The Depersonalization Of America….

Lately, I have come across articles that bemoan the steady breakdown of neighborhood socialization, a consideration fueled by the incredible mobility of our population and giants like Amazon. Gone forever are the family owned businesses that work on our cars, provide our medicines and sell hardware. Instead, in the name of convenience, we never have to shed our pajamas to procure 90% of what we need.

Tellers at banks are becoming extinct. Instead you walk up to an automated screen and talk with someone in the home office who will gladly assist you with your banking needs. Unless absolutely necessary you never talk to the branch manager or other officer in the bank. I mentioned Amazon, a stroke of genius in the business of providing convenience. The transactions are totally impersonal to include the route driver tossing your latest purchase on the porch without a thought. You can, and many do, order your medicines from a giant clearing house and never talk with a pharmacist. Gone is the small hardware store where an experienced employee, often involved in the ownership of the store, offers advice and understands your needs. You can sell your car from the convenience of your living room, have it loaded from your driveway and, if your timing is right, have a new one dropped off in the same spot hours later.

You can earn a degree in your pajamas relying on your IPad and never have a conversation with a learned professor. You can buy your clothes and shoes on line and have them tossed on your porch a day or two after deciding what you think you want from the same chair in the living room. In a final insult and capitulation to convenience in a hurried world, you can consult with your doctor online, thus forgoing the opportunity for the discourse that is sacred and denying him or her the opportunity to look you over. You get your coffee through a damned window and have little idea who the barista is. The grocery store offers a very low percentage chance of meeting and visiting with a friend or neighbor and you check yourself out under the watchful eyes of a clerk who is counting your apples as you face yet another automated screen. The local gun shop is becoming extinct, replaced by box stores and barber shops replaced with stylists in lavish salons. Gun stores and barber shops are where the town’s business was really done. You can even attend church online while enjoying coffee in your living room.

Here is the deal. We have destroyed the concept of neighborhood gathering places. Neighborhood markets have sailed into the sunset and a coffee shop is virtually nonexistent, a huge consideration for police officers who desperately need to mingle with each other and the public. We are killing interaction and raising generations of kids who have no idea what social skill is. They visit on their cell phone even though they are sitting 10 feet from each other.

I am old enough to remember the days when you knew everybody on your street, or maybe the whole town, those were the days when you could conjure up an acquaintance to help with anything from a balky lawnmower to a car that won’t start. I genuinely miss it as folks who know me would certainly add gregarious to a list of expletives to describe me. We have trashed social interaction in the name of convenience and that is sad.

Have a good week

SR