On Becoming Human Again

Hi Jenny. 

Funny, but I almost took this down this morning!  I was just having a bit of a rant, really.

Same with me re: people.  I've always felt like a bit of an outsider, anyway.  But more so now.  Yesterday evening, I went to a book festival event in Margate.  Not huge numbers there - about thirty, maybe.  It was reassuring to listen to the author whose book was being launched - his first novel - as he was describing the process that led him to write it, and what he was struggling against at the time: anxiety and depression.  He said he believes he's autistic, but has never been clinically diagnosed.  I certainly recognised many traits.  Many of the others there, too, were neurodivergent (the event had been organised especially for that reason), so I at least felt like part of a tribe!  But it was still too much in the end, and I didn't stay for the second part of the evening.  Even in such company, I inevitably found myself on the sidelines, alone, observing.  I was hearing conversations that I thought I'd have something to add to, but have had to learn not to barge in or interrupt - something I'd previously have done, if anything to feel myself 'included' in some way.  But I guess I'm a more natural 'sideline observer'!  On the train over and the train back, though, everyone I saw was engaged with a phone - even people who weren't alone.  One guy on the station was on the opposite platform from me and was engaged in a loud conversation for the whole 15 minutes I was waiting.  I moved to the other end of my platform, but could still hear him.  He wasn't keeping still, either, but kept walking around and up and down - seemingly oblivious of the irritation of people around him.  It's like Will Self said, it's the ultimate realisation of anomie in our culture: 'I'm me, here, doing my thing in the way that I choose, without regard for the impact it's having on anyone else.'  And he added, in his usual smilingly sardonic way, that at the end of the world there'll be one single phone left there ringing... and no one to answer it!

As venture capitalist Roger McNamee, one of the original investors in Facebook, comments in 'The Social Dilemma': 'When you wake up in the morning, do you check your phone before you pee or while you pee?  Because those are the only two options now.'

People check their feeds before washing their hands even. That's how fucked the world has become.

Hi Turlough.  That sounds like a better plan than the one I tried.  On a crowded bus, I started an imaginary conversation on an imaginary phone, giving my imaginary interlocutor precise instructions on how to remove the head of the deceased, cut through thigh and arm bones to likewise remove the limbs, then parcel up said dismembered articles (and torso) in black plastic sacks, seal them with gaffer tape, then transfer them to the boot of the car for disposal on local moorland later - though preferably after dark.

Not one single person looked up from TikTok.