This reminded me of a story a volunteer at Engineers Without Borders told me.
They went to a a mountain village in South American and identified a problem that the main water supply was around a 6 mile walk away. A group of women in the village would walk 6 miles everyday to obtain the day's supply. The engineers built a well but it kept getting destroyed. They learned that it was the women who walked to the well who destroyed it. The daily walk was one of their favorite parts of their day because they got to walk and talk with their friends without anyone else interrupting.
They didn't want to "save" their time because they enjoyed doing what many people in industrialized societies would see as an inconvenience.
Justin, this was a splendid essay! I'll save this to share with my readers. It echoed perfectly, and with so many excellent examples, one of the issues Peco and I have written about as well:
"But convenience as a philosophy for living is death. A pleasant death, but still death. The question, then, we need to ask ourselves is, How many convenient boxes does it take to kill a whole society?"
Justin, this is a great essay. Dating is a powerful example of this phenomenon because the idea (for many people anyway) is that the goal of dating is to eventually *stop* dating. Lots of other tech-enabled convenience that trades away the experiences that make up a life is something iterative: looking at FB instead of catching up with friends, like you note, looking for directions rather than having fun getting lost, using GrubHub rather than cooking. Since these are repetitive tasks, at least we can have the choice to decide how we want to use the tools we have. Am I able to assess (probably intuitive rather than deliberative) a successful meal out versus a successful ordering in? Yes, I think so. But Dating, on the other hand, is something (again, ideally, for most people) only ever done *successfully* once. We can’t know what we’re missing out on for the convenience of swiping.
Thanks for this great reflection, Justin. I found this piece via School of the Unconformed. I appreciate especially your thoughts on dating - it's been a particularly hard road to walk as a single gay guy, looking to date men who are interested in monogamy, fidelity, faithfulness, groundedness, all those good things that make us human and whole. But so many gay men are just completely warped by these apps that make sex and physical intimacy easy, cheap, and disposable. My great fear is that I'll never find someone, and that existential terror keeps me on the apps, hoping that I'll find someone like myself who believes the apps are a necessary evil, a way-station on the journey to a life lived off-line. It's hard to keep that flicker of hope alive sometimes.
I echo a similar sentiment in a piece I have written about how efficiency is not a great ethos for dating. Yes, it's great that you can weed people out from your couch and not have to do all of the agonizing work once associated with dating. But the results you get from the dating app seems to often reflect the effort (or lack thereof) that was put in.
"Now before y’all think I’m hopping onboard the “everything new is bad” train, there are aspects of dating that these apps have improved. There’s probably less alcohol involved, for starters".
Why would this be better? I mean, except the prudish preoccupation against people drinking? Especially since drinking has traditionally be a way for people to be less rigid and less preoccupied with their own thoughts. Is it about the danger of being taken advantage of while intoxicated? That's not due to drinking to get a buzz, that's due to overdrinking to the point of passing out (again the result of a culture with a phobic relation to alcohol).
"And a lot of women say it feels safer being able to “test the waters” before agreeing to meet with a strange man".
Isn't a man met online (through a dating app, or via social media), if anything, more of a stranger on the first date, than a person actually encountered on a physical space, built trust with over time, flirted, and so on, before agreeing to a date? Even if the two discussed online for some time before to "get to know each other' that way, it's still way easier to put on a fake front (as to one's character, psychology, and even identity) there, than it is offline.
This reminded me of a story a volunteer at Engineers Without Borders told me.
They went to a a mountain village in South American and identified a problem that the main water supply was around a 6 mile walk away. A group of women in the village would walk 6 miles everyday to obtain the day's supply. The engineers built a well but it kept getting destroyed. They learned that it was the women who walked to the well who destroyed it. The daily walk was one of their favorite parts of their day because they got to walk and talk with their friends without anyone else interrupting.
They didn't want to "save" their time because they enjoyed doing what many people in industrialized societies would see as an inconvenience.
Justin, this was a splendid essay! I'll save this to share with my readers. It echoed perfectly, and with so many excellent examples, one of the issues Peco and I have written about as well:
"But convenience as a philosophy for living is death. A pleasant death, but still death. The question, then, we need to ask ourselves is, How many convenient boxes does it take to kill a whole society?"
Thanks for writing!
Justin, this is a great essay. Dating is a powerful example of this phenomenon because the idea (for many people anyway) is that the goal of dating is to eventually *stop* dating. Lots of other tech-enabled convenience that trades away the experiences that make up a life is something iterative: looking at FB instead of catching up with friends, like you note, looking for directions rather than having fun getting lost, using GrubHub rather than cooking. Since these are repetitive tasks, at least we can have the choice to decide how we want to use the tools we have. Am I able to assess (probably intuitive rather than deliberative) a successful meal out versus a successful ordering in? Yes, I think so. But Dating, on the other hand, is something (again, ideally, for most people) only ever done *successfully* once. We can’t know what we’re missing out on for the convenience of swiping.
Thanks for this great reflection, Justin. I found this piece via School of the Unconformed. I appreciate especially your thoughts on dating - it's been a particularly hard road to walk as a single gay guy, looking to date men who are interested in monogamy, fidelity, faithfulness, groundedness, all those good things that make us human and whole. But so many gay men are just completely warped by these apps that make sex and physical intimacy easy, cheap, and disposable. My great fear is that I'll never find someone, and that existential terror keeps me on the apps, hoping that I'll find someone like myself who believes the apps are a necessary evil, a way-station on the journey to a life lived off-line. It's hard to keep that flicker of hope alive sometimes.
I echo a similar sentiment in a piece I have written about how efficiency is not a great ethos for dating. Yes, it's great that you can weed people out from your couch and not have to do all of the agonizing work once associated with dating. But the results you get from the dating app seems to often reflect the effort (or lack thereof) that was put in.
I find it significant that the graph showing the rise of dating apps stops at 2020. Something tells me an updated one would show the start of a shift.
"Now before y’all think I’m hopping onboard the “everything new is bad” train, there are aspects of dating that these apps have improved. There’s probably less alcohol involved, for starters".
Why would this be better? I mean, except the prudish preoccupation against people drinking? Especially since drinking has traditionally be a way for people to be less rigid and less preoccupied with their own thoughts. Is it about the danger of being taken advantage of while intoxicated? That's not due to drinking to get a buzz, that's due to overdrinking to the point of passing out (again the result of a culture with a phobic relation to alcohol).
"And a lot of women say it feels safer being able to “test the waters” before agreeing to meet with a strange man".
Isn't a man met online (through a dating app, or via social media), if anything, more of a stranger on the first date, than a person actually encountered on a physical space, built trust with over time, flirted, and so on, before agreeing to a date? Even if the two discussed online for some time before to "get to know each other' that way, it's still way easier to put on a fake front (as to one's character, psychology, and even identity) there, than it is offline.
Great!