Monday, September 04, 2006
The Dangers of Anonymity
Let me say first that I understand the desire to be anonymous well enough. There's still a part of me that wants a P.O. Box so I don't have to tell everyone in the world where I live. And I have a burnable email address that doesn't have any of my real information associated with it to use when a website I don't especially trust or want to be connected to for the long-term wants an email address. Some people, and many companies, will abuse any information you give them. So you keep a low profile to protect yourself. I get it.
Saturday at the mall I told my wife about my excellent plan to produce some kind of sarcastic "how to park across 4 spaces" document to put on all the cars, (especially) trucks, and (very especially) SUVs I see that can't or don't confine themselves to a single parking space. My wife wisely noted that this would be trying to control something that's beyond my responsibility, and I allowed that she was right. And there's no guarantee that these people would change their behavior.
But I think what I wanted to do, as much as anything, was deny them their anonymity. I've become convinced lately that a lot of the evils we do--especially the petty, little, day-to-day evils, but also some of the biggest ones--are possible only because we refuse to see the people we hurt. All of the excesses of America are possible because our TVs only show us people still richer than ourselves. When they occasionally show someone poor, either they make it out to be their own fault, some kind of deserved poverty, or we change the channel. We don't want to see them.
When I'm driving along in a straight line at a steady, legal speed, and someone suddenly pulls out to turn left in front of me, forcing me to brake aggressively to avoid hitting them, I notice that they'll never make eye contact with me. Even if I give them a bit of horn, they just stare straight ahead: If I don't see you, I didn't just screw you over.
So I figure the jerks who park across two and three spaces do it partially 'cause they can't see the people who are inconvenienced (and I admit that's all it is) just so they can -- I guess I don't know what they get out of it. So part of me wants to try to force them to see the people around them. I think we all need to do a better job of seeing the people around them. America has gone as far as anyone ever has toward individualism, isolation, and lack of community. Our most abiding relationships are with TV characters on shows that aren't even being made any more, because we can see them five, six, eight times a week. There's no one else we let into our homes eight times a week. We can't look to see if we cut them off, if they needed something.
We just keep staring straight ahead.
Saturday at the mall I told my wife about my excellent plan to produce some kind of sarcastic "how to park across 4 spaces" document to put on all the cars, (especially) trucks, and (very especially) SUVs I see that can't or don't confine themselves to a single parking space. My wife wisely noted that this would be trying to control something that's beyond my responsibility, and I allowed that she was right. And there's no guarantee that these people would change their behavior.
But I think what I wanted to do, as much as anything, was deny them their anonymity. I've become convinced lately that a lot of the evils we do--especially the petty, little, day-to-day evils, but also some of the biggest ones--are possible only because we refuse to see the people we hurt. All of the excesses of America are possible because our TVs only show us people still richer than ourselves. When they occasionally show someone poor, either they make it out to be their own fault, some kind of deserved poverty, or we change the channel. We don't want to see them.
When I'm driving along in a straight line at a steady, legal speed, and someone suddenly pulls out to turn left in front of me, forcing me to brake aggressively to avoid hitting them, I notice that they'll never make eye contact with me. Even if I give them a bit of horn, they just stare straight ahead: If I don't see you, I didn't just screw you over.
So I figure the jerks who park across two and three spaces do it partially 'cause they can't see the people who are inconvenienced (and I admit that's all it is) just so they can -- I guess I don't know what they get out of it. So part of me wants to try to force them to see the people around them. I think we all need to do a better job of seeing the people around them. America has gone as far as anyone ever has toward individualism, isolation, and lack of community. Our most abiding relationships are with TV characters on shows that aren't even being made any more, because we can see them five, six, eight times a week. There's no one else we let into our homes eight times a week. We can't look to see if we cut them off, if they needed something.
We just keep staring straight ahead.
