by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Right now I am feeling very jaded. Yes I am very tired. So that’s part of why. But I feel it’s only a small part. The larger part is because of ‘life’ as a single 48 year old guy living in a small town, where people casually disregard the need to exchange ideas (via deeper conversation) and socialize.
You see I think as a human being – you cannot ignore these two big requirements for well being and get away with it.
As a New Zealander – I think we have a curse related to this. The curse must come from the hardships of the pioneer era. If you are too close to the ‘pioneer epoch’ in time then your culture has not yet achieved ‘social maturity’.
A place which has not achieved ‘social maturity’ will – either unwitingly or wittingly – choose to ignore the need to exchange ideas, have deeper conversations and socialize as a regular part of their common ‘rituals’ (the antrhopologists like that term ‘ritual’).
You see a socially mature population would a) recognize that ‘widespread social immaturity’ is a cancer and b) chose to combat it on an individual level.
In small town NZ we seem trapped in these insular pioneer manacles – and we cannot seem to (or want to) override this tendency.
This begs the question: Is smalltown NZ (& NZ especially as a whole) addicted to this ‘social immaturity’, that results in either a deep form of loneliness or a situation of co-dependency (via you girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband etc)?
You see NZ seems to be bifurcated between the two camps. One camp single @ not getting enough social contact, conversations; and the other camp that board themselves up at home wth their partners or perhaps wider family members.
The Australians seem to be better at this than us Kiwis – they seem to be wiser in knowing that they need proper socialization also and making it happen. Of course I would be a fool to not mention that much of this is due to the ‘big city effect’ where perhaps 75% of Australia lives in the big cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth Darwin. Big cities by there nature (a lot of people in a small space) make it such that a certain amount of what I might call ‘surface level socialization’ is unavoidable (in cafes, public transport, at the larger headcount workplace, neighbours in higher density apartments, at the bars etc).
But Australia I think is more social than NZ ( and so less ‘lonely’) not just because of the size of their cities. I think Australians are perhaps further over their ‘pioneer syndrome’ than NZ. There is a certain necessary pigheadedness about ‘pioneering life’. You have to ignore the fact that it’s a lonely place while you build the country into something more than a few huts with dirt roads. But if your society can’t ‘shake off’ this cultural programming once it has been sufficiently built then surely this becomes a societal -wide pathology. I think we in NZ do suffer this pathology and Australia does too, but to a much lesser degree.
Of course the question then becomes “how does a country that has this a-social pathology affliction get out of it, treat it etc”? I think it’s a very hard question and a very hard task. You see the pathology self reinforces itself. Once someone is insular, they become less confident with others, less skilled in conversation, more likely to be embarrassed about things, more likely to be offended – so they shut themselves away more.
When a society does this, we must then see declines in all the institutions that promote sharing of ideas and socialization. The most obvious decline is that of the ‘great western pub’. You see for a long time the pub was perhaps the center of socialization for the wider community.
Speaking as a NZ’er or an Aussie (or an American or a Canadian etc) The English Pub is obviously a part of our collective Western ethnic heritage. The pubs (and its offshoot the night-club) have all been in decline in the West over the last fifteen to twenty years. This is just one example of one formally strong institution where wider socialization between people is the whole point.
I’m sure that more than the pub – i.e. cricket teams, Netball teams, rugby teams, table tennis, sewing clubs, amateur dramatics etc have all dwindled in participation. This is proof that the pathology has been spreading. At this point there’s no real debate against this fact, other than perhaps the argument that ‘yes but what about the internet – people socialize and communicate on the internet now’.
Yes this is true – but it is not a like for like replacement of the pub, the cricket club, the bowls club etc. Many would say it’s an unhealthy bastardization of socialization. Some might disagree and say that that is being to dogmatic – after all should not the way we socialize be able to change? I guess the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Internet socialization or communication is perhaps best described a ‘half-measure’, that is fundamentally imperfect.
On a personal level – yes internet communication has been great for me – but I do feel its imperfections acutely. For example when I was younger in the nineties the pub scene was a great way to meet the opposite sex and socialize with friends and the wider community – but now that that has essentially gone, and I perhaps chat or send an email to someone it’s clearly something that leaves me wanting a richer experience. If it’s not a long term friend your messaging (I’m messaging) you never really meet up with them – and most the time you don’t request a physical rendezvous. If it’s a relative or complete stranger you say a few lines, like their posts and you might rehash the scenario for a while or you might lose interest and stop doing that.
I should mention the ‘online dating’ situation briefly. Again compared to the pub or the amateur dramatics club of old, it is a debasement. When I was younger – perhaps around thirty I did try this online dating. I found it to be shallow. This really is because the technology is designed to keep you single and having casual realtionships, because that is where the tech giants get there money. There’s no point in saying much more other than this is how I experienced it and I dropped it as a consequence.
I myself am of course talking from the perspective of a very well educated middle age man (of forty-eight), living in small town New Zealand and being single. I am a Gen Xer. I guess I am luckyin that up until thirty-odd I the old world of the social institutions was mostly still in tact. If I was twenty-five I would be more upset about this non-socialization pathology that I am. If I never socialize again, at least I can look back to the old days and feel warm inside. When the twenty five year old is fifty will they be able to do the same? Or will the doctor have done their best to tranquilize the feelings out of them entirely?
And I should mention that I think it is good that more people realize we are in a ‘loneliness pandemic’. I’ve seen that mentioned a lot – on the internet in particular. My fear is we talk about it online, and therefore basically almost make it worse. I myself feel lonely a lot of the time. I worry about this.
I am concerned that my romantic/dating life ground to a complete halt at about age forty. In small town NZ as a over forty male I feel you cannot hope to make a new friend. My friends (bar perhaps one or two others who is really just acquaintances) I have all known since high school. I do not see this changing while my environment remains the same.
In the interests of keeping this digestible – I will end it here. I don’t know what the solution is. I have a hope that there will be a mass movement to be online less. I see some anecdotal evidence of this – but I would say it is ‘scanty at best’. I haven’t mentioned the ‘gender wars’ that seem to be terrible at the moment – but I will say now that it surely is amplified by this pandemic of the a-social. We really need to make a nation-wide and indeed a global emergency of this situation we face.
It is such a thorny issue. I feel sorry for myself and all the millions of others effected by this, especially the young. But it’s bad for everybody. We’ve drifted into this at base totally avoidable situation. I will try to remain positive about the solutions. I will try to champion people to get over their ever increasing social inhibitions meet more in the real world more often. After all a problem (or an idea) shared is a problem halved as they said in the (sometimes wiser) olden days.
Perhaps tomorrow after a good sleep I will feel less jaded about everything. Perhaps this is nothing new and past societies have suffered through and came out the other end of this anti-social quagmire we seem so stuck in. Perhaps the cyclical theory of History can give us (& me personally) a rational form of optimism. Perhaps by 2035 the pubs will be bangin‘ again just like 1999 and before (But did they also ‘banged too much’ back then? Perhaps).
Anton Martin Smith Writer 