perhaps be considered today to be somewhat of a disadvantage. However, the denizens of small towns and villages also possessed the advantage of a greater familiarity (though it may be considered a disadvantage to those of a particularly private or reclusive nature) and connection with their families and neighbours, all the while enjoying greater living space with lower population densities. I know this probably sounds a little idealised, like a scene from a Jimmy Stewart movie but some of it was and is true. The stories about people knowing everybody and leaving their doors unlocked at night were true. The rates of crime (particularly property crime) were far lower in the 1st half of the 20th century in the United States and Britain.

In contrast the experience of modern life in the city is radically different. The modern urbanite is likely to live in a shoe box, crammed into districts with population densities far higher than those in rural and pre-modern society. This experience will also include such negative externalities (as the economists would put it) as crime, pollution, queues and the general rudeness of stressed out people. The modern person is also likely to come across hundreds of people in the course of an ordinary day (as opposed to the few in the pre-modern/rural person) yet his or her connection to each person is likely to be negligible or non existent (which may be a good thing for misanthropists). Ironically it may be that the modern person has fewer (in absolute and not just relative terms) connections, friendships and acquaintances than his or her pre-modern or rural counterpart.

Our economic, social, geographic and culutral mobility is far higher, and that's great. Yet often this mobility means we will lose our connections to friends and family as we all pursue our different paths in life. How often have even close relations, brothers, sisters, parents and children drifted apart not through any break down of affinity but just through the effect of geographical and social distance?

Modern living as we all know, also places greater pressures on time. Ironically even with all our improvements in labour saving devices and technology, it seems that we have even less time to meet with friends, family or even say hello to a neighbour or the doorman. Instead we are in constant state of 'on demand' through the technology that was supposed to save time and make life more convenient.

What does the future offer in modern living? It seems more of the same. An ever faster pace of life, 24-7 news, communications and commerce hand in hand with the increasing atomisation of society into a mere aggregration of isolated and self-interested individuals subject to and creating the will of the market which of course is the will of society ... or at least that's what we're supposed to believe.

Dissatisfaction In Modern Life

In November of 2004 Prince Charles came under criticism for comments from his diary that were leaked to the press, which included: “What is wrong with everyone nowadays? ... Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? ... People think they can all be pop stars, High Court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.”

It seems the Prince's comments were unpopular because he dared question the popular notion that people with enough vision and hard work can succeed in achieving anything that they aspire to. This popular idea is a relatively modern one, and perhaps is found in its strongest form in America and the concept of the American dream. That is the idea that anyone can make it big if only they work hard enough in the land of opportunity.

Someone once said that happiness can be measured or defined by the following simple equation: Happiness = Reality - Expectation. I think that was/is a pretty accurate assessment. It helps explain one of the more curious aspects of life in modern advanced economies & societies; and that is that although living standards have risen exponentially in the last 50-100 years it is doubtful that levels of happiness have risen substantially and in some regards may have decreased.

This seems rather incredible in light of the developments that have made modern living conditions far more comfortable than those enjoyed throughout most of recorded history. In just over 100 years the list of improvements has been nothing short of breathtaking; including electricity, running water, motorised transport, reliable food supplies, literacy, television, vacuum cleaners, computers, mobile communications, birth control, antibiotics, travel and leisure activities which have become available to a majority of persons living in highly developed modern economies.

While the reality of modern life no doubt reflects the incredible amenity and convenience of modern living compared to life in the hard labour of the agrarian economy that is of course only one part of our equation for happiness. The rapid growth in living standards has been more than matched by the rapid growth in people's exectations. This is where the Prince of Wales made a very salient point. People's expectations are unrealistic. A Gallup poll in 2003 found that 31% of Americans believed they would become rich one day, and amongst 18-29 year olds it was 51%.

Now in a very real sense most Americans, British and Europeans are rich compared to the majority of the world's people who live in less developed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They are also rich compared to their predecessors in the developed world. But this is not the type of rich they're thinking of. What is the definition of rich? In the past for many people the farmer next door with a few more acres and bullocks would have been the standard. However in the modern world because of the pervasiveness of media such as television, print and internet, the definition becomes more skewed. No longer is the average person looking next door to keep up with the Joneses but he/she is looking through the pages of Forbes 400, or lifestyles of the rich and shameless for an indication of what level of wealth is to be desired.

