North Star Writers Group

The idea that text messages, email, myspace and various other types of impersonal communication are replacing actual human contact is no longer merely whispered in dark corners, as though no one sees it happening right before their eyes. Most of us are fully aware of it by now, although not quite ready to take any sort of stand. We are content to proofread every fragment of our conversations before hitting “send”.

We like the opportunity to ensure that every written word is articulate, witty or wise, even though it lacks the true nature of personal, face-to-face contact, and the sound of every inarticulate but heartfelt spoken word. We are content with our small, manageable worlds without the intense urgency of human relationships. But recently, I got to thinking that perhaps this age of distance is not necessarily limited to the past few decades. I’m wondering if it was kick-started in 1908 when Henry Ford introduced the Model T – the car that changed everything.

Drivers are horrible people. They scream expletives at one another, curse each other’s names, blind each other with their bright headlights and creep within feet of each other’s bumpers while racing down the freeway at 70 mph.

It is pretty awful. But oddly enough, we’re all drivers. The same person who labels someone else a “lunatic son of a bitch” for accidentally veering into his lane is, 10 minutes later, opening the door for a coworker. The same guy who just gave a woman the finger for cutting him off is saving a cocker spaniel from a pit bull, (or a pit bull from a pit bull, in Michael Vick’s case). If we were as outrageously rude and judgmental with each other in our everyday lives as we are behind our fortresses of metal on wheels, we’d all be dead in a week. “F*** you, I was here first! Give me a Big Mac, damnit!”

Fortunately, this is not the case. But unfortunately, the attitudes we employ while driving are not necessarily confined to the inside of a vehicle. A part of every one of us really does believe that we, alone, are the sole possessors of flawless logic. Only we know the correct way, and it is up to us to bestow all our superior wisdom on everyone else. It is a dangerous ideology, and we would be foolish to assume that the pig-headed arrogance with which we drive does not trickle into the remaining hours of our day.

The problem is we feel completely disconnected from everyone else when we are behind the wheel, much in the same way we are disconnected from others on our cell phones and notebooks. And yet the reality is we don’t stop being people just because we’re in control of 1.5-ton hunks of metal traveling much faster than we could ever run, and that no matter how inhuman we would look to a hunter-gatherer, 1,000 drivers are still 1,000 souls that are truly affected by every moment of their lives.

Technology has always exploited the ugliness of humanity, and always will. I can’t help wondering whether, with all of the potential good it is creating, it is reaping at least the same amount of evil. But then, the solution will never be to condemn the inventions or even the inventors. The solution is to carefully analyze every new thing, whether it be a car, a plane, the Internet, the cell phone, the newspaper, you name it. It is our responsibility to keep a careful watch for those things that could, or have already, separated us from one another.

For while an age of convenience could really be as nice as it sounds, if we don’t use the heart as well as the mind that got us here, we’ll only ever be driving each other away.

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This is Column # NS069. Request permission to publish here.