The Unit

I have often lamented the erosion of "social."

With television, Xbox-360, two wage-earning families and suburban sprawl, there really is no longer any sense of social.

At least, certainly not within my own familial unit and the other units around me. I have to think that among other units across the US this is probably also true, not just here in my Elk Grove. We find that fewer and fewer of us relate to the Shriners, the League of Women Voters, or the Ladies Auxiliary these days. The notional arrangements of social capital are eroding further each and every day...at least, the arrangements of what passed two or three decades hence are no longer valid...or at least, are less important than they once were.

As I grew up, family and friends were important. As kids we used to band together and play in parks, in the streets, but I could easily see the erosion of this idea as early as 1983, when the family unit no longer held sway as it likely once did a generation earlier. Technology and fossil fuels have allowed for each member of the family to migrate out separately...and earlier...than what used to be the case.

Nine year olds are now texting one another within the confines of bedrooms, instead of actually having to venture out of doors. Interactive gaming has taken the place of getting on the bike, cruising to your friend's house and playing the console for hours.

I suppose what I'm really lamenting is my own closed-in notion of social, my own dated expectation of what people these days ought to do for social engagement. This blog is an example of energy shunted away from social interaction -- time spent to post meaningless monologues to myself. This has value, yes, but in the larger context it really is more a means towards further isolation. I post alone.

As I'm neither a gen-y'er nor a millennial, I don't think I will ever fully accept the practice of mom on Facebook, dad playing Angry Birds, sis on Twitter and bro with his iPod while at the dinner table at the fast food outlet. This is the new normal, but it's too new for me.

At work, I can hardly enter a cube (both those of co-workers and management) without some form of Internet media taking away a fraction of your electric ratepaying dollar. If not using the corporate resource, private smarte phones are becoming more common, where everyone can keep the outside world apprised of your everyday activities.

Without personal interactions, it is my belief that Americans are more likely to presume that the TV figment called Snooki is more a real-life figure in their worlds than they'd like to admit. I do not see this as beneficial for a nation about to fall off the cheap energy cliff, a nation that cannot grow its way out of $15 trillion in debt. These things that are passed off as social do not lend themselves well to any form of real calamity. I don't see them improving our situation should our situation turn ugly.

If the familial unit, while completely connected yet completely disengaged can't seem to find any common purpose, what do you suppose the community means to anyone? What do you suppose our culture means to anyone?