This reality-expectation gap not only exists in terms of wealth but in other areas such as relationships. Modern men and women no longer compare their prospective partners with average joe or the proverbial girl next door but with reference to the übermen and women of celebrity, fame and fortune. Their imagination thanks once again to modern media images leaps to near impossible ideals (or at least statistically improbable ones) of Vogue/GQ model looks, and the easy style and confidence of Hollywood millionaires. It's like a seductive dream that seems almost within in reach because of the pervasiveness of its presence through television, film and trashy magazines to the extent that we now to celebrities by their first names e.g. Tom, Nicole, Jen as if they are people we know. As the philsopher Alain De Botton puts it, "One often leaves the cinema after seeing an enjoyable Hollywood film thinking, My life is terrible. I want to marry a princess and live in a castle or something. The work of art was enjoyable, but it was a fable—a fantasy—and it makes us dissatisfied with our own lives."

In the movie Beautiful Girls (1996) Michael Rappaport's character captures this essence of fantasy: "Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That's all they are. Bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels."

The upshot of all these unrealistic expectations is of course dissatisfaction. Most people in modern economies while enjoying high standards of material comfort will never become millionaires (at least in 2006 US dollars) nor will they marry a supermodel, Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. They will instead have to deal with such things as job insecurity (if not unemployment), mortgages, failed relationships, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and the vague sense that some of the promise in life that they had been lead to believe in was a lie.

Essay On Love

I've come to a rather novel but nevertheless important realisation about something generally considered extremely important, that is the topic of love and in particular that subset known as romantic love or true love (however misconceived). Avid readers of FF are no doubt aware that the good doctor has been generally suspicious of the whole romantic love concept or movement (yes it is a movement that feeds the wedding, chocolate, greeting card and trashy novel industries).

The reasons for Dr K's scepticism are founded in science, observation, a little experience and philosophy of late. On an appreciation of the insights found from these sources he concludes that romantic love is neither rational nor is it really love in its true or best form. In reality it is a biochemical state induced by biological drives of the human animal designed to get the male and female of the species together for you know what. These imperatives do not necessarily conform nor are they congruent with motivations of love or the basis of love in relationships between humans. It is not an exercise of an informed or rational decision. This is probably the underlying reason for a great deal of broken relationships and unhappiness amongst people.

To recapitulate earlier posts on the science of love in a nutshell: in the state of romantic love, the participants (or less kindly, the victims), are subject to an extremely potent cocktail of neurotransmitters, phenylethylamine, dopamine etc which produce the powerful feelings of attachment, attraction, euphoria etc. So basically science tells us that when people are "in love" they basically lose their minds so to speak in a similar way to people on cocaine. But let's take a step back to the beginnings of this state. What causes attraction? What brings two people together in the first place (apart from a chance meeting in a supermarket or a cafe in Marrakesh or a carriage on the Orient Express)?
Why do two people like or love each other?

On the basis of self reporting we would get a range of answers to that question. Most of which would have some element of reasoning or good sense to it. Like the two people have common interests, they like each other's sense of humour, their personalities and outlook are compatible, or she liked his nose, he liked her hands. Well you probably won't get anybody to admit the last two (because it sounds too superficial), but it may be that they are the more telling factors, in so much as they speak of the unconscious biological forces at work, which are bringing the two people together.

Although the frequently reported personality/character/lifestyle factors make a lot of sense and probably do help in maintaining good relationships they in themselves are not enough. It would seem that many if not all of these factors could be found in one's friends and the platonic relations between friends. What is the difference for romantic relationships? It's sex. Even in the absence of lust. By that I mean, even if the attachment or attraction is not primarily of a sexual nature, what is happening is that the biological programming of the persons is nevertheless trying to steer them into such conditions for sex. This is perhaps what the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described as, Wille Zum Leben - the 'Will to Live', the unconscious drive to stay alive and reproduce.

