Nailing America The Lonely

FRENCH HISTORIAN Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in 1830, then wrote about his experiences in his famous book "Democracy In America" .He observed that American society is highly individualistic. "I see innumerable multitudes of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each of them withdrawn into himself is almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Mankind, for him, consists in his children and his personal friends. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, they are near enough, but he does not notice them. he touches them, but feels nothing. He exists in and for himself, and though he may still have a family, one can at least say that he has not got a fatherland." De Tocqueville was correct in 1830, and he is right on the mark today. It almost seems as if he visited the United States last week, and is still touring the country. The Frenchman's only sin was his disapproval of Congressman Davy Crockett. he was horrified that Crockett had been elected to congress, thought him a barbarian, and marveled that a far superior man of education and culture lost to the backwoodsman. Had Alexis spent a little more time with the lovable pioneer, his opinion would doubtless have improved. But, all told, he hit the proverbial nail on the head. The United States of Alone. We Americans are trained from birth to be on our own. A more modern comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon is Robert Putnam's seminal work "Bowling Alone", in which the Harvard sociologist describes the recent decline in all aspects of participation, from Parent Teacher organizations, to youth baseball - in all facts of community life in America, participation has markedly declined. We prefer to be alone with our electronic gadgets, where we are in total control, and risk nothing, except eye strain and carpel tunnel. We are looking at something, for something, usually ourselves, but definitely not each other. we take pretty pictures of our pretty selves and our pretty houses, post information about our dogs, cats, and vacations, and show them for all the world to behold - as if anyone out there really cares - while maintaining our physical isolation. We send text messages upstairs, and receive replies in broken, truncated barely decipherable "English". heaven forbid that we should converse face to face. We withdraw into ourselves, unaware of the fate of anyone else, as the French historian cogently noted two hundred years ago. It appears that little has changed over the past two centuries, except our technological means of insulating ourselves against one another. Up go the privacy fences, and the tinted windows, so that as we drive down our lonely highways, nobody can see who we are, of whether we are there. We are not there. We are texting some stranger on Facebook who we deceive ourselves into believing is a friend. Actually, our Facebook friends are merely names on a list, names of people we do not know, and never will, at least not until we decide, in lonely desperation, to come out bravely from behind our brown wooden fences, and show ourselves to others, without our cell phones pointed out ourselves, showing off our vanity to people we will never meet, know, nor care about.