The Chicken or the Egg: Was It the Parents or Technology That Screwed Everything Up?
Ray Bradbury was right again. A look at how The Illustrated Man predicted where we are today.
I saw a post from an old friend on Instagram the other day. At first, I was happy to see the post since I hadn’t heard from her in awhile. But then I noticed something disturbing about her photos.
Initially, it appeared to be a collection of pics taken of her family spending time together. But upon closer inspection, they weren’t really spending time together. Sure, they were physically within the vicinity of one another. However, each of them had a device in their hand and their eyes trained solely on the screen before them.
It’s not like I haven’t seen this before. I’ve watched for years as friends, acquaintances, and strangers put tablets and smartphones into the hands of their babies and children. I’ve also seen them give in to every demand. Every single thing they see and say they need, the parents get it for them.
And the reason for it? Because it’s just easier that way.
What the fuck happened?
The Chicken and the Egg
Things weren’t like this when I was growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I just didn’t realize what was going on because my family was not well off and we couldn’t afford fancy tech until I was in high school. And when we did, my parents were terrified of it.
I remember the first few months of using our microwave, my parents made us run out of the room while it did it’s thing. The reason: That’s how you avoid the radiation coming out of it.
Anywho, something definitely changed when Gen X and Millennials became parents. I just don’t know if there’s something inherently wrong with our generations or if technology is responsible for the societal rot we’re dealing with right now.
I’m currently reading The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. The first story in the collection has similar themes to Fahrenheit 451 and I think it might provide a good explanation for what’s going on today.
This story is about a family that lives in a smart house. The house literally does everything for them. But the parents have discovered that the nursery (basically, the kids’ playroom) has become dangerous and they’ve lost control over it.
They begin to fear that their children are the ones in control of the room. And that thought terrifies them because of what takes place there.
They discuss locking the room up, but are scared to because they don’t want to upset their children:
“And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled.”
“You know how difficult Pete is about that. When I punished him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours—the tantrum he threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.”
Then they toy with the idea of shutting off the smart features of the house as a whole.
“I don’t know—I don’t know,” she said, blowing her nose, sitting down in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. “Maybe I don’t have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don’t we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?”
“You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?”
This scene would be funny if it weren’t so fucking spot on.
This is what our society has come to. We live in a time when technology can save us a ton of time and make our lives more convenient than ever before. But that sort of luxury doesn’t come for free. Even if people aren’t paying top dollar for high-end smart home features, they’ve sacrificed part of their humanity in exchange for smartphones and digital streaming and same-day shipping.
“But I thought that’s why we bought this house, so we wouldn’t have to do anything?”
“That’s just it. I feel like I don’t belong here. The house is wife and mother now and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve been awfully nervous lately.”
“I suppose I have been smoking too much.”
“You look as if you didn’t know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You’re beginning to feel unnecessary too.” [emphasis added]
Focusing on parents again, I think this is what we’re seeing now. Though it’s not so much that parents have become unnecessary. We don’t have the technology to literally raise children. However, I think a lot of parents want the technology we do have to do just that — this is why they plant devices firmly in their hands the second they're old enough to focus on them.
Technology has weakened the spirit, the mind, and even the body of people. As a result, they no longer feel they need to work.
This changing mindset and approach to parenting has led to a generation of children that don’t value honesty, independence, hard work, ingenuity, creativity, or anything of the things that have led to the greatest creations and achievements over time.
“We’ve given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward—secrecy, disobedience?”
“Who was it said,’ ‘Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally’? We’ve never lifted a hand. They’re insufferable—let’s admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They’re spoiled and we’re spoiled.”
I was recently talking to a friend about this very thing. Her kid is impetuous, selfish, ungrateful, and abusive, among other things. When I asked her why she doesn’t put her foot down now, she said that she and other parent friends of hers agree that they failed this generation of children. They refused to let their children feel like they made mistakes or to deal with the consequences of said mistakes.
There’s no desire, it seems, to right their wrongs as parents. They’re just prepared to accept that this is how the next generation of doctors, lawyers, and teachers are going to be. I realize that not all parents are this way. However, there’s a substantial amount of them that have done this to our kids and all of us are going to have to deal with those consequences in the coming decades.
Final Thoughts
So, which is it? Did the chicken or the egg fuck up our society? Was it the Gen X and Millennial parents or the advanced technologies that dominate our lives?
While both are responsible for what’s happening right now, none of this would be possible without the pervasiveness of the Internet and all the new, shiny devices connected to it. Smartphones. Tablets. Virtual assistant devices. Smart cars. Smartwatches. All of it.
What do we do now?
Honestly, I think we need a mass movement away from smart living. While there’s a ton of good that the Internet has done for us, right now the bad vastly outweighs the good. We need people to view it as a special treat — something they indulge in from time to time, not every minute of every waking hour. And most certainly not something they use to shirk their duties as a parent, spouse, employee or whatever.
How great it is that a Ray Bradbury story is so relevant today? I love those writers who can be so prescient. A pet peeve of mine is ALEXA. I hate that crap. I was at a friend's place and saw he had one, and i was grousing about it but he seemed to see nothing wrong with it. The idea of speaking to some piece of tech in the room to turn the light on, rather than reaching over and turning it on myself, is moronic to me. Turning over every little task to tech seems infantilizing. Every little skill we have, the tiny ones we do every day -- it's good for us. It's good to know how to operate a pair of scissors, or a screwdriver. It's good for the brain to be connected to the hands. People like driving cuz it may be the biggest skill they have and get to use.
When i hear about schools dropping something like cursive writing, i think it's bad; there goes another skill, one that, like swimming, i can't imagine not having. I take it for granted. But now schools are too busy doing . . . well, god only knows what they're doing that they no longer have the time to teach these basic skills. I can anticipate the argument that we no longer need to bother learning to read or write -- we can speak into the interfaces, and they will speak back to us . . .
Good point you made -- that tech has weakened us in all ways. It promises to do everything for us, and dazzles and entertains, and pulls at our weakest parts with addictive scrolling bullshit; but it's taking away our agency; how is it an advance to tell some appliance to turn on the lights? I guess if I were so fat that leaving the couch was a problem, that type of help could come in handy.
There's a connection to work, even tiny work, and what we get back from it, the intrinsic rewards. Nothing coming at us thru a screen can provide that.
About your friend with the abusive kid -- I've seen this before. Kids seek boundaries, guidelines, guidance, rules, and they do better when they have these things; it's ingrained; throwing a tantrum will just happen, so be it; I think when kids aren't given these things -- boundaries, expectations for behavior, etc. -- that they feel abandoned or neglected . . . they sense that on some level, and later they have resentment toward the parents who dropped the ball. And they become little Napoleons of course...
Chicken or the egg? I think tech/Internet is the culprit -- I think any generation would have been susceptible to the onslaught of this stuff, had it arrived in their time . . . this creepy thing that preys on the weakest parts of our psychology. Like you said, it weakens us.