This drive or will to live being based on such raw biological goals therefore does not operate on the rational level. It does not necessarily factor into account those qualities which make for a good, sustainable relationship between two people. It instead focuses on socially superficial but biologically significant factors such as appearance which on evolutionary grounds provide indicators to health and fertility. Basically this is why guys are attracted to supermodels (hmm probably not catwalk models because they are too skinny) and girls are attracted to rugby players (they probably most resemble the pre-historic alpha male).

If romantic love is a biological game is it really love? The emotional response to this question is probably - of course it is! But why? It's because it feels like love. But feeling and reality do not necessarily meet. As mentioned earlier, in the state of romantic love, the brains of the afflicted persons are bombarded with so many feel-good chemicals that it's almost impossible to think otherwise. In this heady state, the 'loved' person is never too far from one's thoughts, and their mere presence can make one feel suprisingly good. This powerful state of addiction is nevertheless no more than that. A great feeling. Can this be love? One loves because of how one feels. But why does one feel? How long will one feel the same way? What happens when we no longer feel the same way? What if he or she feels different? You see not only how superficial but how tenuous and capricious these foundations are?

The biological factors of attraction that bring people together in the state of romantic love do not necessarily keep them together. This is as we have learnt because the factors of attraction being biologically based ignore those personality/character/lifestyle compatibility factors which help make good relationships. So after the initial heady days of attraction pass, and two people settle down, perhaps have kids, the 'spark' dies. Biology has triumphed in so much as the couple have had children, so it doesn't really give a shit whether the people are happy or not. Meanwhile the husband and wife start having to deal with the realities of work, the enormous drain on energy, time and money that children pose. The chemical highs of romantic love have long since faded into at best a comfortable but boring routine of familiarity and at worst a jaded relationship of mutual indifference or barely concealed contempt. These outcomes are apparently not uncommon (statistically tends to kick in after about 4-7 years) and would perhaps go towards explaining the current divorce rates of 40-50%.

What then is love? Dr. K would say in its purest form, that it's caring, a deep valuing of a fellow human being or human beings. It's something that's far more generous and not a selfish or possessive thing in the way that romantic love is or can be. We don't love just because the other person makes us feel good. Here at FF we're not too big on religious themes but this time I think I we can borrow a line from the so called good book (1 Corinthians 13:4-8):

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

The Noodle Nadir

For many years I've consumed the leading brand of instant packet noodles. However in the past year or so I've noticed something disturbing. No it's not the msg. It's the noodles, their texture. Something's gone wrong. They're too hard and when you cook them for 2-3 minutes they're all stringy and stick together in clusters. It's all really f---ed up.

I've had to switch to an alternative brand. However the seasoning sachet for this brand has like double the msg, so I still use the sachets from the leading brand. This means I have to buy both brands of noodles. One for the noodles and one for the sachets. Gee what a waste!

The End of MAD: America's Nuclear Supremacy, Part 2

Ok I'm scratching my head (figuratively) trying to remember the whole gist of the original article behind this post. Ahhh yes, Schwarz argues that the dominant position of the US will lead to a dangerous environment whereby China and Russia will seek to offset American power by taking their own measures to strengthen their arsenals and in doing so increase risk and create conditions for miscalculation. Unfortunately that's a very vague argument, and it may be that my memory is a little vague regarding the article, but I think that was all Schwarz offered.

Schwarz's argument about competitors reacting or responding to increased US military power by shoring up their own capabilities is not particularly original. It's just the old concept of the security dilemma: any effort by one side to increase their military capabilities will lead to a counter effort by their rivals, so each is back to square one.

The real issue here is that this common security dilemma may not run to its usual course. This is because America's relative position re China and Russia is so far ahead. Even if Russia and China want to compete in a new nuclear arms race they simply don't have the resources to. Well at least Russia certainly doesn't and for China it would take at least 25 years while having to deal with other problems of rapid economic development, environmental management and social cohesion.

The US will remain in its hegemonic position (at least with regards to nuclear and conventional military power) for the foreseeable future because of its current absolute capabilities and the relative weakness of its rivals. This is not to say that the US can always get its own way (as seen in the Iraq Quagmire ... yes it's a quagmire) but simply that it is and will continue to be the leading power in international relations.