The multiple inputs of modern life lead to differing experiences

I recently picked up the new Tool CD, while I was waiting for my new car radio to be installed.

I’ve been without a car radio for about a year and a half. Unlike the conscious decision not to have cable television, I’ve missed and wanted a decent sound system for my vehicle since the moment I found myself lacking one.

However, having gone for such a long time without, I rediscovered something.

Music, in the appropriate genres and at the appropriate volume, can be nearly as powerful as any drug. The effect can be literally consciousness altering.

That’s not to say this is necessarily a bad thing. In the few days since I’ve reacquired my tunes, I’ve noticed a definite lift in mood while I’ve been enjoying the latest offerings from one of my favorite bands. I have also, though, had to remind myself to pay attention to the road while I’m humming along.

The reason I bring this up is that it led me to a realization.

There have been so many observations that people are becoming more fractured in communicating, that formerly tight communities have grown apart. Often, a decline in moral values is blamed.

But while this may be true to some extent, might it also be that with so many “input” sources—music, TV, radio, video games, the Internet, cell phones, etc.—that we may not be communicating as well as in the past because all those other forms of input in all their various genres are creating a divergence in points of view, not to mention a lack of time? Might the time we spend absorbing these diverse views, often those of an alien “reality” that is not grounded in our everyday lives, be creating a situation in which members of the community have vastly differing everyday experiences, despite commonalities of residence, religion, financial status and other formerly cohesive factors?

Historically, members of a group would have similarities, often enforced by locality, ethnicity, economic status or occupation that gave them a common experience and similar concerns. This led to tight communities, where people looked out for one another, largely because they all had the same concerns.

The Age of Information has brought things the planet has never seen before at dizzying speeds. New ideas, music, information and games rush through our lives at speeds never before seen, impacting society with fads that also rush through our lives with ever-increasing frequency. No one really knows what the ultimate impact will be, and most people go through life reacting to their experiences without really analyzing them. Perhaps the reaction to all this information is a schism, along with multiple points of view among people who were formerly of like mind, that has led to the feelings of communication breakdown and isolation psychologists say have become pervasive today?

As I sit in highway traffic and “groove” to the wall of sound that is Tool, next to me, in a similar car, driven by a similarly professionally employed person, come strains of Journey, or the latest rap group. Despite similar incomes, residences, offices, we are undoubtedly having very different experiences as we wait for traffic to start moving. Behind me, another driver takes in more, different “input” on their cell phone.

We may live in the same country on the same planet, but in the modern age, we live in different worlds and move in different tribes. Is it any wonder we seem to be speaking more and more “different languages”?

(Originally published in The Easton News, October 5, 2006)