There was a time when connectivity was the enemy of our romance with imagined possibilities.
The digital DJ in my iPod was on to something the other day when it decided to play a mix that started with Joni Mitchell’s Night Ride Home before proceeding on to Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie bouncing through the classic Tea for Two.
Mitchell’s song is a favorite. She rhapsodizes about hitting the “open road,” something that perhaps resonates more with a child ofSaskatchewan. An unfettered stretch of highway is the perfect representation of escape from the narrow borderlands of the familiar and domestic. Perhaps I want to see this because I also spent my teens traveling the same kind of narrow asphalt ribbons that threaded through pines and aspens, sometimes reaching pockets of high-mountain snow refusing to yield even to August. The chance to fly along these highways alone or with a girlfriend made them all the more mysterious and promising.
A clear highway to the horizon was a potent adolescent meme. It meant freedom, and an opening to different and perhaps dangerous possibilities: the kind fearless independence suggested in the film Thelma and Louise. Just without the cliff.
We can make too much of a few song lyrics, but I was struck with lines in both songs that referenced the pleasures of not being connected. In those days there was romance in the idea of leaving behind the entrapments of the telephone, among other things. Mitchell sings about the pleasure of hitting the “open road” with her boyfriend with the promise of “No phones ’til Friday.”[1]
What’s changed? How did the phone go from being a nuisance to what it is now: an addictive preoccupation, especially for the young?
I can’t say I get the same thrill of infinite possibilities today rolling through the countryside of the Delaware Valley, pretty though it is. I’m older. But for me the car is still an escape from the phone. The automobile salesperson was annoyed when I told him I had no interest in connecting my mobile device to the car’s “Sync” system. To be sure connecting an IPod made a lot of sense, even though the “Sync” lady responds to my requests for music as if I’m speaking Polish. My cell stays off but close, mostly because the not-so-open road now throws up obstacles that can make a night ride home more treacherous.
But here’s the point. There was a time when connectivity was the enemy of our romance with imagined possibilities. The phone was an instrument of obligation. It represented unwanted entanglements and reminders. Irving Caesar’s lyrics in Tea for Two promises lovers unbroken time together, uninterrupted by “friends or relations on weekend vacations.” In this perfect space, he writes,
We won’t have it known
That we own a telephone, dear[2]
What’s changed? How did the phone go from being a nuisance to what it is now: an addictive preoccupation, especially for the young? I suspect this reversal is related to changing patterns of courtship and marriage. 50 or 60 years ago there was a clearer threshold that divided living with one’s family from the transition to launching an independent life. Among middle class teens, passing this milestone occurred earlier. And most couldn’t wait to be on their own. The open road in mid-twentieth century America was paved with endless possibilities that would end too soon. In those years, teens caught in the thrall of an escape fantasy could never imagine that Jack Kerouac or Peter Fonda would want to check in with mom every night.
For many reasons we are now less likely to see young couples pairing off into early marriage. Most depend on their cell phones to maintain a larger and less exclusive network of friends. To be sure, they still romanticize moving out of the shadows of the family. But the means for taking on the world is now less physical than psychical. Phones and their digital wonders now function as devices for transporting facsimiles of oneself onto social networks of peers. They promise a better life through the constant connectivity that seems a safer substitute for an actual search to find paradise just beyond the next hill.
So the modern versions of this old family appliance no longer carry the stigma of an unwanted tether. They are now instruments of an inner space few want to leave.
The psychological rewards of angry responses are overrated. Even a brilliant retort is not likely to force an errant advocate back on their heels.
Photo: Harry Truman, Library of Congress
For many of us the urge to enter the fray to correct or admonish others is a constant. It is always tempting to think that we are being helpful when we explain to the misguided how they have failed to notice their mistakes. It’s a self-fulfilling process. Others offer corrections or criticisms of our ideas or acts; the least we can do is return the favor.
Aristotle was one of the first to systematically describe how a person should defend their ideas when challenged. He equated the ability to make counter-arguments as just another form of personal defense. Though the great philosopher used other words, he essentially noted that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be pushed around. This was about 380 B.C., demonstrating that some things never change.
Even so, it has perhaps become too easy to fire off a rejoinder or a personal attack. Most of us find it hard to be in a public space and not encounter cross-court slams from an ideological opponent that seem to need an equally aggressive return.
The digital world easily brings our indignation to the fore. Many websites welcome comments, the majority of which are misguidedly protected with anonymity. And it isn’t just the trolls that are rattling on about a writer’s sloppy logic or uncertain parentage. In private and public settings everyone seems to be ready with a hastily assembled attitude. The felicitous put-down is so common that screenplays and narratives seem to wilt in their absence. What dramatist could write a scene about a family Thanksgiving dinner without including at least a couple of estranged relatives rising to the bait of each other’s festering resentments? To make matters worse, some of us actually get paid to teach others how to argue, with special rewards going to those who are especially adept at incisive cross examination.
There are many circumstances when the urge to respond is worth suppressing. Sometimes saying nothing is better than any other alternative: less wounding or hurtful, or simply the best option in the presence of a communication partner who is out for the sport of a take-down.
The psychological rewards are also overrated. Even a brilliant rejoinder is not likely to force an errant advocate back on their heels. You may be itching to correct them. But they are probably determined to ignore you.
And there are costs to becoming shrill. Harry Truman famously sensed this. The former President had a hot temper. Even before he was elected he had more than his share of critics. But his approach to responding to criticism made a lot of sense. In the days when letters often carried a person’s most considered rebuttals, his habit was to go ahead and write to his critics, often in words that burned with righteous indignation. But he usually didn’t mail them. The letters simply went into a drawer, which somehow gave Truman the permission to move on to more constructive activities, such as a good game of poker.
Not responding to someone else’s provocative words can have at least two advantages. The first is that your comments probably won’t be received anyway. We tend to ignore non-congruent information, a process known in the social sciences as “confirmation bias,” but familiar to everyone who has ever said that “we hear only what we want to hear.” The second advantage is that rapid responses to others can carry the impression that the responder lacks a certain grace. Not every idea that comes into our heads is worth sharing. In addition, fiery replies sometimes indicate that we weren’t really listening.
Time gives us a better perspective. It allows us to better anticipate how our responses will be judged. Most importantly, it helps us break the cycle where one wounding response is simply piled on to another.
