HUMAN BEINGS NEED TO CONNECT. Through all kinds of relationships—with family, friends, neighbors and colleagues—partially meet the human’s hardwired need for social contact. The need most commonly reveals itself in the search for love relationships---romantic love. People in love relationships need to expend a lot of energy to maintain those relationships. Many people, not currently in love relationships, invest similar amounts of energy to find one and this is clearly a fact given the huge popularity of dating sites, dating services, speed-dating and personal ads. The need for romantic love can be that strong, no matter how many friends or family one has—the need for the deepest intimacy a person can experience.
I am witness to the people around me and I do see a mad and desperate dash to find a connection, to find love.Finding a life partner, it can be argued, in a sophisticated technological society is harder than finding one in a primitive village, where everyone knows everyone else and one would pick a spouse from the relatively few people available. Now the horizons are much less limited, but the trade off could be a loss of “community” and a fraying of the social web that supports the individuals in question.
I’m of the old school: I enjoy face-to-face relationships with living and breathing human beings, terribly old-fashioned that I am. I’ll take reality over virtual anytime. Nevertheless, I became curious and eventually joined the cyber world of the 21th century, but not to find romance. Ironically, I found many chat groups and forums that complain about the isolation of modern life. In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan first wrote about the “global village”. Since then the world has become even smaller and more interconnected, now that the internet and globalization has brought the earth’s people closer together. Mind you, McLuhan was talking only about physical space, not cyber space. With so many human interactions now mediated by some kind technological interface, be it a phone or a computer, contact between people loses the intimacy necessary to form individual relationships and in turn communities. In our accelerated technological society, we have become too caught up worrying about being a tec nerd or fussing over a “profile” to enjoy a “spiritual connection” to our world or to other people. At least, this can be the sad reality for some people…and for others it is not.
I would now be the first to state that technology has unarguably improved human lives a great deal, and this would include mine. One benefit is the expansion of our circle of potential relationships—especially a love relationship. Personally, I found just such a relationship. I wasn't seeking it. It "just happened." I experienced a great intensity, an overwhelming for the lady that I “met.” Our values and thoughts paralleled one another’s to such a great extent, it seems as if we have already met face-to-face and have known each other for years. As the women I met said: “Yes, we have spent quite a bit of time together. When we get together to talk, easily the hours fly by. I'm so engrossed with him that I lose track of time. The time we do spend together all that matters is Victor."
I felt exactly the same.
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There are those who are cynical or skeptical to the idea that people can fall in love via the cyber world, but when I monitor my insides, my thoughts, feelings—my reactions to this woman—I know for certain that the cynics are wrong.
There are those who are cynical or skeptical to the idea that people can fall in love via the cyber world, but when I monitor my insides, my thoughts, feelings—my reactions to this woman—I know for certain that the cynics are wrong.
Some times these “new ways” of meeting people, ways that are not in step with the conventional way, excites tremendous hostility in people. This woman and I have been exposed to a lot of sabotage attempts online and off, people trying to implant doubt and skepticism as to the viability of an internet spawned relationship. It has been characterized as “rationalism” and “over-the-top” and these are the more friendly descriptions. In the end, who cares how you come across another person: a club, a class room, being introduced by friends, meeting at a dance class, wine testing party, a monster truck rally. Who cares! (Plus, there is no way for them to really know how we feel for each other...so they simply cannot say. Yet, that hostility and nihilism was very present. Envy and hatred is truly an ugly state of mind).
While it is not practical to maintain such a love relationship for a protracted period of time—neither is it desirable—but nobody can tell us that we did not fall in love, although some have tried and fervently so. It is with such possibilities—finding friendship or love---that the modern technological world is to be commended.
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There are thinkers and philosophers who have wrote about the “alienation of modern man” with the advances of technology, and I always found a certain plausibility to their claims, but I eventually concluded that alienation is an inner phenomenon and not external. Spirituality—in the secular meaning—is essentially an internal matter, an affair of the heart and head. It has to do with a mode of consciousness, a certain way of perceiving oneself, others, and the world and the universe at large. There is nothing religious or mystical about this. People are connecting all over the world with a personal home computer and a click of the mouse. This “spiritually” is being transmitted and communicated and FELT at long distances via the miracle of technology.
A quote from the woman that I met clarifies the point very nicely.
“I've found so much in Victor that I have never found in anyone else. He truly is a mirror image of who I am, what I represent, what I value, my interests, and so on. I've never met someone such as Victor that has had everything that I wanted in a partner. I knew well before coming to any sites or reading about the philosophy that I wanted someone that was very much like me. Someone that reflected who I was and am. And Victor is the first man that has been able to do this. We've connected on so many levels.”
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Yes, people are connecting all over the world, meeting in chat-rooms and forums and the like. At some point, however, they’ll have to leave their desks to enjoy and maintain that which can never be replaced: live contact with another human being. The internet can bring people together—but it can’t keep them together. Can people connect and fall in love before actually meeting? The answer is a resounding YES. There is no dispute. This girl and I have thought of our selves as standing on a hill thus allowing us to have a different view from the cynics. We moved from the valley--where the mob stands—with its heard view of success, trends, and values—and what they consider “appropriate” and “normal” when it comes to meeting another person and falling in love. We saw a new perspective—we saw our own. We wrote our own rules. Yes, I admit it: I was skeptic before, but now I’m a true believer.
Yes, people are connecting all over the world, meeting in chat-rooms and forums and the like. At some point, however, they’ll have to leave their desks to enjoy and maintain that which can never be replaced: live contact with another human being. The internet can bring people together—but it can’t keep them together. Can people connect and fall in love before actually meeting? The answer is a resounding YES. There is no dispute. This girl and I have thought of our selves as standing on a hill thus allowing us to have a different view from the cynics. We moved from the valley--where the mob stands—with its heard view of success, trends, and values—and what they consider “appropriate” and “normal” when it comes to meeting another person and falling in love. We saw a new perspective—we saw our own. We wrote our own rules. Yes, I admit it: I was skeptic before, but now I’m a true believer.
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