We watched a film called Snowpiercer, one of a handful of movies portraying a morally corrupt future where the privileged live a lifestyle of absurdity and rule over what remains of the populace and humanity once bent on self-destruction. For us, films such as The Hunger Games and the Divergent trilogy fall into this genre.
For a while, we have been reluctant to automatically dismiss such stories as merely dark science fiction where a hero among the disenfranchised rises up to lead a revolt against the arrogance in power. Especially as Americans, it is difficult for us to imagine a reality when we fall susceptible to one line of obedient thinking that borders on a form of government mind control.
However certain aspects of today’s society offer glimpses of how disconnected we can become from each other. Ironically, social media, in our view, plays a significant role. While social media provides an important voice for people, organizations and social causes, it also appears to lower the standard of genuine friendship and personal communication. Couples sit at restaurant tables fixated on smartphones instead of each other. People walk across parking lots focused on those small screens instead of the vehicles swirling around them. Walk into a waiting lobby and roughly half those in the room are lost in an electronic world originating elsewhere.
Combine this with neighbors who don’t consider welcoming the new people who moved in next door. There are the emails and phone calls that inexplicably go unanswered. Others turn the concept of scheduling a simple meeting into a complex endeavor. While we passionately complain about our politicians, their red tape and bureaucratic lives, they may actually be a public reflection of how so many of us live our lives.
Arguing that all this is leading us to a path of some entity gaining monolithic control over us would be a melodramatic exaggeration. But everyday routines offer us flashes of lost community, with individual thinking falling prey to a world of templates. For this reason, we recommend exercises such as taking time away from smartphones or actually meeting with friends and family instead of replacing such experiences with a click of a mouse. Look up and witness the world around you instead of the one from afar reaching you through a handheld device. Technology is wonderful and allows new worlds of communication. Technology also can harden humanity, ensuring we remain inside our own boxes with little need or desire to reach out. When society walls itself off, it can become vulnerable to concepts normally reserved only for science fiction films.