Look up from the screen
ROUGHLY two years ago I wrote a column about my first impressions as a green South African tourist in the big, bustling metropolis called the Big Apple by some, but called “Where can I find a restroom?” by yours’ truly.
Besides having to learn that, as the native New Yorkers told me, “there is always a restroom at a Starbucks”, the other thing I learned is that people are completely disconnected from reality simply because they are plugged in to their devices. My first trip on a subway train was disturbing because I was not used to being around 30 to 50 people and not having anyone say hello, or even nod an acknowledgement.
I thought that I had regained my powers of invisibility.
One particularly scary incident happened as I was walking down a street in Brooklyn one day. An angry New Yorker came stomping up the street, and this scared me, because here I was thousands of miles from home and thousands of rands in debt; essentially an “inferior person”, and I believed that I was about to be assaulted by an American; maybe because I did something culturally offensive – like greet, perhaps.
However, to my great relief, he stormed past me ranting, raging, scolding and arguing … I initially thought he was mentally disturbed.
It was only when he stopped at the traffic light (New Yorkers know how to use pedestrian crossings) that I noticed that he had a Bluetooth earpiece in his ear and he was speaking to (or shouting at) someone on the other end of a pretty scorching cellphone connection.
After that I noticed how in a city of 8.5 million people, these people would walk around totally detached from anyone else. If they were not speaking into a Bluetooth headset, they were thumbing away at devices.
Fast forward to a few days ago, back here in South Africa. The Garden Route went up in flames and social media was red hot as South Africans expressed their shock over what was happening. There were mass evacuations, the military was mobilised; and as volunteer firefighters rolled up their sleeves alongside career firefighters, and aid started pouring in to Knysna, Plettenberg Bay and other areas affected by the fires, messages of support lit up social media platforms.
One thing that bothered me during this time is that there were some voices asking whether the help, support and sympathy flooding into the affected tourist towns was simply because the people there were wealthy … the question was asked: what about the poor people – the “inferior people” – affected by the freak storms happening in Cape Town at the time? .
And it bothered me for a simple, and pretty shallow reason. I wondered why people are only moved to react when calamity strikes. It almost seemed as if the social media “sympathy” for the affected poor was just spontaneously generated to criticise the outpouring of support for the affected wealthy.
Please note, I am not choosing sides; what I am simply asking is why do we only seemingly snap out of our dream world when calamity strikes? Why do the poor only matter when our statements about them will get social media airtime? Often we are so energetically plugged in to our devices that we are apathetically detached from each other.
George Orwell foresaw this kind of apathy becoming a problem. In his novel 1984, written almost 70 years ago, he stated: “The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.”
Ask yourself, when last have I acknowledged an “inferior person”?