We live in a time of sadness, even despair. There are so many things wrong with our world, so many heartbreaks and tragedies, happening now and soon to be happening. Has it always been thus? Perhaps so, but what distinguishes our world from earlier times is that because of instant media and communication we know all about it, everywhere all over the world, probably way more than our poor primate brains can tolerate. I think this is one of the many curses of social media—sometimes it brings us more sadness and doubt than we can handle.
Let’s be honest: there has always been sadness; uncertainty and tragedy is endemic to the human condition. We are evolved for it and adapted to it. For most of our history, humans were one dry season away from famine, one new pathogen away from plague, one military campaign away from war. Think even of recent history: two world wars, a world-wide economic depression, the ever-present looming threat of nuclear annihilation, and most recently, the Covid pestilence that killed millions. Right now, today, there is a shooting war in Ukraine that is causing unimaginable suffering. Yet the Ukrainians, against all odds, persist. We might even say they are hopeful. How can that be? I believe it is because they are together, they are close, they share their agonies. They don’t need Facebook to tell each other what to do and how to think. They might not have electricity or even water, but they are shoulder to shoulder, close by, with each other. I think there is a lesson there.
That’s my theme today: despair is global, but hope is local. Hope is face to face, body to body, friend to friend and family to family, unmediated by technology or clickbait. I can read that some young person has “gone viral” due so some video they posted, and now has two million followers. This is supposed to represent some modern-day version of success, I suppose. Those followers can even be monetized and make that young person rich. But what use, really, are those two million people? It’s a number on a screen, or perhaps a headline in a news story, but can that vast anonymous multitude help you through a hard time, or comfort you in the despair you feel when the laptop closes down and nighttime closes in? When it comes to hope, two or three people you can be in the same room with to share your burdens is more valuable than two million or twenty million followers. With two or three close friends or family members you can get through a war, survive a life-threatening illness, be on drugs and come off them—do things that we as human beings have the power to do as long as we are together.
I think this yearning for direct, face-to-face contact played into the resistance to lockdowns and masking during Covid. At first I found it hard to fathom why anyone would risk dire illness or death by not wearing a mask, but as I pondered it more in hindsight I wonder if the comfort of seeing a person’s face—especially someone you know—is more important emotionally than the abstract risk of possible contracting an illness. When you wear a mask you look anonymous and scary, and others with masks look that way to you. It can catapult you into a dark place reminiscent of a nightmare. You just want to see a smile somewhere. During Covid there was a lot of denial, too. I remember reading about a server in one restaurant in the Midwest who, when asked by a reporter about Covid, laughed and said, “What’s Covid?” Everyone around her, hearing her reply, laughed too. The comradery of companions can’t scientifically protect you from a virus, but it can keep hope alive—which for many people may be more important.
In a recent article about the epidemic of depression in teens, the authors cited research that clearly showed that “the drop in teen well-being coincided with the rise of smartphones,” and that “there is no question of an association between the use of social media and the dramatic increase in suicidal behavior and depressive mood.” There it is in black and white. In the old days, before smartphones and social media, teenagers would hang out and talk face to face or on a landline phone—fulfilling their critical need for social interaction and peer intimacy.
It’s clear from all of history that human beings, when pushed to the brink, have an enormous capacity to endure and to remain hopeful—but only if they are within reach of each other in real physical time and space. So I’m all for a campaign (yes, perhaps on social media) to encourage people to step away from their screens and look at each other again, and touch each other. It may be our greatest resource as we face the ever greater challenges to come.