Our social relations have different levels, dimensions and meanings. When you say that somebody is your friend, it implies that a certain level of intimacy and trust exists between you and that person. Similarly an acquaintance is somebody, you just know. A colleague is somebody at your office and nothing more. So on and so forth. We use these terms in our everyday lives because we want to filter and quantify our relations with other people. To put it in simpler terms, we want it to be known to the world, who is who and which is which.
But an alarming new trend has emerged. Perhaps it started emerging with the advent of our famous industrial (material greedy) revolution. Yes! We have a new kind of relation; “A Contact”. And like any new born who comes into this world, we have been treating this new term in our everyday lingo with a great deal of curiosity and interest. Anyways a contact is a person who can help you in some way or the other. People have contacts in governments, private organizations, schools, universities, barber shops (seriously they do, so that while they get a haircut, they can feel special about the whole experience) and God knows where. You need a job, you need contacts. You need to file your tax returns, you need contacts. You need to get an abortion, well guess what, you need contacts.
As we can see, a contact has and will always have a materialistic connotation attached to it. The problem is that these days you need solid contacts to run your life smoothly. This gives out a very strong message to the likes of me who don’t believe in such kind of “material” social indulgence. The message is very clear. We are doomed and bound to get nowhere. On the other hand, the society at large is in a way patronizing such kind of networking. Because the benefits of having more and more contacts is shown to outweigh the costs by a great margin.
Speaking of costs, the biggest cost to the society is in terms of lost values. What happened to the good old days, when you would meet people because you really wanted to meet them? Where you could be straight forward about your choices of keeping people at different levels of interaction on the basis of a clear cut criteria in your mind which was not based on materialism but rather on your personality and compatibility with the other person. And what happened to our hatred for the word “Hypocricy”? Isn’t it hypocrisy that’s going all around us? As a matter of fact, I see the very definition of the word “society” changing in the next few years. It will most probably become something like “Society is defined as a network of contacts, interconnected via links of personal interest”.
So I’m going end this article with a little exercise for you. Next time when you log on to your facebook. Put your status to something like “I’m a human being, not a contact. If you don’t agree, then please disappear from my life”.
On a second thought, don't put up such a status. You don’t want to lose all your valuable contacts now, do you? =)
But an alarming new trend has emerged. Perhaps it started emerging with the advent of our famous industrial (material greedy) revolution. Yes! We have a new kind of relation; “A Contact”. And like any new born who comes into this world, we have been treating this new term in our everyday lingo with a great deal of curiosity and interest. Anyways a contact is a person who can help you in some way or the other. People have contacts in governments, private organizations, schools, universities, barber shops (seriously they do, so that while they get a haircut, they can feel special about the whole experience) and God knows where. You need a job, you need contacts. You need to file your tax returns, you need contacts. You need to get an abortion, well guess what, you need contacts.
As we can see, a contact has and will always have a materialistic connotation attached to it. The problem is that these days you need solid contacts to run your life smoothly. This gives out a very strong message to the likes of me who don’t believe in such kind of “material” social indulgence. The message is very clear. We are doomed and bound to get nowhere. On the other hand, the society at large is in a way patronizing such kind of networking. Because the benefits of having more and more contacts is shown to outweigh the costs by a great margin.
Speaking of costs, the biggest cost to the society is in terms of lost values. What happened to the good old days, when you would meet people because you really wanted to meet them? Where you could be straight forward about your choices of keeping people at different levels of interaction on the basis of a clear cut criteria in your mind which was not based on materialism but rather on your personality and compatibility with the other person. And what happened to our hatred for the word “Hypocricy”? Isn’t it hypocrisy that’s going all around us? As a matter of fact, I see the very definition of the word “society” changing in the next few years. It will most probably become something like “Society is defined as a network of contacts, interconnected via links of personal interest”.
So I’m going end this article with a little exercise for you. Next time when you log on to your facebook. Put your status to something like “I’m a human being, not a contact. If you don’t agree, then please disappear from my life”.
On a second thought, don't put up such a status. You don’t want to lose all your valuable contacts now, do you? =)
