Have We Lost Something?

Is there something that has been lost in our modern age? Audiences have become unrulier. People have become more disconnected. Nothing is shocking or surprising to an audience who's gone numb to anything sexual or violent. All around we are a different society that is attached to the phones in our pocket, but has that caused the loss of something.

I recently attended a concert where the performers asked the audience to put away their cell phones for a certain song. He wanted to share this work of art and make a connection between audience and performer. Begrudgingly, many in the audience moaned and groaned about the request. Eventually though the audience went dark for the first time all night and it was only human beings. Within minutes though everyone had their phones out, and were shining their flashlights to create a surprise for the performer. Afterwards he thanked us all and said it was a beautiful moment.

Now I bring this up as an example because it shows both sides of the same coin. On one side it shows how attached we are to our phones and how hard it is for us to disconnect. The other side, however, shows us that we can create beautiful moments and tributes with our mobile devices, but at a price. The moment everyone brought their phones out again, a wall seemed to go back up. The performance became one seen to many in the audience through a screen. A moment of humanity was all that existed within those two hours.

Cell phones have given the world so much, and we have become a generation of limitless knowledge at our fingers. The only problem is we have also become addicted to the feeling of having that knowledge constantly. We must always be on social media, sharing, liking, and watching the lives of everyone else go past our eyes. This is the problems we face today with the invention of modern technology only becoming more advanced by the day. Eventually we may never witness live performances with our own eyes. Everything may be seen from behind the digital walls that our lives all reside behind these days.

This does not only invade performances today, though it also invades our normal day to day lifestyles as well. I was speaking with my girlfriend's sister recently and I noticed she had left her phone behind in the car. I grabbed it and brought it to her because I knew within minutes she would be freaking out. I told this to her, and she says to me “Your phone is everything.” These words struck me with a sense of fear and sorrow. There is so much truth behind this statement because we truly cannot leave our phones behind for more than a moment. We can forget everything else, but if our phone is with us we don’t care.

We must be able to function for more than a moment without using our phones. Many of us today cannot even leave our phones five feet away from us or else we might miss Kim Kardashian's latest tweet. There is something that has been lost today, and it continues to slip away from all of us. We have lost our ability to connect as humans with the world. Instead we connect to the world behind whatever our personality is summed up as in our online profiles.

The world will never be the same, but we must learn to leave that wall behind. Otherwise we will never find what we have lost, and instead continue to lose all ability to interact as humans. As of right now, we are going more towards the area of becoming more rooted within our technology than in our own humanities.