One is the Loneliest Number

On my friend Lee Distad's blog site is an article about the imminent closure of the iconic Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street in Toronto. The current management of the store comment that they are forced to accept that the day of the recorded music retailer is drawing to a close as alternative forms of distribution, primarily based in the internet, are taking over.

While consumerism is a issue with deep, difficult and wide ranging implications for people of faith, commerce in and of itself is not sinful - only out attitudes and actions stemming from those attitudes can make our shopping choices sinful. I see the loss of Sam's as a cultural loss that goes beyond the music world as it sends us signals about what may draw us into the public marketplace, or what may make us decide to remain cloistered within our private spaces. As I opine in the comments section on Lee's blog, portions of our culture and society are becoming less and less communal pursuits and more and more individual pursuits. This raises troubling questions regarding what sort of society and culture we may be moving towards.

I am ambivalent about what the power of the internet is doing in regard to our communal/individual experience. I watch my son regularly communing with his peer group from his desk as he simultaneously chats with anywhere up to half a dozen friends. I can keep in touch with my sons in Edmonton, friends all over the place, missionaries in other countries and forge new relationships through the power of email, blogs, text messaging and even voice and video. But at the same time the same forces are beginning to limit some of my interactions on other levels.

The physical marketplace has served a vital social and cultural function for all of recorded human history and we may be on the doorstep of the first generation we know of that will live without this physical presence as a dominant force in their lives. As more and more business can be transacted online, as more and more relationships can be engaged in online, people will face a life with increasingly less need for direct physical human contact. If, as some modern era historians suggest, the television drove those in Western developed countries (and eventually everybody else as the technology became available) into their private homes, killing some forms of communal interaction and recreation, what then might the internet do in this regard to further our isolation?

A story in today's news reports about the tragic deaths of an east cost mother with MS and her disabled daughter, who both died unnoticed in their own home, may be a disturbing symptom of what is emerging as the "new culture" of personal physical isolation. I have to deal with this issue personally as someone I care for deeply, living in another city, is experiencing loneliness and some isolation. Do my interactions over the internet with this person help or hinder their ability and desire to go out and have face to face relationships with other people? Is the telephone better because it engages another sense besides sight, or is it merely the precursor to our internet chat interactions? Do my online relationships interfere with my "meatspace" ones. What does a word like "meatspace" and its creation say about emerging attitudes towards physical interaction?

There is a deep spiritual significance to physical presence in relationship as well as Scriptural exhortation to maintain such relationships. Christ came physically. Being God there were much more efficient and effective options available to Him to bring the message of the Gospel to the world, including individual, personal revelation transmitted directly to each living person. But efficiency and expediency were not the point of the revelation of God through Jesus. The point is more closely wrapped up in our created nature and God's ultimate intention for us. We are "Created for Community" as the title of the book by late Stanley J. Grenz proclaims.

We will be able to find new ways to experience and enhance community through the potential of the internet because I believe Christ will grant us the wisdom to do so. He wants the internet to be redeemed as He wants all of creation to be redeemed, but the potential of our sinful nature will also mean that we must be on guard against allowing damage to happen to our relationships through this same medium. There will also be forces that will harness the influence of the internet to twist its potential for good into something that will damage our humanity. The more obvious uses in this vein are already well established (pornography, gambling, rampant consumerism, fraud, theft, infidelity, etc.). We are now beginning to face more subtle issues and challenges that are just as, if not more dangerous. The influence of the internet is shaping our common cultural experiences - the public marketplace for one - and we do not seem to have the power to control such shifts.

That being the case, we must then decide how we will respond. We cannot seek a path through anachronistic entrenchment of bygone church customs and practices. We need new and creative approaches that recognize and reflect the reality of our lives today. This will take more brain power and prayer than any of us can muster individually - again we see the power of the community becoming more important.

If the very foundation of community is at risk, then we who are "created for community" have interesting and challenging days ahead.

Shalom.