Club

So maybe you’re feeling lost. Apparently, no maps are available. And if there are any exits out of this dark room, so far they’re unlighted.

To get one’s bearings in this present moment, it may help to dig into the past - literally. Geologic core samples have been used to illuminate what existed in one place eons ago, allowing for more informed speculation on what led us to our current reality. Other core samples might only go back decades but they can also widen our perspective on how we got here and perhaps where we got lost.

Since 1965, when surveys began to seriously measure such things, Americans have been spending less and less face-to-face time in each other’s company. Just since the beginning of the 2000s, in-person human interaction has declined by nearly a third even as leisure time has been increasing steadily. Over the last six decades in fact, discretionary time has grown by six hours a week – that’s over 300 hours a year.

This added time is apparently not being spent in the company of others, except as filtered through screens. Television already had a well-established its presence in 1965. By then, 93% of all American households had one. This marked the beginning of a steady trend in human separation that our core sample can trace accurately. Ground zero for this social estrangement: the decade between 1985 and 1994 when participation in local community groups (bowling teams, service clubs, fraternal societies) plummeted by half.

Indications are that the future offers us more of the same. The next generation of adults, aka American teens, currently spend a third of their waking hours staring at their various screens. The percentage of adolescent boys and girls who gather with friends outside of school hours has declined by 50% over the last three decades.

Since we will not likely interrupt these trends as a society going forward, we are left to absorb their impacts individually. So yeah, maybe you’re feeling pretty lost right now. Perhaps it might help, especially in this increasingly secluded environment, to share that feeling of being lost with just one person. Core samples dig deep; they literally stop time – time that right now seems to be moving very fast in a trajectory that casts us farther apart from one another, even as our world gets smaller.

So maybe a connection with others that involves the sensory and the interpersonal in the present moment. After all, if you’re going to embrace a fast-moving challenge, it might help to stand still with someone else. Then, who knows? You might find that you can dance together.

Song, Artist, Album

Deadbeat Club, B-52, Cosmic Thing 

Village Green Preservation Society, Kinks, Village Green Preservation Society

Mostly German Philosopher Song, Jere Boor

Memo To My Son, Randy Newman, Sail Away 

So Quiet In Here, Van Morrison, Enlightenment 

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Here At The Western World, Steely Dan, Citizen 

Let’s Get Together, Hayley Mills, Let’s Get Together    

Take Me To Church, Sinead O’Connor, I’m Not Bossy