The video acknowledges at the beginning that “man is a social creature”
and we naturally form community. It goes on to making an interesting point that
the modern Western value of Hyper Individualization has isolated the
individual. The individual can now attain fulfillment outside of community
through personal achievements, wealth, self-image, and consumerism. The video
observes: “These tools of self-actualization replace familial and community
relationships. This has led to social fabric weakening, and loneliness.”
Online social networks
promote relationship “quantity” over relational “quality,” such as the number
of Facebook “friends.” We determine the nature and frequency of our online
interactions, thus becoming our own public relations specialists in the
process. The video says that this creates a cycle. We are lonely and afraid of
intimacy at the same time.
Online world offers us
gratifying fantasies: because we control the flow of our information, we will
always be heard; therefore, we are never alone. The idea that we will never
have to be alone is a paradigm shift. As human beings, we crave community.
Connectivity trumps intimacy. The video concludes “If we are not able to be
alone, we are only going to know how to be lonely.”
My own interest in the
video stems from the fact that I’m a parent of two Millennials. According to
the most recent census, this demographic constitutes a third of current world
population. In the U.S., Millennials have overtaken Baby Boomers, the
generation to which I belong, to become the largest living generation. Within
the next decade, representatives from this group are expected to head political
and social institutions worldwide.
Millennials are also
known as Global Generation. They are the first generation to embrace the notion
of “shared fate.” They understand the connection each has to the other across
the globe. But most of all, this is a generation which believes that as
individuals they have the power to effect real change, not always by
transforming our institutions, but by ignoring and circumventing them when
necessary. They believe in measurable results and they focus on action not
talk.
In the recently concluded
primary phase of U.S. presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders was the
most popular candidate among U.S. Millennials. In the United Kingdom, the
majority of Millennials opposed Brexit. In March 2014, the Pew Research Center
issued a report about how "Millennials in adulthood" are
"detached from institutions and networked with friends.”
Yet Millennials are also
the Loneliest Generation and the video introduced earlier is a testament to
that. Like the video says, connectivity is a powerful replacement to intimacy,
and creates the illusion of being heard, and faux-community. There’s a
dangerous side to the connectivity in an illusory world.
Jihadists have been
deftly exploiting social media to promote their agenda and recruiting among the
Western youth. As a result, Western Millennials are stocking the rank-and-files
of ISIS and other similar-themed terror bands. Perhaps, it is the “loneliness”
that is driving thousands of these youth to self-actualization in far-away
places, to become “Jillennials” – jihadis who are Millennials.
The recent attack on a bakery
in an upscale neighborhood of Dhaka, Bangladesh, has once again thrust the Jillennials
into spotlight. These attackers were not stereotypical and did not travel to
the “promised land.” They were mostly drawn from privileged classes, but their
involvement exposed ‘the cracks’ in our modern society.
"That's not my son,
that's not my son," lamented Meer Hayet Kabir in a TV interview for the
global audience. He was the crestfallen father of the 18-year old Meer Sameh
Mobasheer, who was the youngest of the five attackers of Holey Artisan Bakery
on July 1. Mr. Kabir happens to be an executive of a telecommunications
company, a hallmark of the globalized world.
As I watched the shaken
family patriarch trying to come to terms with the realities on the ground, I
began to reflect on the walled lives that the inhabitants of this globalized
world are building.
Just hours ago, Mr.
Kabir’s beloved son and his accomplices were systematically slaughtering
hostages and uploading pictures using the tools of the interconnected world. This
was the same offspring whom he gifted an English translation of the Quran so
that his child could explore the tenets of Islam directly from its source, not
through a warped interpretation elsewhere. Yet the lure of elsewhere
overpowered parental discretion.
The last time Mobasheer's
family saw him, he was walking out the door, munching on popcorn as he headed
to an examination preparation class. On that evening of February 29, Mobasheer
stepped out of his virtual living into a world unbeknown to the walled lives of
his family.
And this was not just one
disillusioned Millennial. The world came to know that all of Mobasheer’s
accomplices went through similar transformations.
One would think that in
this interconnected world of smart phones and smart apps, communication among family
members living under one roof is a foregone conclusion. However, in the case of
Mobasheer and his friends, the perennial generation gap was never bridged. Instead,
in their search for real living, these youngsters ended up on the darker side
of humanity.
Interestingly, the same
tools of communication that often fail to connect the family members are deftly
exploited by the darker forces. When the father of the San Bernardino shooter,
Syed Rizwan Farook, was inquired about his son’s background, Mr. Farook did not
hesitate to speculate that overseas terrorists could have contacted his son
using “internet and all this technology.”
The 9/11 attackers or the
2005 London bombers apparently had managed to keep their activities completely
hidden from their respective families. How did they do it? They exploited the
walls of isolation to pursue their agendas.
Radicalization is not the
only escape route of younger generations from the compartmentalized modern lives.
As the society organizes into nuclear family units, our mutual isolation
increases. The economic underpinnings of the globalized world foster further dissociation
as younger workforce often live large distances away from extended family and
friends. Our growing reliance on social technologies rather than face-to-face
interactions is thought to be making us feel more isolated. It means we feel
less connected to others; consequently, our relationships are becoming more
superficial and less rewarding.
We humans are social
animals and any isolation, particularly for long term, breeds loneliness.
Each of us has
experienced loneliness at certain points in life, whether due to death in the
family, job relocation, going to college, etc. However, these are temporary
events. Research suggests that this experience of loneliness has a positive
aspect as it motivates us to reconnect with others and to seek out new
friendships to reduce the "social pain" that we feel. But for some,
when reconnection is not easy or not possible, those people can remain in this
uncomfortable loneliness state for a number of years. Again, younger
generations remain more vulnerable in the loneliness state.
Perhaps as a generation
the Millennials will discover that the “tools of self-actualization” are a bit
of a farce. How about a good conversation with someone who knows you and cares
about you? “All you need is love” the Boomer generation said, but the reality
of the values that were passed on to Millennials seems to contradict this
sentiment. Perhaps the current loneliness epidemic is a good catalyst for
a healthy change to prioritize relationships.
If this shift to prioritizing
authentic relationships doesn’t happen though, the video might be right that Millennials
are destined to be the Loneliest Generation. Like the video says, connectivity
is only a substitute that can’t meet the needs of an individual for long, so I
think most Millennials will eventually take the risk of trying to build real
intimacy. In my opinion, the fear of loneliness will trump the fear of
intimacy, though it could be a longer and harder battle for this generation
than in the past.
[SUBHODEV DAS]
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