It occurs to me to comment/speculate that the primary relationship most Americans–and most members of most developed nations and indeed now many undeveloped ones–have, is the one they have with their screens.
Your TV, your smart phone, your computer: who are you without those? How much anxiety would you feel if they were all suddenly taken away?
The screen is the intermediary between you and your friends, if you are typical. Of course you meet them, see them, talk with them, play with them. But friends are temporary: the screen is forever.
And the screen is mutable. It demands your compliance and conformity, but promises no stability, no constancy, and indeed one of its “charms” is its very randomness and unpredictability.
I’ve seen commentators as diverse as Yul Brenner, Orson Welles, and G. Edward Griffin, comment that we are born alone and die alone, and that whatever companionship we find in the middle is a gift.
But the screen is constant, is it not? Is this a solution of sorts to the interminable and very ancient human problem of betrayal, of misunderstanding, of change and death?
I think much of our world is suffering from some varying combination of Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and not infrequently de facto sociopathy.
People are not real, to to many of us.