We’re insulating ourselves from others now more than ever …

With selfishness being the ancient maladay of humanity, it’s nothing new to hear about people insulating themselves from others. We always have, both inside and outside the church.

At work, you connect with some peers and avoid others. The same at school.

At church, you go out to lunch with the same clique of friends. In fact, the small “home group” you’re a part of likely is comprised of that same clique.

But over the last decade, we’ve watched as people have used technology to ratchet up the degree to which they insulate themselves from others. Today …

People brag about telling friends — even “best friends” and family! — “don’t call me if you can put it in a text.” We’re actually reducing our human interaction with the people we claim we’re closest to!

Family members text or otherwise “message” each other inside their homes instead of talk to one another.

Instead of participating in person in church worship services, some are opting to “live stream” the service on a laptop from their couches (or beds) at home – not because they’re shut-in, but for the “convenience.”

More are rationalizing that clicking “like” on a social media platform as an actual action of empathy, sympathy, love, compassion, or caring and feeling satisfied they have done something of value by making that click.

There are various ways we’re further insulating ourselves from others, and there are various reasons for doing so, but a leading reason harkens back to that basic problem of selfishness …

We use technology to insulate ourselves from others in an attempt to control relational outcomes without the work of personally interacting with others.

Human beings have always wanted to get what they want without all the work involved, that’s true in our relationships as well. But actually interacting with human beings is messy. We can be misunderstood, we can’t always have things our way, other people will want some give in the relationship and not all take, etc. It’s much easier to narrow interaction to controllable bites and publicly project relationships as being how you want them. Pastor Neal Pollard wrote about our increasing self-absorption through the use of technology …

What do high cliff ledges, train tracks, animal game parks, bridges and buildings have in common? They are apparently popular sites for people to take selfies and places where over 200 people have died in the last 5 years in pursuit of that “perfect selfie.” The Economic Times of India, a country leading the world in deaths by selfies, reports that 86 people in 2016 and 73 people in 2017 died in this tragic, needless way. Since 2014, 128 have died in the course of taking selfies in this densely populated nation.

But other countries are getting involved in trying to stem the tide of such tragedies. Irish doctors reported, “The consequences of poorer spatial awareness and a focus on getting a good or daring photo has lead to multiple traumas” (Indulekha Aravind, 2/18/18). There are people in Russia that have become celebrities because of their daring self-centered photos (ibid.). Nowhere social media has gone is there an exemption from this trend, including here in our country.

Because I do not have a background in psychology, I could be wrong about this but could these extraordinary lengths to capture oneself in these kinds of photos be an act of desperation for acceptance, friendship, or even love? Could the yearning for admiration, congratulations, and adulation drive people to disregard all restraint and precaution?

Pollard concluded with this:

I do know that, as Henry David Thoreau said in 1854, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (Walden, ch. 1, p. 8). With selfies, we are able to project exactly the image or perception of ourselves that we want others to see. We don’t publish the unflattering or the boring. We want to be seen as valuable, relevant, and attractive. Why? Though we might lose our way in the process, human nature yearns for community and relationship (cf. Genesis. 2:24).

We rarely give any serious consideration to how insulating ourselves from others in the pursuit of self-interests impacts others, but Vernon Grounds relates a story that shows the ugliness of self-absorption …

Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book Of Anecdotes, tells a story about Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who achieved popular success with his novels Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962), and Ada (1969). One summer in the 1940s, Nabokov and his family stayed with James Laughlin at Alta, Utah, where Nabokov took the opportunity to enlarge his collection of butterflies and moths. Fadiman relates:

“Nabokov’s fiction has never been praised for its compassion; he was single-minded if nothing else. One evening at dusk he returned from his day’s excursion saying that during hot pursuit near Bear Gulch he had heard someone groaning most piteously down by the stream.

‘Did you stop’ Laughlin asked him.

‘No, I had to get the butterfly.’

The next day the corpse of an aged prospector was discovered in what has been renamed, in Nabokov’s honor, ‘Dead Man’s Gulch.’ While people around us are dying, how often we chase butterflies!”

Many people today, including those professing to be Christians, have opted to chase butterflies instead of personally interact with others or respond to the needs of others around them. This increasing self-absorption is in direct contradiction to what the Bibles teaches us about how disciples of Jesus should live:

“Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too,” Philippians 2:3-4.

Has your use of technology made you more self-absorbed, or have you used it to connect with and serve others? Is your life about chasing butterflies while others around you are dying, or are you sensitive and responsive to the needs of others around you? How have you insulated your life from other people? Does your use of technology invite and enhance relationship, or narrow and manipulate it?

Scotty